"Good Enough" - Shifting Gears in Mini Painting.

 Perfect is the enemy of good.

- Voltaire

Hello Hobby peeps and welcome to another Friday on The Art of Caesura!

Today I want to talk about a painting concept which is pretty obvious, but only really hit home for me a couple of years ago: it's the idea that you don't always have to paint your best.

Now, that's a bit of a negative way of putting it, because what I'm really talking about is cultivating the ability to have different "levels" of painting and recognizing when each is appropriate. Sufficiently confused? Good, let's dig in.

So, what got me thinking about this is that I'm painting my first Black Templar in almost a decade, and my painting confidence has come on a long way since the last Black Templar model that I painted. This current model (which will be the subject of multiple posts in the near future) is bringing me pure hobby joy. I am really digging into it, and happily spending about three times as long on it as I would normally spend on a model of his size. It's the nostalgia factor, the fun novelty of painting Space Marines, and, having recently read Helsreach, I'm on a super Black Templar high at the moment. 

As you will see in upcoming posts, I am really pushing myself to learn new techniques and elevate my painting with this model. While I am painting it as a gaming piece, this is a model that (when I am finished it) I feel would be at a standard that would be appropriate to enter into a local competition (remember those!?)

As Deadpool would say, I'm giving maximum effort. 

As Scott and Jon from Trapped Under Plastic would say, in their own inimitable verbiage, I'm going full ball sack. 

And you know what? It's great! But, what this post is about, is that you don't always have to give maximum effort. 

Until a few years ago, I kind of thought that you did have to pretty much go full effort on every model. I mean I bought them for painting, so I want to get my money's worth. That would mean that I would spend hours and hours on one Orc but only ever made it through maybe half the orcs from the Warhammer Fantasy Battles 6th Ed. Starter Set. 

I think it was when I started getting into Kickstarters I realized that, especially with multiple monopose PVC figures, that the joy can come from banging them out and initiating "quantity over quality" mode. This was very much my ethos with the enemies from Reichbusters earlier this year. I was messily knocking out Nazi Zombies like no one's business - and having a blast doing it! The Grimdark style has been really liberating for that purpose. 

Likewise, I have my longterm project of finally painting all my Night Goblins from The Battle for Skull Pass using pretty much only Contrast Paints and only moderate effort. Are they going to look amazing when they're done? Perhaps not, but would they ever have got done if I felt the need to paint them all to a high standard? Certainly not!

So that's what I'm talking about. I'm sure you guys have figured this out long ago, but if not, take this as a challenge to try to mix things up a little bit. If you're a methodical painter, try to bang out a unit of something in the time that you would usually spend on two or three models. If you are a zippy painter, try to slow it down and lavish a few more techniques on a hero model. 

Anyway, let me know how you got on. I'll see you next week on The Art of Caesura!

Watching: Blown Away Christmas Special

Reading: Doing Good Better - Will MacAskill

Next Week:

That Black Templar I was talking about...