Monday 17 February 2014

Mulling over Monday morning melancholy.

Good morning morning you crazy cats or is it? I had a bit of a crisis of faith last night as I was finishing up my evening painting session, trying to get the last highlights on to my blowfly mounts for the Plague drones and I began to compare the job I'd done with my GUO and realised that I wasn't as happy with the job I'd done on the GUO as I had previously thought. After much moping (and re-evaluation in the softer light of day) I've come to two conclusions-

1- I hate the necessary evil that is varnish! So often I spend ages painting something only to have a lot of the subtly obscured by the varnish required to protect the miniature whilst playing with it. There's a good reason that all the models in Warhammer Worlds exhibition cabinets aren't varnished (rant over).

2- Ok so this is more of a question than a conclusion. Do we get too close to models when we evaluate the success of a paint job? How often do we see models online or in a magazine and think 'hmm, paint jobs a bit off' but see it on the table or in a cabinet and suddenly it looks a lot better. I was wondering if the need to get within a few inches to paint the model means we very rarely look at them from arms/table length. We often already know the parts of a model that we aren't happy with so even at these distances I find myself focusing on the errors rather than enjoying the successes.

1 comment:

  1. I think youre probably being a bit harsh on yourself, your GUO looks excellent, id be well chuffed if i'd painted something to that standard.

    I totally agree with you on varnish, if i can get away with it i avoid using it at all. Sadly there are times when thats just not an option though. If only there was a good, properly matt finish varnish.

    I often have that feeling when i've painted something, i'll have been pleased with the way it was progressing during the painting process then when its finally finished im a bit 'meh, could look better actually' and im then tempted to go back and try and make it look better.
    Usually i resist (mostly through laziness) and then, when i get it down on the table (preferably surround by some good painted terrain) i just forget the disappointment and enjoy how good the whole thing looks as a spectacle.

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