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I've been painting on and off for a handful of years now, maybe 3 or 4. I've tried out various techniques, tools and paints, watched tutorials, practised as often as I can, though I find the shockingly slow pace of my limited abilities to be massively demotivating. Just today, I've been painting a vanguard veteran that had some colour on him already. It's taken me a small age to get his backpack done, only to then knacker the highlights and have to start from scratch.

I don't know if I'm just being too delicate with my approach or whatever, it just seems that as soon as I get happy with one component, I fail to translate that to the rest of the model, or screw up a detail that spoils the rest of the work I've done.

I've just had a rant to my wife, going over my frustration at the time spent on this hobby and the lack of progression in my ability. I mean no disrespect to anyone should I be giving the impression that I expect to wake up one day and instantly be able to freehand a 40k equivalent of the Cistene Chapel (spelling?) though I really do feel that I should be much better than I am now. I've come close to getting my models on ebay and sodding it all off, though I've thankfully kept that teddy firmly in the pram.

How long have you guys been doing this, do you ever feel the same, and how do you get past it? This is a recurring theme for me that's only keeping me away from my paint station now.

Hey I've been there. Its taken me two months to finish two deathwing models.

You know honestly, I had to take them to my FLGS to finish them. It was the motivation I needed. To be around other gamers, listening to game jargon, watching guys paint and play.

It was the kick I needed. I don't think there is anything wrong with what you are doing. I mean heck I think every gamer has been there

I've been doing this for over 20 years & while I have improved greatly since I started there are still things when I'm frustrated with my painting. Hell I still can't satisfactorily do NMM & it makes me feel like an amateur. And keep in mind that I even have people who pay me to paint. It's usually my own models that I am never happy with.

since 96


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Sorry, I've been painting since 96. I agree with the above, totally feel the same way.

We have all been there my friend. I still struggle to get any kind of highlights on and stick to washes, drybrushing etc.

Out of a massive DA army I have only two fully painted and based squads. The rest all have some colour but nowhere near finished.

At this stage in my busy life (family, work etc.) I have to be content that I don't have the time to get better than table top standard, but you know what? That's ok.

I'm still a little gutted when I finally am happy with a model and I put it next to my friends Eldar and it looks like a blind 3 legged dog finger painted it!

But I enjoy modelling and love playing. Maybe my painting will never be award winning but I'm sure if we all try not to let it get to us and just keep practising we will get better.

In the mean time I'll just keep buying new brushes (never seem to be able to keep a tiny point for long!)

As my dad always says "Keep smiling".

I am about 4 months into a rhino at the moment, about to prime the outside tonight (hopefully).

It happens, the thing I normally do is switch projects, or clean the desk, or whatever to get you back at it. Perfectionism is a tricky beast, in that you will never be really good until you do it badly and get better - do some rank and file troops to tabletop standard (ie., badly).

I mean, have a look at buypainted's videos - he does a level of work that I would be thrilled with, but if you look closely, it is actually rather sloppy a lot of the time. A good oil wash covers so many sins.

I am new to 40k but come from an artistic background and have been drawing/painting my entire life.

No artist EVER is happy with their own work. All we see are the flaws that nobody else ever will. Learn to get over that and call it good enough. Which leads me to my second piece of advice...

Those little details are awesome on close inspection but impossible to see on the table. This is a game about hoards of things. People will see them all together with the general feel and style and color of the troops. Small defects wont get a second glance because they like will never have a first. Let it go man. Call it good enough.

Best advice an artist can give from years of art experience

I'm with Lance, both on the 'quality of quantity'/'at arm's length' points and the 'own worst critic' bit. I've been painting for a bit over half a decade and can barely fill 2 shelves of my Detolf with finished models. I paint at a narcoleptic snail's pace - I'm slow when I work and I only work in short, infrequent bursts.

I seek the highest quality I can achieve and have from the outset. There hasn't been all that much visible improvement in quality, over the years. Mostly, it's just become easier to achieve those same results, as my hand becomes more practiced and I pick up different techniques and tools/materials.

The biggest challenge, for me, is shifting my perspective. On the one hand, I had to learn to say "good enough" BEFORE I drove myself mad and simply called it quits on a project. Often, when painting, you hit a point of diminishing returns on successive painting tweaks, anyway. Don't let yourself spin your wheels for too long.

