In my painting era!
For years, my miniatures sat in quiet judgment… rows of perfectly sculpted potential trapped in the purgatory of gray plastic. It wasn’t just disappointing to me, but imagine a beautiful well painted terrain and having an opponent with more skill and a very pretty army on the other side of me. Then there is me. A sea of gray plastic. I told myself I’d paint them someday. Someday, when I was better. Someday, when I wouldn’t ruin them. Someday, when courage magically arrived packaged with artistic talent.
Spoiler: someday never shows up on its own. I have been playing for years now and with multiple armies across multiple games. Yet not a single fully painted mini.
The Games We Ran
Enter my friends, especially thankful to Ben Marsh who pushed me to just start and try. They assisted me in learning the process with patience, encouragement, and the firm belief that paint is not permanent failure but part of the process; and maybe that it just needs to be done already. Under their guidance, I finally took the plunge and painted my first model: a red Slaad from D&D. Appropriately chaotic, slightly intimidating, and just low-risk enough that my perfectionism and lack of confidence at painting agreed to sit down and be quiet for a minute.
Venue Notes
And you know what? It worked. Was it flawless? Absolutely not. Was it even good, perhaps. Did I learn that models look dramatically better with literally any color on them than none at all? Yes. More importantly, I realized painting isn’t that scary. That I can accomplish it. Just take it step by step one color at a time. Build detail slowly and work on just getting color down. It looks infinitely better than a plain gray mini.
What made this one special?
After several years of gray armies staring back at me, I finally feel competent enough to start bringing them to life instead of waiting for imaginary perfection. Turns out the hardest part wasn’t painting. It was starting.
The gray era is officially over.
My first painted mini!
“I’ve come a long way since priming models from the top only!”
Moe Thompson
SETGO Board Member
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