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I try to paint for atleast a half hour a day. The next morning I'll usually look at what I've done the night before, and will always find something on the figure I want to change. So that night I'll go back and fix it. Sometimes I'll go as far as to stripping the whole figure and starting over.

Its takin about two weeks of working on the same squad before I realized I'll probably never be truely satisfied with the end result of my projects. Does any one else have this problem? How do you deal with it?

A good example is. I have a chaos space marine who I've named problem child. Problem child has been stripped, repainted, takin apart and remodeled at least four times. Problem child is the bane of my hobby exsistence.

Please tell me im not alone in this.

You're not alone. The best advice I can give you is don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

As my unpainted armies can tell you, sometimes the only way to win is not to fight at all.

You are not alone. I have quit so many times and not completed anything because of this. I find my work never good enough so I quit and never become better and keep quitting since I want to change what I painted.

So best advice I can offer is try to ignore it and just push through and only go back to change things once you have completed a lot of stuff.

 Crimson Devil wrote:
You're not alone. The best advice I can give you is don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

This. You have to come to grips with the fact it may not be perfect, and that's okay.

Finish things even if you're not happy with the result (I often find myself unhappy with things until very near completion),

if you allow yourself to endlessly fiddle with a mini first it will never get done, and second you're training yourself to believe (subconsciously) that nothing you do is good enough making things worse

Finish the mini, get it based and put it aside for a week or two then have another look and you'll probably be pleasantly surprised how good it looks (and faults you do see will be more likely to be 'real')

and if you really, really can't bare to finish it, put it aside for a week or two and work on something totally different (not another figure in the same unit/army), again when you come back to the first mini you're more likely to be able to see what you've really achived rather than concentrating on what's 'wrong'

Push yourself to finish an army to completion before going back and changing things. I find that seeing a completed force together looks better and I often change my mind about going back later to change things.

Trust me...finish things. Nothing I've ever painted has been anywhere near perfect. But they look good on the table and get the job done.

I do rarely encounter serious problem models. I painted my damn Fuegan four times.

I was about to say 'no, I've never experienced this', and then I realised I've repainted my entire khador army to fifth border legion from the 'codex' red/grey scheme, I've repainted almost all my circle of orboros army to have a coherent paint scheme, and I have repainted all of my ariadna for infinity.

Metal models, so stripping is a must...

I guess that's about 200 models for my khador, about a hundred for my circle and fifty odd for infinity.

Thing is though - the new paint job is so much better so that makes it all worth it.

Now I feel only I could stop painting green into all my armies!

I wish I was better at painting, and I slowly, slowly get better, but what I've done is my best shot that day, and that's good enough.

This is exactly why my stuff takes so long to paint. Basically I have better end results in my head, and when I can't paint them to that level I just get annoyed and slow down and stop.

Usually though I'm pretty happy when the model is finished and based, but it's at the mid to three quarters point that I get discouraged, and sometimes a model will sit at that point for up to a year before I go finish it.

Annoyingly it usually only takes me a couple of hours to finish and I could have just gotten it done.

My secret is I look at my painted mini's from 3 feet away....if they still look bad at 3 feet away I try 6 feet away...

When I started I was so bad that I had to learn to put up with crappy minis, so as I've gotten older I've always had a pretty low "good enough" standard. But over time my painting has improved a lot, and I've thought about going back to that old stuff and fixing it. But in the end, there's always something new to paint that is more interesting, and the most I've ever done is give it a wash.

I reckon, it's always better to have a pile of stuff painted to a mediocre standard than a mostly unpainted collection.

"Art is never finished, only abandoned".

Perfect is the enemy of the good, as someone else said.

Batch squads so the whole squad is consistent, and move on to the next squad. That'll be better and so on.

All that hard work won't be visible even a foot away. Currently, I'm going for enough contrast that you can see sections on the miniature at tabletop. Otherwise, I go as far as advanced tabletop (that means I paint in eyes if they have 'em).