On the other hand, I also have to 'zoom out' - these are 28mm (haven't even primed a single model for my 15mm stuff) models. Everything at this scale has to be both simplified and exagerrated to be visible. Many of the most attractive paintjobs on the table look a bit crude under the magnifying glass, since the painters knew how to play up the right shapes with extreme contrast placed at key points. Tiny details and smooth, subtle blends may seem critical when you're holding the model under your nose to paint, but are nearly invisible with a little distance. Take a step back every once in a while and you may find yourself happier with the work you already do or you may end up shifting to a different style that better suits the medium.

I think keeping at it is the key. I am not a great painter and am pretty slow, but I don't let little details that go wrong get in my way. i just finish out the model as best I can. once it is finished I realize the "mistakes" that were made are really not all that visible on the table. I find it to be motivating to get a squad finished so i can put it on the table painted and with pride. where I play many armies are simply a "sea of gray" so i really don't feel bad about quality since i have at least given it a try.

Here are some images of my Ork army I have worked on for about 10 months or so. this is basically my first army and have been at it here and there with some Marines for a year or so before this. Not great, but I still feel pretty good about them. I also find it motivating to see really how much progress (at least in terms of volume) I have made over the past year.

http://www.dakkadakka.com/gallery/images-72079-44995_Ork%20Army.html

I've been painting 40K minis since about 1987, started with Orks, and much later moved to Space Marines and Chaos Daemons. I'm generally a very slow painter, but that's due to me always trying to make EVERY model a work of art (at least to my limited abilities).

I've found that if I take a step back and accept that table-top quality is good enough for the rank and file, I can move much quicker. I painted about 43 Chaos Daemon infantry over the course of a week using very simple color schemes and loads of washes. If you stare at them closely, you'll see they were a rush job, but all together on the battlefield, they look great. Anymore, I only spend a great deal of time on the character models and more unique vehicles such as dreadnaughts.

It definitely took me a couple years (3?) to develop a painting quality that I think most players would consider above average and that I was pretty happy with. Then it took a couple more years (3?) to be able to do that reasonably quickly.

Specific projects can also take a long time for me. The trick i think is to develop a handle on when to power through, and when to switch to something else. I had some Sternguard that I wasn't really feeling, let them sit base coated for a year, and then got inspired, got them back on the bench, and wrapped up super quickly. I had an assault terminator squad very poorly base coated that I've very occasionally used for ~5 years, and just got inspired to do them all up pretty well in a couple hours to field them for an Apoc game this year. So, I wouldn't necessarily stress about that, just move on and come back.

 kitch102 wrote:
I've been painting on and off for a handful of years now, maybe 3 or 4. I've tried out various techniques, tools and paints, watched tutorials, practised as often as I can, though I find the shockingly slow pace of my limited abilities to be massively demotivating. Just today, I've been painting a vanguard veteran that had some colour on him already. It's taken me a small age to get his backpack done, only to then knacker the highlights and have to start from scratch.

I don't know if I'm just being too delicate with my approach or whatever, it just seems that as soon as I get happy with one component, I fail to translate that to the rest of the model, or screw up a detail that spoils the rest of the work I've done.

I've just had a rant to my wife, going over my frustration at the time spent on this hobby and the lack of progression in my ability. I mean no disrespect to anyone should I be giving the impression that I expect to wake up one day and instantly be able to freehand a 40k equivalent of the Cistene Chapel (spelling?) though I really do feel that I should be much better than I am now. I've come close to getting my models on ebay and sodding it all off, though I've thankfully kept that teddy firmly in the pram.

How long have you guys been doing this, do you ever feel the same, and how do you get past it? This is a recurring theme for me that's only keeping me away from my paint station now.

welcome to mini painting 101. this is why people pay money to get it done well. there are not that many shortcuts to increase speed without sacrificing quality. even for the best painters, it still takes them forever. And many people you cant trust them when you ask how long it takes, they have a warped perception of time. some will say 6 hours when it was actually more like 60.
with the amount of crap they plaster over everything these days you could burn 20 hours on a single marine without even noticing.

some tips
if youre really obsessed with speed you can check out some of awaken realms tutorials for a quick and dirty airbrush style of painting. personally i cant stand the look of it.
dont bother with nmm, it looks at its best in pictures from a certain angle anyway.
find what works and stay with it. experimenting is ok but usually when you go too far outside the box it ends up looking bad.
usually its faster to cut details off than to paint them. when there's 15 trinkets on a model does anyone even notice when 2 are missing?

Thanks all, your comments are very reassuring. The painting rant that I had the other night was honestly just the icing the cake of late - for some time I've been feeling useless at much of what I do, and frustration on Sunday was the last straw that caused me to snap.

