Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

As title really, how did you find it?

Seen one or two YT videos recently where the target is paint an army for 24hrs or there abouts.
Normally I will/can only do a couple hours here and there. However I happen to have a fair chunk of terrain primed now and a bit of time on my hands. So I thought I might give a marathon session a go on that. As a quality drop may not be so disappointing.

Edit: Added a bit of a poll for funsies.

I used to paint happily as a kid pretty much the whole day, especially on holidays and days off. Used to really enjoy the experience especially when I had mates around. Some days it was sun up to sun down. Perhaps a game here and there as well for good measure.

These days no more then an hour at a time. But it is probably the only hour I may relax that day. Hopefully when I can get the eyes sorted out and add better lighting I could improve on that time and get a bit more painted.

2020 - Back in the spring/early summer when everything was shut down around here I'd spend about 3-5 hours each evening binge watching Netflix/Amazon & painting AoS Gloomspites.
I'd get 12-15 minis finished each session.
Sooo many archers. Sooo many spearmen.... The only reason I could tell I wasn't just painting & re-painting the same mini was that the primer white pile slowly shrunk & the fully painted pile slowly grew.

Spring of '19 I had numerous 8+ hr sessions as I painted up some 150 unique NPC types for a D&D project, on a deadline.

Summer of 1994. I bought Titan Legions, and spent the next 48 hours sleepless assembling and painting the whole box.
The irony is I played a single game and sold it.
I did this when I was 21 and there is no way in hell I would ever do it again. I’m almost 50 now so it’s more an age thing really.

If you’re youthful, staying up for a marathon of anything is much easier. I still wouldn’t recommend it though. I was pretty beat after my two day stint and had to work the following day feeling like a bag of crap.

These days since the pandemic crushed the service industry and left me jobless, I normally paint for at least 4 hours a day, usually 6 to 8.

I did a few 12 + hour painting marathons

I've also painted somewhere in the range of 40~ full sized armies over the years so this isnt anything too crazy.

Generally it's fairly unhealthy and I'm burned out after 6 hours and need a break.

edit: I can do the paint an army in 24 hours and plan to do that with my Traitor Guard

I generally can't paint for more than 1-2 hours without my eyes losing focus, joys of ageing!

When I was younger I did a couple of 8-12 hour marathon sessions in preparation for a tournament or some agreed game. I think the most I did was painting a buttload of Orks for a tournament back around 2008, and painting an entire Mordor force for LOTR in a day.

Overall I don't find it a good way to paint because the results were a bit shoddier than I would have liked. I ended up having to redo a fair bit of the orks or at least come back to them, and the Mordor force is still something I wish I had done a better job on. It makes for an entertaining youtube spectacle but I think it is a bad way to approach the hobby.

Around 2002ish or so they were making the transition from 3rd edition to 4th edition. My FLGS had a ton of old, dust covered 3rd ed starter sets (20 Dark Eldar warriors, 10 space marines, and a Land Speeder plus terrain) that they were selling for $30 each.

I bought 3 of those starter sets and it formed the basis for 2 new armies. At the same time Spring Break was happening, so there were no college classes, and there was a 3-day Law and Order marathon on TV. Other than eating, bathroom, and sleeping I just painted and watched crime drama.

I did a 24 hour session whilst watching Le Mans on TV. Goal was to paint all my Night Goblins (around 200 of the buggers)

Aw, jeez. That’s hard to say. I don’t really time myself, but I’d say for infantry models, an hour for each or so.

I have done several 12+ hour marathons. Usually for new editions and such.

Pretty sure I never crossed the 24 hour mark without games taking up the bulk of the time.

Hard to recall how it split but one　sunday 13h period minus gym trek i painted lumineth to finish them up. Don't recall at which point went to gym for about 2h

12 or a bit over that hours.

Had to get a table's worth of terrain ready from grey plastic to this:



It's not just drybrushing... believe me.

I once painted a company of Dark Angels in a day.

Never. Ever. Again.

Now I want to do a 24 hour

When I first moved for work to a new area, my family was still several states away. I would pretty much spend all night painting while I listened to director's commentary on any movies I could find lying around.

I pretty much painted 8 Blood Bowl teams, and Inquisitor 28 warband, and some other bits and bobs in about 2 months. That was probably my most productive painting time ever. I do not recommend it as I was painting out of loneliness and boredom.

Since, I typically only paint for a 1-4 hours at a time, but occasionally can get an all day painting session which translates to between 4-6 hours. It is rare though.

Been doing 8-10 hour painting sessions the last month or two with the winter shut-in, while having Star Trek Deep Space 9 on in the background.

I think the longest session may have been 12-14 hours. Something like 6 pm to 7 am on New Years - painting Team Yankee and Flames of War tanks.

I used to do 36 hour sessions on the regular in my youth. (When I was early-mid 20's about a decade ago).

Nowadays I can still squeeze out 10-12 hour sessions, depending on what I'm working on and how engrossed I am in it. More often than not though these are building/modelling projects and not just straight painting. I can't hold a brush for more than 6 or 7 hours now without getting cramps and stiffness (I am an artist/designer, so pre-COVID I would also draw all day, and so I've put a lot of wear and tear on my wrists. Lots of breaks to rest my wrists, back and eyes are almost mandatory).

