Why paint?

Before I have asked you “Why are you painting?” but now I will ask, why paint? For the less interested in reading or for those who are more interested in the audiovisual here is my presentation it is many years old now but I want to introduce you to the concept.

Painting has been a long-standing cultural tradition for all cultures across the world. In fact, if you heard of a culture that didn’t paint, didn’t have art it would probably make you suspicious. Art started out not as the tool of high society or if you want to go into a deep-diving rabbit hole how criminal organizations use art to launder money. No art was practical at first it was cave paintings showing the shapes and forms of animals around us, no doubt used as a teaching tool. Then as it became refined over the ages it was used to show assets, many a picture of a pig has been painted in middle-aged England and Victorian aged for that matter- oh wait…

You mean miniature painting.

That’s different.

That is the usual look when you hear someone say, miniature painting after they hear about your painting right? So why not just get some commissioner to paint it for you? (Shameless plug)

I will tell you why (no wait what are you doing that could be a sale…)

Here is something you may have trouble believing… exercise only has a marginal impact on weight loss. I know that sound ridiculous, so am I saying that you shouldn’t exercise? NO!

Exercise will help condition your body against illness and disease, it will help stabilise your mood and helps fight against depression. It will help you be a happier and healthier person. No, I won’t say for a second that it doesn’t help you. But the idea that exercise is the key to weight loss is mythology. See exercise usually comes along with lifestyle change and it helps in other ways. It helps you get endorphins into the body and all sorts… So am I having a dig at exercise?

NO

What I am saying is that it helps in ways we don’t often think about, and it isn’t the major contributing thing in the thing (weight loss) that most people think about when it comes to exercise. So yes it is good for you…

I hope that exercise aside has helped you understand what I am about to tell you. The reason you paint, or the reason you should paint. Isn’t to get paint on your models. When psychology went into studying happiness one of the things they discovered was a form of ‘perfect happiness’ known as the flow state. This in short is where body and mind work in perfect harmony without conscious effort. To help you understand what it is, understand what it isn’t may help, when someone ‘chokes’ during a sporting event, that is when a flow state has become broken. When you get into the flow with painting everything else fades away, bills, family problems, work drama, drama in general whatever it may be… it all fades away.

Planning

Detail creep

Detail Creep

There is a more than 90 per cent chance if you’re a painter of miniatures that if you are coming here, that you are painting Games-Workshop/Warhammer miniatures. Something you may or may not have noticed. These models are getting more complex and not necessarily in a good way. Painting helps you with your planning and with your task execution, why? Not every model can have a massive amount of effort put into it. Why? Because you have troops, not every single one of your models is a commander. You have to decide how much effort are you going to put into each model how much time will you put? Are you going to batch paint them, are you going to use any time-saving measures or are you going to just going to try and plough through? It will allow you to understand something through hobbying that it may not be as easier or as pleasurable to learn in other domains of life.

Mastery in one domain leads to mastery in all domains

Things you learn in painting can be applied to other aspects of your life, just as planning is a general skill those things that get you into flow state might help you with work and so on. Skills such as learning colour theory, contrast theory or rules of three/the golden rule. These things you learn in your hobby you don’t simply forget and then move on with your life. You keep those things and you can use them… But finally there is one reason. You may want to paint models…

To get your models painted

Until next time friends.

Keep those brushes wet.

And I will see you later…