I suppose I can see that I've progressed since first picking up a brush, though when the main reason for not having time to improve on my painting skill is really just down to having an over active social life, I can't really complain.

Lance, your words especially have struck a note, and reminded me that when I showed a friend my models, whilst they don't compare to the airbrushed works of art that I was showing her on CMON, she was still very impressed and that's what I need to keep in mind.

It's also reassuring to read a few comments here saying that it was 3+ years before you guys started to feel happy with your models.

So, in short, thanks to you all - it's very much appreciated.

If you make a mistake on a highlight, you can usually just wipe the paint off with your thumb, or a dampened brush/paper towel, provided you do so immediately.


Saves having to do all the shading all over again.

Hell, I can hit the tiniest details, no problem, but the similar techniques to do highlighting have always escaped me. Still keep plugging away, though.

Painting is tough! I go through patches where I paint a gak ton of models to the standard I want, and then have three or four months where I just pick away at half finished projects and don't really do much...

Honestly, the only real motivator for me is tournaments. For every tournament I'll pick something new to paint, and focus on getting that done in time, otherwise I just can't stick with it!

And, as others have said, you are your own worst critic. I see the flaws in my own models, and describe them as being 'OK, I guess, but not great', when in reality I go to clubs or tournaments, and they are some of the better (not best!) paint jobs on the tables.

fella, i've had this so muxh way back in the past. I gave up for a long time bcs i fekt so disillissioned with my own skills. and to make matters worse, I listened to all the GW haters which made me doubt the hobby even more. only recently I got back into it. I'm a decent painter but nothing great - but that doesnt matter - what matters is how it makes you feels when you put the workd aside adn pick up tht fig and that brush adn relax adn enjoy what your hobby is. if you have any questions or prbs about painting - msg your other dakkadakka friends, we're always here to try n help. I'm not a pro painter but im pretty good adn always wanting to help anojther painter. this is the best hobby in the world (imho) and its made that by the community who enjoy it.

I am myself not even close to where I want to be skillwise but I have made a huge leap recently. I am still slow as <bleeeeep> but I make steady strides and the result makes me feel I am going forward and not sideways and backwards.

The biggest difference is that I paint with a plan, I have structured the way I go about it so that I minimize risk of having to touch up an that every step visually gets me closer. This helps motivate me.

As an example, I always glosscoat it I am doing a wash to make sure I can remove it without damaging the paint underneath.

When I go to paint in a tight space I mask of surfaces temporarily with Tamiya maskingtape to make sure paint goes where I want. Learned this when I started shading with airbrush and oilwash. If I mess up and spill paint it is not so easy to touch up a surface with a gradient.

This may not be much and it might not be what you need but the feel of progression and the fact that I don't have to back over and over again have made me bolder, and the bolder I get the more I learn.

Particularly when edge highlighting, I keep water and q-tips close at hand, so that I may quickly wash off any egregious goofs. Also, I like to paint after a couple stiff drinks/four or so beers, as it loosens me up and reduces shaking. It's also lots of fun! Like anything, it is a double-edged sword, the better I'm feeling the more likely I am to have another, and soon enough I'm far too impaired for such a precise activity.

Funny, I have tried to not drink on "painting nights".

Seems that may have been a mistake

THIS! This is why I love this wee community right here

Yeah, I can say I've been there too. I had a great group of guys to hang out with in both painting and playing games. One guy came along, I met him at a tournament at a local, he had painted directly onto the metal with now primer. We spoke a bit, started hanging out and I gave him what limited knowledge I had about painting... Well if he didn't strip those models, repaint them all after priming and they all came out like he'd been painting for years and years and way surpassed my limited ability! That's the sort of thing maybe you need, is a group of guys to hang out with, have a beer, paint, build, have friendly games. It goes a long way. These guys are now my best friends, unfortunately I had to move away, and we lost one in combat over seas...
I paint and build now, but I have no one to game with... :/

Hang in there, just sharing my personal experience, and I hope it helps somehow.

 kitch102 wrote:
Thanks all, your comments are very reassuring. The painting rant that I had the other night was honestly just the icing the cake of late - for some time I've been feeling useless at much of what I do, and frustration on Sunday was the last straw that caused me to snap.

I suppose I can see that I've progressed since first picking up a brush, though when the main reason for not having time to improve on my painting skill is really just down to having an over active social life, I can't really complain.

Lance, your words especially have struck a note, and reminded me that when I showed a friend my models, whilst they don't compare to the airbrushed works of art that I was showing her on CMON, she was still very impressed and that's what I need to keep in mind.

