My Painting journey, 1990's - 2023

Where to begin? 

To go all the way to the beginning would require going back to the late 1990's when i first began to paint miniatures. But that's a lot of time to cover, so let me summarize.

I'm married, have a young child, and am working at the beginning of my career. Not a lot of free time. One of my old high school friends gets into painting miniatures. I think it looks fun, so i pick up a few supplies and try my hand at it. Here's the first mini that i painted (well, among the first. It's the oldest one i could find. It was gathering dust in an old storage container in the garage).

Pretty terrible, right? Well, i thought it was amazing what you could do with just a few strokes of the brush. So i kept at it. 

Unfortunately, due to trying to build my career, raising a family, etc, i didn't get much time to paint. So about once every 2-3 months i'd pick up the brush. Sometimes 6-9 months or even a year would go by without any painting. As you can imagine, i never got better. And i got frustrated. Why weren't my mini's like those amazing things i've seen others do? Surely i could do better.

The one good thing about this intermittent hobby of mine was that i kept buying supplies over the years. New brushes, new paints, new workspace areas. Watching videos of the pros. Then we arrive towards the end of 2023.

I'm now well established in my career (even a bit on the downhill side!). The kids are older - mostly moved out. We're established in our lives. I've got free time again. And so i decide to make a dedicated effort to apply myself to the painting hobby. And so far i've been pretty good about it. I've been painting for 1-2-5 hours a day, 7 days a week for several months now.

And ... it's amazing. I'm actually getting better. My minis are still nowhere near the level i want them to be at. But each one is better than the last. And i'm having fun again. Instead of being frustrated, i'm taking each mistake as a learning experience.

Wish me luck! I doubt i'll ever get a golden demon (that's a prestigious painting award for those not in the know), but i'll eventually have a nice display case full of miniatures that i'm not embarrassed to show.

Oh ya - and stay tuned. I'll post images and information of all the miniatueres i paint from this point forward. I may occasionally post previous paint jobs, but i'm focused mainly on the road ahead.