Anyone enjoy painting miniatures?

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As a companion intrest to my intrest in RPGs, collecting miniatures goes hand in hand. I must have a couple thousand dollars in miniatures. The only problem is I cann't seem to paint them. I used to go down to a local gaming store and, sit at a painting workshop. However I never seemed to get any painting done. I have stacks and stacks of magazines on how to paint miniatures. I have a big fish tackle box with probably 50 different colors of paints, inks and washes. I have a mirade of brushes. I really really like the idea of painting but, when I sit down to do it I just loose all my energy.

I've done some miniature painting in the past. I did enjoy it, but burned out on it all too quickly. Tried to get back into it a couple of times, but with similar results. It's a real shame because I really dig the concept and would love to have have huge armies marching all over the place

Part of the problem, is that painting one miniature took me 8+ hours because I'm such a damn perfectionist. To make matters more complicated, my hands tend to tremble ever so slightly when I'm at a relaxed state. I can overcome this by tensing up, but as you might be able to guess, doing that for the time it takes to get a single miniature even partially done leaves my body... well... tense and achy. It's like doing workout without all the positive benefits of burning calories and getting into shape.

Unfortunately, I was never able to convince my little un- and half-painted minions to give me a massage. They just didn't seem to care much for me, so when my nephews got into Warhammer, it seemed fitting to give my miniatures a new home of mutual love and respect. Alas, I still miss those days and every now and then, I find myself browsing websites, wishfully dreaming of that grand army of colorful beings laying siege to the kitchen appliances. The best I've come up with is doing some model building. It's a bit more varied and each individual piece is generally less complicated than an entire miniature. Using enamel paint also helps to slow down the process a bit. The problem with that is that I'm notoriously unable to finish long term projects. So now I have half finished ships and planes instead

Hmm... anyway...

I have never experienced the thing about my energy vanishing away like midnight smoke when I sit down to paint miniatures. That's how I feel about pen'n'paper RPGs these days though, and it's bugging the hell out of me. I have all these wonderful books just sitting there on my shelves and even more PDFs on my harddrive. I still purchase RPG books and supplements, yet I haven't done any actual playing since... oh... 2001 or perhaps early 2002? I don't have anyone to play with these days either since we've all gone our separate ways. Yet I still linger on and roughly twice a year, I get this strong urge to get back into it. I sit down, try to come up with something (gamemastering is my drug of choice) and it just doesn't happen. I can't even figure out which rules system I would like to use. I end up just nitpicking them and getting annoyed over some obscure rules situation that would most likely never pop up in actual play anyway. Then I try to put the rules issue aside and just work on a non-rule specific campaign setting and guess what? I end up spending my time trying to figure out pointless things like how much food a medieval farmer can produce and how much of the landscape is taken up by the fields needed to support a city with 21732 people. Aaaaargh...

And that's when I say "F*** it!" and resubscribe to World of Warcraft...

*sigh*

I've been thinking about PnP RPGs recently too. Which is why I'm also thinking about my miniatures. My WoW has become routine raiding and, I've started to spend less time in game. I too am missing old RPG gaming friends. My favorite game store has closed. I used to spend $100 a week there. Painting minis would be a way to indulge my PnP intrest without having to find a gaming group.

My younger brother, a long time ago, use to a lot. He was pretty well respected for his skills, and was able to get paid for his work.

I'm a wargamer first, painter second |(well actualy third after the modeling part ahah)

So yeah, I paint, but I paint as an accessory to playing.

I was a huge WARgamer also. I played Warhammer Fantasy and Warhammer 40k. For my Wood Elves and Tyranids, I found it much easier to base coat, or prime, and then just do some simple dry brushing with themed colors. It was a partial-ass way of doing things, but my frustration of trying to perfect a single model was too much. 6+ hours on an archer / wardancer was killing me!

I used to, but it's bad for my eyes so I stopped. I'm more into shooting now, I might get back into painting if I get a job because at the moment doing both would cost a fair bit. I used to paint Warhammer. My team is Space Marines lol.

If you're trying to paint a LOT of figures all at once to a reasonable standard you could try a dipping technique. Base-coat, dip in inky substance, tap off excess and finish off. No use for super-detailed schemes but army-building-tastic.

ANY war-gamer should have a huge lead mountain of unpainted little men.

Recent budgets have caused me to downgrade from 28mm to 15mm, which means I get more men for my pound, but have to paint more of them...

I don't much like miniature painting, but my little brother does. He gets my Warhammer minis and pints them over. He doesn't do a good job, but at least he's enthusiastic about it.

I used the dipping technique to paint some Tyranids a few years back. Tyranids are easy to paint.

Unfortunately, my favorite army is Eldar. I have a mountain of Eldar that I just can't seem to paint.

Eldar can be some of the most beautifully painted figures going, but they do suffer badly from a shabby paintjob, and dipping just doesn't do them justice. However it IS a very fast way to get minis to a certain "fieldable" level, on top of which one can certainly superdetail. From a 3000k army of Eldar, I have a Howling Banshee, a Warlock, a scout and a farseer that I finished. Sad story of every army I ever had, until I started with the 15mm stuff

I've got a case of Warhammer Fantasy Orcs & Goblins and High Elves but a lot is left unpainted. It has been a few years since I last painted, even longer since the last game.
My painting skills aren't top-notch but the result is usually good. I also have trembling hands so painting is an intense job with regards to tenseness and focusing. I should try it again sometime soon...

I do quite well at painting horde armies as I specialize in drybrush/inking wash type techniques. My 40k armies like eldar took a different style but still look good, vehicles especially.