How I Found Time to Paint and Finally Attained Inner Peace 
In my article 8 Tips to Help You Finish Painting Your Army, I listed as Tip # 2 the admonishment, “Buy, paint, and FINISH (finishing includes flocking, glossing, and whatever other final steps you usually take before you consider a model done) one unit at a time.” 

Have I followed my own advice? Lately, no. 

I had been going through and touching up my Fighting Tigers when I caught the buying bug and started two new armies AND added some units to my existing ones. While I managed to hire my pal Pat to paint one of the new armies for me (the Kurindans), I was still left with a heap of work to be done and, as usual, seemingly no time to do it. Shameful, but there it is. 

To determine just how bad the problem was, I recently took out my collection of 40K miniatures and listed all the work that needed to be done:

For the Fighting Tigers of Veda (Space Marines): 

• Touch up and re-base Talwar Chakram (Chaplain in Terminator armor)
• Paint a Captain and 5-strong Command Squad
• Paint a Techmarine
• Touch up 42 figures, varying from another Techmarine to Assault Terminators
• Touch up and re-base three Dreadnoughts
• Convert six Land Speeders into Land Speeder Tornadoes
• Build and paint three more Land Speeder Tornadoes 
• Build and paint three Drop Pods (received as gifts)

For the Kabal of the Ozone Scorpions (Dark Eldar):

• Paint 13 Warriors
• Paint 2 Wyches

For the Fearful Symmetry (Chaos Space Marines):

• Paint Aspiring Champion Sorcerer and Familiar
• Paint 4 Chaos Hounds
• Paint 10 Flesh Hounds
• Paint 40 Daemonettes
• Paint 14 Bloodletters

How am I ever going to get this all done?

For years and years and years, I painted when I was able to carve out big chunks of time, at least an hour, usually two or three. I’d sometimes go down to the local gaming store and paint. Sometimes I’d get together with my gaming buddies and have “painting parties” (as a matter of fact, I spent the night before my wedding painting 40K figures with my friends instead of the traditional bachelor party: how geeky is THAT?). Usually, I just took advantage of my insomnia: if I couldn’t sleep, I’d paint!

But times have changed since I did the majority of my army painting. The “local gaming store” now is a Games Workshop place a half hour away (and the last time I tried to paint there, they wouldn’t let me. Swine.). My gaming buddies are even farther away than the GW. And my insomnia has become much less frequent. My standard strategies for finding time to paint would no longer work.

I found that the answer to my predicament was not to try to find big chunks of time on isolated occasions, but to find 10 to 15 minutes a day, every day. So that’s what I’m doing, and it’s working, I have already finished the 13 Dark Eldar Warriors and the two Dark Eldar Wyches, I got through the 10 Flesh Hounds and four Chaos Hounds, and I practically flew through the Aspiring Champion Sorcerer and his Familiar. A little bit every day, and I’ve made more progress than I ever had before. Instead of waiting for the stars to align and the tides to come in and getting the chance to sit and paint, I am making it happen, 10-15 minutes a day. 

Longtime Jungle visitors may recall that I have always hated painting (I’ve vented about that on at least one occasion). But because I only do it for 10-15 minutes a day and I’m making such progress, I not only enjoy painting, I actually look forward to it. Unbelievable, but true.

But that’s not all. I’ve applied this practice to other, non-40K projects, too, and had similar success. I work on Jungle articles a few minutes a day. I work on stuff for my personal website a little at a time. I write one page a day for the kids’ book. I’m making progress on each of these. 

If you have a lot of things you need to get done and not a lot of time each day (or just a severe case of Attention Deficit Disorder), try my approach. Just a few minutes a day can make a huge difference.
 
 

Posted March 2007 

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