It's also reassuring to read a few comments here saying that it was 3+ years before you guys started to feel happy with your models.

So, in short, thanks to you all - it's very much appreciated.

I've been in this hobby since 1998, when I was 12 years old. I had 4,000 points of Warriors of Chaos back in 5th and 6th edition, easily 5,000 points in Dark Angels, and am now the proud owner of a 3,500 points in each of Tomb Kings and Vampire Counts (or about 6,000 in combined Undead Legions).

And between all of that guess how many fully painted armies I can field? Zero.

Despite closing on two decades in the hobby, I have always been so picky and self-critical that I have never actually gotten all the way through an army. I take forever to paint things, endlessly obsess over colour schemes and techniques, strip models and restart them. I've gone literal years without painting a single model out of this same frustration.

However starting last year I endeavored to change this. I picked an upcoming tournament and vowed that, come hell or high water, I would have it ready for then. I continued to obsess over models, strip and repaint, until suddenly it was crunch time and I couldn't afford to do that anymore. Suddenly "good enough" became the motto. I developed all sorts of little shortcuts and tricks to get things looking close enough to what I wanted without spending an inordinate amount of time doing it.

And you know what? It looks fething awesome. Despite the fact that EVERY LITTLE DETAIL isn't quite up to my standards, having an army that is actually almost painted makes me feel a thousand times better. I have the painted models lined up across the top of my desk now, silently cheering me on towards completing the rest of their brethren.


So don't despair. I know you're frustrated, but the only way to get better is to keep trying at it. The first few models will never look perfect, so just start on the ones you don't like and come back to fix them up once you've gotten better at the technique. Quite honestly I am NEVER happy with a new technique the first model I start on. However the joy of Warhammer, compared to some other games, is that you've got a lots and lots of models to practice on before you get finished.

Also the key to good painting isn't getting things right the first time...it's touching them up so that they look good *eventually*. You will always have errant brush strokes, lines that aren't straight, and all manner of other little blemishes and screwups. That's why you thin your paints, so that you can go over multiple times without messing up the final product. And if things get too bad then whatever...dunk them in simple green for a couple days and everything will be golden.

I just wanted to say it's awesome everybody jumping in here to help the OP out. Lots of this is good solid advice and topic matter aside these are the sorts of things good friends say to one another. I'm happy to be a part of a hobby that makes strangers into brothers.

You just don't worry OP, it sounds like you are just a long aging wine. It don't happen overnight, but I'll bet if you look at one of your first models compared to a more recent one you'll see a huge difference.

This thread was what I needed to put together some frustrating older OOP metal models and half a Tactical squad today, thanks all.

Going to try to go to the FLGS to see if that will help me put some paint on them.

http://doodlealley.com/2012/10/10/be-friends-with-failure/ This has gotten me through after some rough patches while being an artist.

I've basically resigned myself to the fact if I ever want to paint an army, it's gonna look like crap. If I want to paint models that look good, I have to limit myself to single models, MAYBE a small squad, but mostly just single models.

I'm not sure if it's more or less depressing to accept that... but it does put things in to perspective and stops me embarking on unrealistic projects.

I have found that to really improve quickly, you have to dedicate yourself to one model (or small squad) at a time and really put the effort in. If you aren't pushing the limits of your ability you won't improve, but pushing the limits of your ability is not conducive to getting entire armies painted.

As has been said a few times now, by various people, this is fantastic advice and indicative of the good in people. In spite of never having met me once, not being able to identify me in line up or whatever, you've all rallied round and honestly, spurred me back on.

I was back to painting my Vanguard Vets last night, and I noticeably felt different in my approach. I think I had the "it only needs to be good enough" thought process that has been mentioned a number of times that, up til then, had been missing from my station. I'm still a bit het up by the lack of speed, though introducing the conveyor belt approach over the single model at a time method helps me to feel like more is happening, even if it doesn't appear like much has changed.

I've got some micron pens to help with my painting white too - they've just arrived - so I'm looking forward to trying these out tomorrow.

I'm with you!

I too am a "one model at a time man" and get so fed up of how long it takes. I'm too much of a perfectionist sometimes. Interesting how I've also taken the "conveyer-belt" advice on board since restarting modelling a week ago and feel so much calmer about the squad in front of me in just building them, hope it carries forward in the painting phase.

Best of luck. Just remember someone will always be better than people like you and I, and someone will always be worse. So let's get a grip and be nice to those guys and help them through.

PS Have to say that I love the support that you get on the whole in the Dakka community