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Painting for money: Death guard

How I almost Quit Painting Miniatures

I made a mistake. I'll own it because it was unforced and it seemed like a good idea at the time. I agreed to paint a Death Guard army, in exchange for quite a few (metal) Sisters of Battle, and a small amount of money.
I thought at the time that this was a good deal, how hard could it be? 18 months later and I'm just putting the finishing touches to the last few models that I had agreed to paint. I had meant to spend the past week painting a few smurf Ultramarine characters but a quick glance at my pile of shame reminded me I still had a few Plague marines left to paint.


My main mistake was overestimating my ability to paint quickly. I'm a bit of a perfectionist, I will paint things to the best ability when 'OK' is good enough, and my 'OK' seems to be better than a lot of peoples best. I do know that currently my best wont hold up against a lot of peoples, but i'm not painting for competitions (at the moment). My will to paint was quickly sapped and my technique was quickly reduced to just a few tried and tested ones to get through the task I had set myself.


In short, I stopped painting for fun, and it was more of a chore than anything else. I started painting less and less, and then hating myself for not painting. Painting anything other than death guard made me feel guilty, and after 50 or so plague marines, and 80 pox walkers, I didn't want to paint any more plague ridden filth. so I stopped painting...


The lull lasted about 6 months, and I didn't stop buying miniatures, far from it, the issues of conquest kept rolling in (I'm never doing something like that again) and my lovely wife asked me which Infinity faction I wanted to collect (Yu Jing) and then promptly bought me everything Corvus Belli had in their store for them for my birthday. (She is definitely a keeper) and she has constantly encouraged me to start painting again because she knows I really enjoy it. Its taken a massive push and a lot of encouragement to get the last of the Death Guard done, and there are just 10 cultists left to finish, and i'm going to take my time on Typhus because Typhus is the one model in the whole range I actually want to paint

 I can definitively say that commission painting is not for me, at least as far as entire armies are concerned. I have a lot of respect for people who do commission paint, i just can't do it

I may if people ask nicely paint the odd model or two, but I know i'm not the best painter out there, and certainly not the quickest. once the last few models are done, I can concentrate on getting a Demi Company of Smurfs Ultramarines finished, and try out the new Crusade game mode for 40k. and i am definitely looking forward to getting my teeth into some Yu Jing Heavy Infantry. they are by far my current favourite models.

Once The whole DG army is finished I'll be doing a showcase of it. The majority has already been delivered so i don't have it on hand, but my good friend (and oppressor) Ginge has kindly said he will bring it all over for a photo session (on condition that I paint a plague burst crawler for him, but i now have an airbrush!)
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