Also, see every miniature you paint as practice for the next miniature. You're not going to turn in the miniature to be judged, so you don't have to get to display-level quality. You're probably already doing assembly-line painting for squads, but maybe try painting of identical individual pieces before assembly for faster results. That way, you can still give in to your perfectionist tendencies, but, at least, can get the work done faster.

Finished is always better than perfect. Good enough is great!

As you finish, it will give you greater confidence and a measure by which to see improvement.

I do like to do test figs to test color schemes before I commit to the whole unit/army. But don't overdo it; it's a test figure- don't neglect the rest of 'em!

Never strip a model until you've painted everything.

As others have said, you can never get perfect minis, and for most of us it's really satisfying to see a large painted force, so getting squads done and on the table is very important to keep the motivation going.

I would add that you can try to focus on one thing at a time: on any given minis, you always use many different techniques. Instead of trying to perfect all of them at the same time, you can focus on a specific one on each squad.
For instance, on squad A you try your best to have nice looking swords. You allow yourself to come back multiple times on that specific detail, because you want to master it, but at the same time accept that the rest of the mini won't be as good. Then on squad B you focus on a completely different detail/technique, and so forth.
That way you will get stuff done, while still improving.

I think there is a lot of pressure for all painters to be perfect at every technique. You have to be able to just say;"To hell with it,I'm painting for me,not the approval from anyone else."
Try things/develop your own ideas rather than trying to copy everyone else.There are no rules when it comes to painting so why impose rules on yourself?
Have fun,that is all that matters!

 OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote:
Finish things even if you're not happy with the result (I often find myself unhappy with things until very near completion),

if you allow yourself to endlessly fiddle with a mini first it will never get done, and second you're training yourself to believe (subconsciously) that nothing you do is good enough making things worse

Finish the mini, get it based and put it aside for a week or two then have another look and you'll probably be pleasantly surprised how good it looks (and faults you do see will be more likely to be 'real')

and if you really, really can't bare to finish it, put it aside for a week or two and work on something totally different (not another figure in the same unit/army), again when you come back to the first mini you're more likely to be able to see what you've really achived rather than concentrating on what's 'wrong'

This. I find myself hating my painting until after I step away from the model.

My best advice is to never stop on a model until it is done. It may look subpar now but after you finish all the details you may end up liking the result as a whole. Just keep going and don't second guess yourself. And, don't do what I often do and internally justify dropping a project and moving onto another when you didn't even finish one unit,...

Nix66 wrote:
I try to paint for atleast a half hour a day. The next morning I'll usually look at what I've done the night before, and will always find something on the figure I want to change. So that night I'll go back and fix it. Sometimes I'll go as far as to stripping the whole figure and starting over.

Its takin about two weeks of working on the same squad before I realized I'll probably never be truely satisfied with the end result of my projects. Does any one else have this problem? How do you deal with it?

A good example is. I have a chaos space marine who I've named problem child. Problem child has been stripped, repainted, takin apart and remodeled at least four times. Problem child is the bane of my hobby exsistence.

Please tell me im not alone in this.

Don´t force yourself to paint every day. Just take a break and relax otherwise your hobby becomes a chore. There is also little sense to compare yourself to Golden Demon winners. Trust me, your painting skills will improve over time.
Did you try a drybrushing painting scheme? This scheme takes very little time and you have only to paint a few details in the end. It definitely beats highlighting all those edges on various parts of the power armour.

i have trashed models that i've put 60 hours into. not liking what you do is a sign you are going to improve, or realize you are never going to be good and chill out lol

I agree that is an easy problem to get into.
I am big on setting "rules" for myself to get me out of various "insane" behavior that does not improve my life.
You want to game right?
You want to game with painted models right?
Can you game with painted models that are not perfect?
Think hard and do not even bother to start painting if you cannot field "gaming quality" models.

I perform these points in order and am not allowed to backtrack when I have moved on to the next point:

- Pick a squad, unit, vehicle, monster to build.
- Clean sprue with detergent and dry.
- Cut parts out of sprue and remove unwanted bits and flash.
- Decide if you want to perform full assembly or partial for easier painting.
- Determine pose you want.
- Determine if larger model can benefit from magnets.
- Put together models.
- Fill gaps with green stuff or more glue, whatever is best.
- Remove parting lines and any rough bits of green stuff or glue.
- Gravel or texture base as you see fit (unless it is a scenic base).
- Determine which priming suits your style: Black, grey, white or coloured.
- Prime models. Note: Very light spray, do a few light coats not one big heavy one.

