What Resolution?

I have been thinking about setting up some New Year’s Resolutions for the first time in my life. That is right; I have never to this date set a New Year’s Resolution for myself. I had written up, pruned, re-built, torn down, resurrected, and demolished a list of things I want to do and not do in the miniature war gaming hobby in 2014 with a particular emphasis on painting my models.

Looking back at my painting habits as of late I do not think I require a New Year’s resolution to continue to improve my painting. My health also makes it a bit rough to plan a week ahead paint wise let alone a year. I can see myself improving and know there is plenty of room for personal growth. In 2013 I have managed to paint more models in the span of one month than the combined total of models painted from 2001 though 2012. I am still learning new techniques and trying new things as recent as this morning. Setting limits on the process as it is occurring now does not make much sense and most of the lists involved putting limits on myself if we go by sheer number of entries in the lists I have been making.

In spite of the various rewrites of that list there has been one underlying theme that remained throughout the process, but was not obvious to me at first. I want to be more social with my painting. I do not have a firm grasp on how I want to go about doing this as of yet, but for the first New Year’s Resolution of my life I am going to make 2014 the year I will find a way to make miniature painting a more social experience. Perhaps even a cooperative one as well.

I expect I will start with simply painting in public, but I am starting to think of ideas for events to encourage other people to become involved as well. I realize cooperative miniature painting is something akin to people playing Solitaire while sitting at the same table, but perhaps we can put a variant rule set on the traditional means of painting alone even when there are other people present.

I realize I have a young, somewhat wordy, and sporadic blog with few posts that is a bit all over the place content wise so this request might fall on deaf ears. If you are reading this and have a suggestion to help me nurture a more social side of miniature painting then please share. I am willing to listen to any and all suggestions on the subject even if I end up not going the route offered or tweak the path to my own tastes. If anyone is interested in sharing in the experience then feel free to contact me so we can get together to paint.

Please have a pleasant 2014.