I was contacted by one of my clients who I had painted a copy of Super Dungeon Explore for. He had acquired a mini from sodapop as a bonus character and wanted to know if I could paint it up. I wanted to, but there was a bit of a snag, I haven't owned any paints or brushes for about three months.
Now I still have plenty of friends who have all their stuff, and I was able to borrow what I needed to complete the job, but it got me to thinking about the fact that I haven't painted for quite some time.
When GW relaunched their paint line this year, I took a long hard look at where I was and where I wanted to be. I did some basic calculations for replacing all of my paints, along with the investment in a new warhammer fantasy army that I had been planning, and when the cost broke four figures I knew I was done. I got all my paints packed up and traded them to someone who would be able to use them while they were still good. With all the minis painted that I had been planning on, I was able to wrap things up nice and neat.
Except there was a blog that I had been maintaining for the last two years. To say I was attached would be a bit of an understatement.
I had a hard time reaching this decision, but I received some solid advice through this TED Talk. I highly encourage everyone to watch it, it's only 3 and a half minutes, but the relevant point for this post is to focus. If you're going to paint, paint all day every day. If you're going to draw, draw all day every day. If you really want to succeed at one, you can't spend your time worrying about the other, or you won't get either.
This is and always has been a painting blog. Now that I'm not painting, I've decided to take my own advice and just stop it: therefore, this blog will become an archive of the several glorious years of my life I spent painting toy soldiers. I may have one final project on the horizon, but that's still up in the air. If that comes to fruition, I'll post an epilogue, but otherwise, I'm content to leave this blog for others to find, share, and enjoy.
Two final points:
First, don't be afraid to finish. There are 24 hours in a day, and you can't just keep adding new time commitments onto your existing schedule forever. Eventually, as I've found out first hand, you'll run out of room, and then you have to start making sacrifices. That's not a fun road to go down, trust me. Instead, consider the idea that we're constantly starting things, and expected to maintain them, but rarely in our lives are we allowed to finish things. It seems like the internet is especially geared toward this phenomenon of endless effort. There are a million search results on how to start a blog, but precious few on how to end one. Focus on giving yourself permission to examine what you're doing, see if you've accomplished everything you set out to do, and if so, stop doing it. The only way we're going to be able to transition into the next phase of our lives is if we're unencumbered by the past.
Second, I'm still drawing. As a matter of fact, I'm drawing more now than ever. I plan on turning my drawing into something bigger in the future. And I still have plans to do some dreadball illustrations at some point. In the meantime you can find me posting things every weekday:
on twitter
and facebook.
My gratitude goes out to everyone who has been part of this grand adventure for the past two years. Thank you all for making it a journey worth taking.
Now it's time for me to just stop it.
