After all the incredible inspiration gained after visiting Golden Demon, I was really excited to start painting again this week. But sometimes, you have these moments when everything is just not working out.
For me, this is mainly caused by myself trying to make everything as perfect as it can get. Hell, I want to paint like those Golden Demon winners 🙂 But obviously, it doesn’t work like that. I need to take my time to finish a piece, those winners don’t get there by rushing an entry.
Which leads me back to why I started this hobby in the first place… fun! This hobby is great, full of fantastic people (as has been proven by the wonderful day I had this weekend) and at the same time it is a great way to clear your head and relax. So why stress yourself out any longer?
Yesterday I raised this issue on WAMP, you can follow the discussion on how to relax during painting HERE.
Not quite unsurprisingly, many fellow hobby-ists experience these same feelings. As I also found reflected in todays post from the guys of Massive Voodoo, who shared a great article about the fear that can tear apart the creativity of artists.
With all this in mind, I started my new project. I hadn’t painted in quite some time, but this will be a great project to get me going again. The aim: have a lot of fun with this tiny minis, and try to not stress myself out for getting the perfect blends and colours 🙂
So here is the effort so far. Because I still like a challenge, I decided to paint a dark skin tone, as I’ve never done that before 🙂 Obviously, it’s far from done. But I realized taking breaks and quitting, when it-just-doesn’t-work-anymore, really helps to retain the motivation.
So there you have it, my journey back to liking the painting game!
1 comment
So true, and it shows on a piece when the painter enjoyed the experience: the result is so much better. When you are enjoying yourself, and the painting mood you're in, you will always be more able to take your time, willing to go the extra mile, challenge yourself (as you did now with the dark skin) and in the long haul create some stunning work.
If you, on the other hand, are not excited about the piece you are doing, you will cut corners, you won't push yourself beyond your boundaries and that also reflects on your model.
Zen away! 🙂