Getting motivated to paint your miniatures

The hobby of war gaming is very time consuming, and the painting/converting part can take a lot of time. So sometimes it can be hard to keep up being motivated to paint your miniatures. Especially when the pile of unpainted miniatures keeps getting higher and higher, but despair not! Here's some little hints that have helped me.

The left dwarf is the first citadel miniature I ever painted, the right one was not so long ago

• Goals and stay focused! I actually suck at this, but I at least try to focus on one project (or three, four) at a time and try to finish them. Creating objectives is a great way of staying focused, for example finish painting an army for a tournament. And/or making weekly or monthly objectives like painting 500 pts of miniatures each month.

• Do something else when you paint! Not any advanced stuff though, you still need your hands free to actually paint. But it really helps if you paint in company with others or listen to music. Or do as I do I usually do, watch tv-shows on your computer while you paint. Don't loose your focus on the painting part though.Some of my favourites are Stargate SG-1 and Atlantis, Batman the animated series, Firefly, X-files, Weeds, How I met your mother, Family guy, Big bang theory (comedy shows can be dangerous while you paint though). Currently watching Smallville as I'm a Super Hero nerd atm. If your want to get into a fantasy mood I recommend Game of Thrones, awesome show but you will be hooked in front of the screen so you can't paint in the meantime.

• Share your work with the world! A blog like this or on a forum, facebook etc.. Take some photos of your painted minis and upload them to somewhere where people can see it. Hopefully you get comments and suggestions about your work, that may make you a better painter and helping you to get motivated to paint more and show more of the stuff you paint. All the nice comments I get here and on forums sure helps me a lot.

• Don't get discouraged and hone your painting skills! Even at if you aren't great at painting miniatures, do it anyway. We have all been beginners as you can see on the pictures above, but you have to start somewhere and continue to paint and train your skills is the best and only method of getting better. And don't be afraid of testing out new techniques, paints, brushes and so on. 

• Good and organized painting place! Try to have a nice place to paint your miniatures and to keep all your paints, bitz, brushes, basing materials and other stuff you need. If you have all things organized it's easier put all your time into actually paint the miniatures, instead of looking for that painting pot you just must have right now for half an hour. I suck at this to I'm afraid, but I do sometimes get the I need to try clean up and organize all the things again.

Well it works with an disorganized desk when you paint as well.

Well that's all I can come up with at the moment, I think most of you know these things already but it can be a good thing to be reminded sometimes.