Alrighty then, it's time to talk about motivation and a slight ramble about quality.

One of the biggest questions I seem to hear in the painting communities, miniature and otherwise, is how do you find the time to paint. It's a bit of a trick question. It may seem hard to find whole days at a time to be able to sit and make big jumps in progress, but the only secret is there is no secret. Make it a habit, like anything else you have to do in your day. If you truly want to paint, then you're going to find the time to paint. If you're unwilling to find the time, maybe you need to look at something else that's holding you back?

I don't yet have a habit, but I am working at one. I'm aiming for roughly a half hour daily, and that's my recommendation to everybody else. If you can't find a half hour in the night, after dinner when most people are just watching tv or browsing facebook, then you're unlikely to find the time ever. Set yourself the time, the same time each night. 9-9:30 or so and just sit and paint for a little. Maybe you'll only get a basecoat of a single colour down, maybe a wash. If you're not inspired, just sit and look over your books or magazines. Just set the time aside each day and it will become a habit.

It's the same advice I've been given for everything else. Writing, exercise, reading. Even if you're not doing the activity, so long as you keep the time set aside and are sitting and thinking about it you're still building that habit.

Another big issue that crops up is quality. I've lost count of the number of painters who collect miniatures and just don't paint not from lack of time, but because "I'm not a very good painter". The thing about quality is, it's subjective. There is no true objective quality with art. Compare a world competition winner from 20 years ago to one from today. They're going to look like night and day when compared side-by-side. So here are a couple of thoughts to keep in mind, that have helped me over the years.

First and most importantly is, most of the time you're painting an army and not a model. The bulk of miniature painters are gamers first and foremost and whilst I'm not in this category myself I still take the occasional commission job. You got the eye wrong on that one guy? You could stress out over it and try a dozen times to get it right and risk ruining the whole face. Or you could put it down and move onto the next model, and see how the whole block looks as a whole. Often times people will forget this, and over think a single model that ends up causing trouble or killing motivation for an entire project.

Hold your model at arms length. Seriously, if you're not sure how a model will look, you're not happy with it close up, you don't think some blending is smooth enough or a colour works. Hold it at arms length. This is the average distance people will see it from, usually from across the table or in a cabinet or any number of other situations. It's rare a model is picked up and inspected unless it's specifically a competition piece and even with the high end it has to look good from a distance to grab that initial attention. Learn to take a step back and observe it from a distance, you'll be better off for it.

Just do it. Seriously, it sucks to have to batch paint a whole army but everyone does it at some point. Set yourself a short time period, 20 minutes or so, and just grind through it. This sucks but sometimes this is the best thing to get past the funk of batch painting. That 20 minutes of work will get you through days of motivation issues if you just push yourself a little.

Finally, remember why you're doing this. For me, I love art. I wrote a post about my love of art already. Remind yourself why you paint, either for a competition or a game or just for the fun of it. Immerse yourself in your inspiration, talk with other painters, interact with what local community you have. If you don't have this, it will just become a job and then you'll give up on it for good when it becomes a chore.