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I am an avid painter.
I even sell my services cheap for people just because I love doing it!

But the thing is, I find myself recently getting burnt out with painting? Which sucks.. Because I love doing it, but for some reason I always start something, and never finish it..
I want to get my motivation back, I have a Riptide I've been meticulously stripping to repaint, and it's almost ready to go through a solid revamp
I also may be picking up Mortarion soon and I want to have a painted Pallid Hand Morty for my army!

So what keeps all of you motivated? And what causes you guys to feel like painting?

Well, unless someone is doing it as a source of income...the best motivation is to quit when you don't feel like painting.

I go through stretches, weeks, occasionally months where I don't want to paint - so I don't (unless I need something done for a game and then it's a struggle).

If you have the luxury of taking a break - do. It will come back.

Technique keeps me motivated. Painting whole armies can be a soul-sucking repetition of a handful of colours, and just using the techniques you're already good at gets old eventually. I check out CMON daily, and I'm always on the lookout for new techniques, new ways of using colour, conversions - anything and everything.

When I get bored (frequently) I'll pick a new technique that interests me and work on just that for a couple of days, Call it sketching in 3D. Any old figs will do really, so long as they're cheap, I'll just whack away at whatever technique I'm doing on the bits of the figs that matter and switch from fig to fig whenever it suits me. No deadlines, no need to 'finish'anything. It's glorious.

There's a ton of stuff I'm not good at yet: OSL, source lighting in general, real metallic metallics, texturing cloth, alternate colour use in areas of shadow, different kinds of weathering and battle damage, use of oil paints, etc etc etc.. New skills can give your painting time new life.

One thing that helps is having something to listen to that doesn’t take much concentration away from the painting. Podcasts and radio programs work well, anything you’d like to do but would feel like you were wasting time just doing by itself.

definitely agree with podcasts/music - or twitch too, lots of painters and wargamers stream via twitch (or youtube)

You may just need a break though, truth be told. Everyone gets some burnout sometimes. Taking a break is a good solution, just make sure you have something cool to come back to

I personally tend to paint a bunch of infantry or whatever, then a character or a large model (tank etc), take a break and do terrain, then rinse repeat.

I also find it helps to have a stack of my pretties nearby my work area - or spend time looking over your pictures of done models. It definitely helps you feel like you're accomplishing something!

I listen to music or put on youtube next level painting vids and old streams. Makes it less lonely, as you hear someone "painting" with you.


Trying and painting new techniques helps keeps it fresh. Changing up the models etc...

I just finished paint about 2500 points of tyranids, and still got another 2000 points of models built and primed staring at me and I want to scream. so i busted out some old marines that i have. Going to try an OSL airbrush on these guys.

One thing that has well me keep motivated is sharing my work and entering fun competitions.

I previously did this hobby for a few months then would go do something else for a few months then come back, but sine I've started entering Paradigm's painting challenges I've been creating and painting something every month for almost 3 years now

Link if you are interested
https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/745712.page

I tend to change what i’m painting, doing the same models over and over destroys my soul after so long, I usually do 10 troops and then move onto something else to break the monotony.

The hobby should always be fun and having a diversion to something else will always freshen things up.

I’ll second painting competitions as a great way to put some zing back in your painting. I used to enter the competitions held on the Somethingawful website’s hobby section, where you could win prizes for your work, with many goings to additional things like Most Improved. Particularly crazy people could also put down their website membership as collateral and motivation to finish projects in time, with failure resulting in perma bans. It certainly got me to finish a lot of models.