Up to this point is everything that ensures there is not some detail that makes you want to rip apart the model and start over.
This is the logical point where your "subject" should be pleasing to work on and not a lesson in frustration.
If you missed something... that is too bad... no, do not go ripping into it now.
You want to be picky? Be that way at THAT step.

- Paint by numbers! or otherwise known as "block painting" for base coats. Nothing fancy just good, accurate coverage. Keep block painting till everything is "within the lines". Note: I strongly recommend painting an intended metallic area with a similar non-metallic first. Take your time, you may be here a while.
- NOTE: metallic contamination is the bane of painting! Keep brushes and water pots completely separate from each other or your models will be doomed to look like they came back from a rave covered in glitter.
- Now for a very slight highlight of covering a little over 1/3rd of all raised surfaces closest to the virtual "light source" with a shade lighter of each of the block painted areas.
- This is taking a dip into the path of madness but, you can choose to add another surface/area highlight ~1/3 of the prior areas painted.
- Now apply highlights, drybrush, whatever you feel best to define sharp or shiny areas for light to "glint" off of, any sources of light as well.
- Look hard at this result. Is it accurate? No blobs? No bits of stray spatter? Sure no cat-hair sticking to it? You cannot "touch-up" after shade washing without it looking very strange so be sure.
- I feel I should note that a gloss coat can be helpful for washes to give better results at this point: your choice.
- Apply shade/wash, try to target the recesses more rather than brushing on the whole thing.
- Re-highlight any areas you feel was dulled unduly from the wash.
- Decals and decal set can now be applied.
- One more gloss coat, let dry, then a matt-coat and the model is done, leave the poor thing alone, it has been well fussed over up to this point.

There are many different ways to paint, dip methods, airbrush can be inserted anywhere in there, use of coloured rattle-cans, Zenithal highlighted models then washed...
Just decide to be critical of your work at each stage, not of the entire thing: it is too late then and very maddening.
Think on what methods or techniques can improve each step of finishing the model and it may improve results of following steps.

I found that after making 3 squads of 10 I can see a marked improvement from the last set I did vs the first: that is just how it goes.
Don't be so hard on yourself, it is pointless.
The army looks FAR better than the individual models which is REALLY the proper end-result.

This is the story of my gaming life, every army I ever had ended up on ebay, mostly undercoated.

I used to do this myself. I'd spend WAY too much time on even the most basic model. Eventually, I realized I don't need my stuff to look good at a macro scale for the camera. I need it to look good from three feet away on the gaming table. As long as I can appreciate it there, I'm fine. But when I pick it up to look closely, I still don't leave a bunch of mistakes. Just more like, not picking out ALL the details and painting them.

Give this video a watch. It helped me stay motivated and moving on painting.

https://youtu.be/_Yve7bislU0

 Chute82 wrote:
My secret is I look at my painted mini's from 3 feet away....if they still look bad at 3 feet away I try 6 feet away...

Ha!! This is funny!

Actually, the best advice I got somewhere is never make minor corrections to your painting until totally done. In 99% of the cases, if can even tell you made slight error (missed a small spot, overlapped a bit of color, etc.), then you are the ONLY one that will ever know. This does not apply to big mistakes that do need to be corrected!

Being obsessive over your painting can be taken to an extreme. Why don't you post a few pics and get some feedback from the DD crowd? You may do doing an excellent job and are just too hard on yourself. Getting some positive feedback can do wonders and really do the trick. Also, you can certainly get some great tidbits from some of the excellent painters here.

What Talizvar said. Exalted post.

Enough said.

Cheers,

CB

What are your painting goals?

Do you want to be doing this:


or general tabletop?


Either way practice is the only way to get better, but know what you're aiming for.


NB: the example picture is not my work, it's just something I found on google when looking for inspiration.