Practice: It Really Does Work

I feel as though I should open this post with a disclaimer of sorts. This isn't directed at anyone specific, nor anybody that's recently asked for advice or pointers given some of the techniques I use. It's more to address something I see come up fairly regularly both in comments sections where I work and lurk, and remembering some of the conversations I'd had in person back in the day. If you're worried I might be talking to you specifically, I promise I'm not!

There's a phrase I dread more than almost any other in the hobby space when it comes to painting miniatures. "I did the same thing as you and it didn't turn out right." There's some variation on this just about anywhere you care to look, in any hobby or skill set with learned techniques that can be practiced and enhanced, but wherever it shows up it makes my blood run cold. There's no easy way to approach the comment, after all. Nobody likes to be told they're wrong - very few of us, I wager, like to be as blunt as that with strangers, either! But here's the truth of it: If you did exactly what I did, you should get the same result. Somehow, somewhere, there's something that's being missed, and those skills aren't going to improve unless you're going to go looking for it.

"I did what you did and it didn't work." Well, no. You didn't. That's not an indictment of someone's skill or practice, either. The idea here is that this is a sentence which needs to be thrown out of one's phrase book, because it leaves everything dead in the water. To borrow a phrase from elsewhere, it might be looked at similarly as a 'thought-terminating cliché.' It ends a conversation; it brooks no argument and doesn't, ordinarily, invite discussion. But, once again and as politely as possible, whether it's one of my tutorials or any one of the thousands of others out there online where people are sharing their knowledge and techniques, if you were to have done exactly the same then you'd be getting those same results.

Like most problems, there might not be a single solution. Sometimes getting to the root of a problem requires iterative testing, after all, which can be disheartening when every time you're trying something it's coming out wrong, or just not quite how you'd like. But ask yourself this: If you've attempted something five times, did you change something in your approach each time to see if you could get a better result, or did you do the same thing five times in a row and then get mad that it didn't work? I don't mean to point fingers, but I've done a lot of teaching in person and I can say from experience that this is far more common than you might think! Consider your approach, look at what isn't working, adjust your method and try again.

The other thing to consider is that the issue might actually not be with your technique. I find a lot of the time when trying to demonstrate a technique or method, something that I'm as guilty of as anybody is assuming knowledge on the part of the audience. A common example of this in my videos is how I've started mentioning before using Agrax Earthshade that it needs a really good shake before using it. Shades and washes, after all, have pigment and other binders in them just like ordinary paint, so they require proper mixing before use. However, if you're new to painting miniatures, that's a piece of knowledge which might not be immediately obvious. We occasionally make the mistake of assuming someone should be familiar with what we'd guess is basic knowledge, but remember there's always a first time you learned something. Comments and criticism leveled at people about the basics always leave me a little irked; was that really as obvious as those of us who've been doing something for years would imagine?

So, in a roundabout way, we come to the idea of practice. Yes, some of the methods that are used for painting miniatures can be simpler than others, but that doesn't mean the 'easy' way is necessarily as simple as it might look. It requires, though, that you give it a shot more than once, and remember that testing your failures is one of the most important parts of mastering a technique. You can watch a thousand hours of YouTube tutorials or painstakingly follow a magazine article word for word, but there's absolutely no substitute for when the brush is in your hand and the miniature is there in front of you. You wouldn't expect to learn to drive a car by reading the owner's manual and watching Top Gear, so why is it that so many drop the paintbrush the first time a new technique doesn't work? We're lucky that painting miniatures is, at least ostensibly, a relaxing hobby. If we make a mistake in a moving vehicle the results can be disastrous. If we make a mistake while painting, we might have to repeat a section we've already done or - at the absolute worst - strip the miniature and start over. Is that really so bad?

The internet gives us unbridled access to the most skilled painters from around the world. Every hour, people are uploading and sharing thousands of examples of their work which leaves me astonished and wondering just how they've achieved their results. Sometimes, I think, with the right time and the same paints as they used, I could emulate those methods and finish something to a similar degree of polish. A lot of the time I see astounding miniatures that halfway make me want to snap my brushes and go live atop a mountain without paint or WiFi! It's difficult to remember sometimes that what might be simple for some is the result of years of practice and learned skill; what one of us might think is easy is an entirely new set of skills for someone approaching them for the first time. That doesn't mean those skills don't work, or that they're unattainable. You're going to have to practice.

That being said, there's also an argument to be made for finding your niche and being happy with the work you're doing. With a bit of time and effort, I'm fairly sure I could make a decent showing in a painting competition, let's say - but that's not what my hobby is about. I'm happily drybrushing rank and file miniatures and painting the occasional nice face on my leaders and characters so they look good on the table, and playing games. I don't see the standards of those more experienced and skilled than I am as unattainable, but the flip side of that is this: I don't hold myself to those standards, either. I've been painting miniatures for more than twenty years, and in that time I've found my niche. I'm quite happy with what I'm doing, and as a result I can sit back, while away an afternoon painting fairly simple blocks of troops for my armies, and be satisfied with the finished result. It's taken me a while to find that niche, though, and if someone attempts what I find simple and has trouble with it, that's not a shortcoming or a failure on their part. It just means trying it again, trying something slightly different, and seeing if the result changes.

"I did exactly the same thing as you and my miniatures don't look like that!" No, you didn't. You need to know that somewhere along the line, you did something differently, or the materials you're using aren't prepared in the same way. But there's nothing wrong with that. Reset, try again. It's often as simple as a thin coat of paint to start over, and then see if you can make a better go of it the second time around. Or the third time. You'll get it. You just need to do it more than once.