But I very rarely find myself having to do these long sessions. I'm usually very good at managing my time and planning lead-ups to events (again, at least pre-COVID) and so the old last minute tournament/competition preps of old that required multiple 36 hour marathons are usually no longer necessary, as I get my stuff done well in advance.

Nowadays I'm usually painting for a few hours, I'll take a break with something light like Stellaris, maybe take a walk with the girlfriend and dog or grab a meal, hop back to build some models, watch a film, and then maybe bounce back to painting. It's nice to be able to really dial it back and be okay with just minimal hobby progress during a day.

 Easy E wrote:
When I first moved for work to a new area, my family was still several states away. I would pretty much spend all night painting while I listened to director's commentary on any movies I could find lying around.

I pretty much painted 8 Blood Bowl teams, and Inquisitor 28 warband, and some other bits and bobs in about 2 months. That was probably my most productive painting time ever. I do not recommend it as I was painting out of loneliness and boredom.

Since, I typically only paint for a 1-4 hours at a time, but occasionally can get an all day painting session which translates to between 4-6 hours. It is rare though.

Video sessions help I find. Allows you to interact with people whilst pushing some paint around. Has certainly helped me with my motivation, to the point I’m just over halfway through an army in a matter of weeks, with two more armies more or less ready to follow up.

The length of my painting sessions largely depend on the time I have available and what I am doing, but recently I end up having marathon airbrush sessions followed by brush work.

Different lockdowns had me with huge amounts of free time so I nearly did full working days of just painting for 8 or 9 hours.

I also tend to have a habit of procrastinating painting minis for tournaments and the night before is usually a long affair getting everything to a presentable standard!

Me and my next door neighbour used to sit on the floor and paint for 8 hours and occasionally play a couple of games when we were bairns.

Now? I think the longest I did recently* was 3 hours.

*I say recently I'm pretty sure the last time I managed time to paint was in October?

Did a couple of 12-hour sessions when I was younger. One was an all-nighter to get a friend's Chaos Space Marines ready for a tournament the next day. The other was almost an entire Dark Elf army in the transition from 5th to 6th edition WH.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

 Easy E wrote:
When I first moved for work to a new area, my family was still several states away. I would pretty much spend all night painting while I listened to director's commentary on any movies I could find lying around.

I pretty much painted 8 Blood Bowl teams, and Inquisitor 28 warband, and some other bits and bobs in about 2 months. That was probably my most productive painting time ever. I do not recommend it as I was painting out of loneliness and boredom.

Since, I typically only paint for a 1-4 hours at a time, but occasionally can get an all day painting session which translates to between 4-6 hours. It is rare though.

Video sessions help I find. Allows you to interact with people whilst pushing some paint around. Has certainly helped me with my motivation, to the point I’m just over halfway through an army in a matter of weeks, with two more armies more or less ready to follow up.

Oh yeah, Social painting is way better.

Now that my family is back with me, I get to paint less. However, I much prefer it to the alternative!

I think i painted a tank in like 3 or four hour when i was 17? maybe?

now i gotta struggle to paint for ten minutes straight

Sitting around for even a 2hr painting session is quite difficult for me without social interaction, which has been made quite difficult with this new lockdown. However, I'm finding that livestreams with multiple hosts, who respond to comments made by viewers, helps to mitigate that. It feels as pleasantly conversational as you can be over the internet.

As such, I now have a regular livestream that I listen to, that enables me to paint regularly once a week. Finding other shows and even other background noise like audio books is helping me get a few shorter sessions in during evenings.

Exactly 24 hours.
That was a few years back though, I doubt I could stomach doing it again now.

A group of us decided to have a 24 hour session as a challenge for 30k.
All started a new chapter and whoever got the furthest was given a primarch for their legion by the other 3.

The main issue is that power armour really isn’t interesting to paint, so by the 10 hour mark it begins to get extreme monotonous.
If it was something with a variety of vastly different colours and models it wouldn’t have been so bad.

Jackal90 wrote:
Exactly 24 hours.
That was a few years back though, I doubt I could stomach doing it again now.

A group of us decided to have a 24 hour session as a challenge for 30k.
All started a new chapter and whoever got the furthest was given a primarch for their legion by the other 3.

The main issue is that power armour really isn’t interesting to paint, so by the 10 hour mark it begins to get extreme monotonous.
If it was something with a variety of vastly different colours and models it wouldn’t have been so bad.

Not sure why, but its the opposite for me. I have no problem churning out rank and file dudes but the minute that I need to do characters, I just can't get happy with the model and spend weeks painting it and it rarely sees the table top because I'm not happy with it. Though the rank and file, I'm able to paint up pretty well. I've been painting some models for years - I've got several Praetors for my Dark Angels that I just haven't finished and I'm just not happy with them still after 7 years and the bits are no longer available from FW (head, bionic arms, combi flamer, bionic leg, etc.)! I just don't think I've done him justice even though there is more detail in him than my tactical squad!

Well, I'm just off the back of having a go.

19hrs hobby time with 3 hours of breaks.
I would say that productivity did vary wildly during those 19 hours.
Did get loads done and not all strictly painting either as I chopped and changed a fair bit, as that does seem to be my hobby preference. Will need to check quality when I next get in there mind.

Quick list:
Vertigus terrain set, painted
2x Munitorum crates set, painted. The barrels seemed never ending.
21 models, based.
14 models, assembled and primed.
2 models, kit bashed.
1 model, painted not based.
8 models at various levels of painted.

The terrain was the objective any model work was a bonus really.