My painting time consists primarily of an hour of two, in the evenings, before crashing in bed. And not every evening obviously. As a result I have a strong pragmatic focus on getting models finished for the tabletop. I really do enjoy painting for a number of reasons. It's relaxing. It's cathartic. It engages a completely different part of my brain than my job does. And last but not least, I love the feeling of putting painted models on the table when I play a game. However I routinely get myself in a mindset of how am I going to get my huge mountain of models all painted, especially when I keep buying more. Now, let's set that context aside for a moment...
The other day though I read a really great post on Dims' Galleries. He talks about inspiration from talking with Roman Lappat of Massive Voodoo fame, and how Roman recommended really enjoying his project but not to be too eager to be finished. He gets at a concept of finding joy by challenging oneself in earnest. There's many ways to go about this as well. For example, when it first feels like a project is complete, set it aside for a couple days and then look at it with fresh eyes later. Go over every detail of the model. Put it under a camera and look at blow-up images of it. Turn the model upside down. Put it under bright light or dim light. All kinds of things to do. Whatever the processes taken, the key is an earnest desire to look at one's own work with an eye to make it better and not be satisfied.
This is a concept that I live by in many aspects of my own like: employee, husband, father, gamer. But when it comes to painting, lately I feel like I've fallen into a "I want to get stuff done" trap. After reading the post from Dims' blog, I want to get back in touch with that joy of painting. To that end, I've decided to take some real pragmatic steps on exploring my own painting style, skills, and what I really enjoy the most about painting. There will be more posts on it to come, but here's a quick pic of a side project I plan to not be eager to finish.
This will be the first bust I ever paint. I'm looking forward to it, but trying to encourage my patience to take action. I'm probably going to make some customization before I prime it, but I'm waiting for my inner muse to finish singing inspiration to me.
The other day though I read a really great post on Dims' Galleries. He talks about inspiration from talking with Roman Lappat of Massive Voodoo fame, and how Roman recommended really enjoying his project but not to be too eager to be finished. He gets at a concept of finding joy by challenging oneself in earnest. There's many ways to go about this as well. For example, when it first feels like a project is complete, set it aside for a couple days and then look at it with fresh eyes later. Go over every detail of the model. Put it under a camera and look at blow-up images of it. Turn the model upside down. Put it under bright light or dim light. All kinds of things to do. Whatever the processes taken, the key is an earnest desire to look at one's own work with an eye to make it better and not be satisfied.
This is a concept that I live by in many aspects of my own like: employee, husband, father, gamer. But when it comes to painting, lately I feel like I've fallen into a "I want to get stuff done" trap. After reading the post from Dims' blog, I want to get back in touch with that joy of painting. To that end, I've decided to take some real pragmatic steps on exploring my own painting style, skills, and what I really enjoy the most about painting. There will be more posts on it to come, but here's a quick pic of a side project I plan to not be eager to finish.
This will be the first bust I ever paint. I'm looking forward to it, but trying to encourage my patience to take action. I'm probably going to make some customization before I prime it, but I'm waiting for my inner muse to finish singing inspiration to me.
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