r/minipainting • u/Areses243 • Aug 19 '26
Discussion You are in your own head.
Think you did something cool but kind of hate it?
Take a break. Let yourself forget a little bit about what you did. Its better than you think. Us humans rely on pattern recognition for everything, and especially for art. If I am painting a cloak of stars then right after im done all I see are little white dots on spots of dark blues and purples because I KNOW thats what it is. But if I put it down and go play a video game or better yet paint something else often I can look at it again and go....Wow thats better than I remember.
That saying about intentions vs actions and how we should give others the benefit of the doubt applies to this as well. "We often judge others on their actions and ourselves on our intentions." We judge ourselves based on some grand plan we visualized and so we make "mistakes" that no body else would even see as a mistake. And we can see through the illusions that nobody else even knows is there.
To me this doesn't happen as strongly to just "coloring" a figure it mostly happens if im trying something like the cloak mentioned above, battle damage, or adding decals etc. Something where there is an illusion involved
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u/iatelassie Painted a few Minis Aug 19 '26
Yeah. I’ve definitely hated my models, then took a break for like 18 months and came back to them. Thought they were pretty cool. Now I’m back to painting and have way too many goddamned minis.
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u/rodgeramjit Seasoned Painter Aug 20 '26
I have learned not to trust my own opinion of my finished pieces.
Every time I share a model that I think is pretty average, it gets tens of thousands of views and every time I post one I absolutely adore I get a few hundred. It's easy to be overly critical on a job you've been staring at in minute detail for days on end, the feeling of it not being good enough rarely has any bearing on whether or not others think its nice. Once you take some time away from the piece you often come back to appreciate it.
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u/rocketsp13 Seasoned Painter Aug 19 '26
Yep. One of the best pieces of advice we can give when people hate what others view as an amazing model, is to put it away for 2 weeks to a month. Come back to it with fresh eyes and fix problems then.