Sometimes it is difficult to finish creating or painting a model. Over time, your standards improve and the next model just have to look even better than the last one. Eventually, the need for perfection leads to passiveness and nothing gets finished.
For a long time I wanted to try Bolt Action, a WWII wargame played with painted figures on a tabletop with a realistic terrain, all in 28mm or 1:56 scale. The game reminded me of playing Imperial Guard in Warhammer 40K many years ago (2nd and 3rd edition!) as well as Warhammer Panzer Battles.
But the prospect of painting a lot of figures scared me, while the idea of playing with unpainted figures displeased me. So for a long time, everything stood still and my unassambled and unpainted figures lay dormant in their boxes. But by chance, I came across the new contrast paints that Games Workshop and others introduced around 2020, which supposedly was a fast way of painting figures, eliminating several steps of the painting process.
Then I came across a great video on YouTube by Mediocre Miniatures (love the name!) on how to paint figures of my first chosen army, early war Germans. That inspired me to buy my own contrast paints, and after recovring from the shock of their cost, I started painting. Within a few hours, my first three models were actually finished and ready for tabletop battles!
The contrast paints are really effective to increase both the painting of base colours as well as instantly shading the model. My new models are not spectacluar in any way, but they are painted good enough for a game, and in a way it is quite liberating to just aim for good enough.
Now I have to paint a lot more, so my first battle can begin. In the meantime, have a look at Mediocre Miniatures great guide to painting early war Germans with contrast paints:
Here my three models have received an AI-generated background to place them in the middle of war-torn France in 1940.
Epoch 