It may not come as a surprise, but like many artists I find a lot of different outlets for my artistic passions. I write, sure, and I love writing (so much so that it’s the only occupation I pursue!), but I also love to draw, and I love to paint.
I most paint miniatures (“war dollies,” if you will), and I have no shame in it. Sure, it’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but I really like having little armies of little soldiers that smash into other people’s little armies. I play a lot of varied games, but currently I’m not active in any of them, really.
Thanks COVID.
But joking aside, I enjoy painting because it’s a very different sort of brain activity than writing. Writing is like pushing your arm through a meat grinder sometimes. It’s painful and difficult and it seems to only get moreso as time goes on. But painting… you start off with something plain and boring, and slowly add layers and detail until you end up with something that’s quite pretty.
I’m not a great painter, by any extent, but I’m not awful and I can usually make the miniatures look pretty half-decent.
Anyway, the ones I’m working on right now are for a board game called “Descent Legends of the Dark,” which I am very excited to play at some point. The miniatures are incredibly detailed, and that helps, and there are a few good online tutorials to help with the colour selection (the area of painting I struggle with the most!). I think I’ve been working on the team of heroes for about a month now, and they’re almost done (may actually finish them by the end of March!), and then I’ll start painting all the baddies… there are way more of them, but they’re repeats so I should be able to crunch through them pretty quick.
Just a nice little distraction between writing!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!