Defining Limit Breakers in Miniature Painting
Every now and again, you should be painting to the best of your ability. You should push yourself and devote a large amount of time to a single project.
For me it’s competition and display pieces. For you it might be the same, or a larger hero model, a gift, or something you just think deserves it. There is a special rhythm we can tap into as artists. There is the common flow state, but sometimes when we really give ourselves over to a piece of art, and painting miniatures is in fact art, we can go beyond the flow state. We delve into obsession, paint a little more than we should, lose track of time. I feel like this process is good for the artistic soul. It’s also beneficial to your progress as an artist.
First you need to define your limits. Overall you might be looking at other artists and their skill and thinking that it’s something to achieve. You are wrong. You have a personal skill ceiling. I have mine, your favorite content creators have theirs. That ceiling is breakable. You can look to others as inspiration, something to try and emulate for the sake of your own education, but it should never be something to achieve completely. Comparing one's work does a disservice to not only them but yourself too. Let those artists exist as human beings, not machines on a pedestal. Look inward to your fears. Do you avoid nmm like I did for years? Think Warhammer is something only for people shooting for tournaments or Golden Demon? Those are limits. At a certain point even the idea of painting a Limit Breaker is itself a limit.
This goes into a previous point I've made about deliberate practice. When you devote hours onto a piece and focus on techniques or aspects that you find yourself lacking in, you chip away at your own skill ceiling. You raise that bar of which you are able to accomplish. You are able to render what you see in your mind's eye onto the miniature with better fidelity. This raises your overall level. Pushing on your own walls as a painter in a display aspect will often unlock tricks and comfortability with faster yet more complex techniques. If you devote a lot of hours on a piece that uses wet blending as a focus. Wet blending then becomes trivial when working on models for the tabletop.
This isn't me suggesting you should only care about improvement, this is me saying there are theory driven tools like Limit Breakers that can make you more comfortable in being the artist you want to be. If you are not satisfied with the outcome of your own art, it is time to break through your limits.
