New Year , New Hobby Goals
It’s the start of a new year. If you’ve talked with friends, family, or coworkers, there’s a good chance the topic of New Year’s resolutions has come up. Right now, grocery stores are selling more healthy food, gym memberships are up, and more books are being read. These, of course, tie directly into the most popular resolutions made each year. Being healthier or reading more sounds great, but us miniatures gamers often have different goals.
Generally speaking, we all have a big pile of plastic that beckons to be painted. The big question is how do we get more models painted? There have been a lot of studies around habit formation, and at this point we have a pretty good handle on what makes a habit stick. Let’s leverage this information to clear out those backlogs!
Set Realistic Goals
First off, setting unrealistic goals is a quick route to failure. So, make sure to frame out goals in a way that’s not going to derail you right off the bat. Having a fully painted army for the tournament next weekend might be impossible if you’re starting from scratch. Having a fully painted army for the tournament in the spring is much more reasonable. If you’re not a tournament player, maybe something as simple as painting 10 models a month or painting 4 times a week is a great goal. Give it some thought. What’s a realistic goal for you?
Consistency is Key
Okay, so we have a goal. We need a way to reach that goal. The literature says that habits are formed by having contextual cues that drive an action. Let’s say you’ve just gotten into your car. What’s the next thing you do? Very likely you’re going to put on your seatbelt. Getting into the car - contextual cue. Putting on your seatbelt - action. I’m sure you can think of a million examples of this. Flush the toilet, wash your hands. Take a glass out of the cabinet, close the door.
Those are simple examples of small habits that we’ve formed over years of practice. You can extrapolate those out to bigger, more substantial habits though. For some people, after waking up in the morning they go for a run. If they don’t go for that run it’s noticeable. They feel off. They’ve done this long enough that it’s become a habit. That’s the kind of thing we have to tap into in order to accomplish our hobby goals.
For me, the contextual cue is my family going to bed. My subsequent action is to pop down to the basement and get painting. I do this nearly every night. If I don’t get some paint on a model, I feel like I’m missing something. The key here is to find a consistent time to work on your hobby. Maybe it’s after you shower, but before heading into work. Maybe it’s during your lunch break. It could even be when you’re watching tv after dinner. It doesn’t matter when it is as long as it works for you… consistently.
Here’s where the effort comes in. You have to keep doing it. Even when something shiny is pulling you away from hobbying. Even if you don’t really want to work on the project (more on that later). You need something like 10 weeks of performing the activity consistently for the habit to really stick. That leaves a lot of time for you to bail out and come January next year you’ll look back on the missed opportunities to get more models painted and on the table.
What about Inspiration?
This is going to be brief. Inspiration is a trap. Inspiration alone didn’t make the first airplane. Inspiration alone didn’t send astronauts to the moon. Inspiration alone didn’t write the first screenplay of Star Wars. Don’t get me wrong. Inspiration is great! Inspiration without consistency and effort is borderline worthless. If you’re already hobbying, then you’re going to be more productive with a better result when you’re feeling inspired.
Tools to Help
The following are some recommendations for keeping on track, keeping things fresh, and staying in that hobby zone whenever you’re painting.
Dedicated Space
This is mostly about preventing habit formation from being torpedoed. Having some kind of dedicated space allows you to get right to painting. If you have to put everything away, and then get it all out again, you’re more likely to just say, “forget it,” and do something else.
For some hobbyists, it’s easy to just set up in a spare room and have your own dedicated space. If you’ve got that, make it a space that you want to return to each time you hobby. Organize it, keep it clean, and make it a space that’s conducive to making progress. I always put everything back in place and wipe down my area between projects. That keeps it relatively tidy. At least tidy enough for me to have space to work and know where things are.
Let’s say you don’t have a room or desk or something that you can dedicate to your hobby. That’s alright! There are plenty of other things you can do. Pick up a tray that works for you and set up your project on that. It’s easy to put away and pull back out. Everything is right where you left off. When it’s hobby time, bring your tray over to the kitchen table, get water in your cup, and get painting. If you want to go fancier, there are options out there for mobile hobby stations that house your paint, brushes, tools, and usually a few models. A nice benefit for those types of setups is that you can pop into your friendly local game store for painting nights.
Switch Things Up
We’ve all had projects that were a slog. Units we don’t love painting, but they work great in our list. Or worse yet, squad after squad of a corp troop that we need 4 or more of. Having painted all of my Stormtroopers and Clone Troopers (Phase 1 and 2), I don’t really feel a strong desire to paint a bunch of white armor anytime soon. There were some ways that I got through without it being totally awful though.
Are you staring at 4 squads of Snowtroopers for that Blizzard Force list? Maybe build them all and get them primed, but bite off one squad at a time. In between, paint up a pair of bikes. Maybe get Vader knocked out. Bounce between unit types, paint schemes, or armies if you play more than one. Heck, maybe paint something from *gasp* another game. I haven’t played a lot of Marvel Crisis Protocol, but talk about a change of pace. After I paint a brightly colored model in a different scale I’m ready to bang out another squad of Black Sun Enforcers.
If you really want to switch things up you can even work on terrain in between painting figures. It’s hobby-related, but a totally different vibe. Getting to work with different materials is fun. And, to be honest, terrain doesn’t have to be nearly as intense as painting figures. You can kind of be messy and get amazing results. Better yet, when you’re done with that terrain, you can play on it with your freshly painted models.
Lastly, if you’re really not feeling like painting, put some models together instead. Any progress is good progress, and this sets you up to paint later!
Try New Techniques/Tools
It’s easy to fall into doing the same things in the same ways, but that can get kind of boring. YouTube and your community are filled with a wealth of hobby content and advice. New basing techniques or different ways to paint can be fun and exciting to try. And, when you’ve learned the new skill, it’s just another technique in your arsenal. I love finding a tutorial for a particular model and following along with it to push myself to try new techniques. Wet blending, glazing, using contrast paints, and more are at your disposal with a little effort.
There are also always new tools to try. Maybe you’re interested in learning to use an airbrush. If you’re painting straight out of citadel pots give a wet palette a try. Again, reach out to your local community or hit up YouTube to learn about things you’ve heard about, but haven’t taken the plunge on. Need some suggestions? Check out Sorastro’s Painting, Vince Venturella, Ninjon, Dana Howl, The Terrain Tutor, or Real Terrain Hobbies for tutorials and guides on a wide variety of techniques!
Happy Hobbying!
I wish you luck in your hobby journey in 2023! I can say from experience that this strategy works for me. I started tracking my progress in 2019 and I’ve painted over 600 models and piles of terrain in the past 4 years. Give it a shot, and watch that pile shrink! You’re gonna need more space to display your models, but that’s a topic for another time.
Written by Tim McKnight (@TheDrStrange)
Tim is a long time hobbyist, a 5280 awarded painter, and a successful competitive legion player who recently went undefeated in a 40 person tournament at Inconceivable Games. New to hobbying? Check out Tim’s other article “The Right Tools for the Job”