This post will be devoid of the usual rantology - apologies to any who tuned in for that. This particular post will simply be dedicated to the unabashed joy of painting - in particular, painting miniatures.
What I do isn't art. There are miniature painters who hit this standard, but I don't, anymore than a child who proficiently draws within the lines. But if I wanted to be an artist, I'd need a heroin habit, longer hair, motifs of sorrow, loss, and other such stuff. And I have no time to do all of those things because I have a pile of pewter that fills an entire cupboard that needs painting.
Miniature painting is like exercise (or at least, what I've been able to observe of exercise at a safe remove). At first it is painful and labourious. The rewards seem distant and the aches and pains ever present. But if you do some, everyday, even just a little, it gets easier and easier, and more and more consuming.
Having a fair whack of spare time on my hands at the moment has given me the opportunity to catch the bug. And it's been wonderful.
First of all, my giant pile of shame has been steadily diminishing. In a world full of unquantifiable gains and losses, this is something I can see happening. Bits of scattered pewter steadily become a squad, an army! I'm not good at setting goals but this is something tangible and concrete. It's a sense of achievement that grants me pretty minimal bragging rights within a very limited set of people, but the internal sense of satisfaction in definitely disproportionately large.
The way it starts to occupy your mind is also great for stress relief. Instead of worrying about the unavoidable minutia of adult life, you think about washes, what highlight you're going to use where and trying out that new feathering technique. I actually dreamt about washes and shading the other night.
There is a meditative aspect to painting that I haven't been able to access through actual meditation (actually, for various reasons meditation is now associated with social anxiety for me but that's a story for another time). In high school, and was pretty solidly stressed out, what with managing the only known atheist chapter of the Junior Anti-Sex League all by myself, listening to waaaaay to much Ministry and Big Black in the mornings and trying to complete work requirements. The only thing I think that kept me sane during that time was rhythmically painting skink after skink. This was back in the day when each was identical, so I don't even know how I managed to paint 80 odd of the little bastards.
Painting gets me out of a grown-up self-critical linguistic state. When I finish painting some giant monster and make "Raaaargh" noises as I put him on my shelf I am lost in the mindset of a child. There's no artifice to it - I'm not going to make more money, be cooler, or pull more ladies as a consequence of completing it. Yet there it is, a slice of pre-pubescent joy, to see something angry and cool-looking on the shelf. 8 year old Reuben would think it was completely awesome.
So there it is, a little love letter to my current hobby. For those of you out there who share it, then you know what I mean. For those of you out there who don't, well hopefully this is some insight into why I'm at home on a saturday night.
you have just articulated some of the reasons that I spend a lot of time knitting. Hobbies FTW.
ReplyDeletealso, Hobbes. but we're getting meditative and letting child-like joy of simplicity overrun that for a moment.
What sound do you make when you put a new scarf on the shelf? I imagine a contented "Hmmm."
ReplyDeleteHobbies do win. I'm not sure why more people don't have them. I'm never bored. I'm not sure I'd have been able to cope with unemployment without my minis to paint.