A 2D artist's experience with miniature painting

This is my interview with Sunny about how she got into miniature painting. Its not going to be an exact transcript of but rather the most important points.

How did you get into mini paint?

Originally, Sunny tried out her first model and she found the whole processing pretty intimidating. The model was Zenthial Primed and she found it a bit of a problem. Not due to the prime, but because she was worried about ruining the models.

Because the Warhammer store had test models she felt free to try things out.

What made you excited about miniature painting?

After trying the tester paints and models she tried out the contrast paints at home and experimented with them a lot. This experimentation made me feel able to paint without worry.

What caused your breakthrough in painting?

Sunny started to enjoy painting once she felt she could actually paint with some ability, she mixed contrast paints, did things against the ‘rules’ and got encouragement.

How was it to enter the wargaming community/hobby community?

Sunny was surprised about how some people were excited about things she considered normal like finger dabbing which is common as an art technique but isn’t considered common or good practice in miniature painting.

I wanted to reiterate the question so I could a more focused answer.

How did it feel to enter the wargaming community and how did it make you feel?

Sunny was wondering if she truly had entered the community considering she wasn’t playing Warhammer ‘just’ playing Frostgrave. But what did motivate her was being able to make her own story rather than feeling pushed into an army or faction she had little control over.

She brought up the nearly identical paints and just wondered, why don’t people mix their own paints? We talked about how people wanted repeatable patterns so that they could get uniform results rather than art pieces, they want game pieces. Which she understood.

How did the rigidness of army painting make you feel?

She brought up the idea of painting 500 space marines.

It made Sunny feel like she was back at work, working on art, not for enjoyment, even without actually painting them. It feels like factory work and she’s not sure she could do it.

What was the deciding factor in trying miniature painting?

It was probably a combination of things testing the models, seeing other models painted as just tests, having some knowledge about mini painting. Also, experimenting with the spider grots and seeing the different effects she could get made her want to keep going seeing the different effects going on. It helped her understand model painting a lot more to the point where she felt competent.

Do you think you will continue with this hobby?

What made you a hobbyist? How can we encourage others?

Allow people to experimentation, take the pressure away and help people enjoy the process instead of the end result. If you want your wife, girlfriend, boyfriend, husband to get into the hobby, just put out some paints and have a relaxing painting session, encourage mistakes, let them do what they want with it and they will realise it for themselves.

Thanks for being with us.

Thanks for having me.

And keep those brushes wet.