What inspires you to paint?

ONE OF MY BETTER PAINTING DAYS

For me, one of the most enjoyable aspects of historical minniature gaming is the painting. There are times when one needs to just get units done because you need them for the next game, then there are times when everything just "clicks" for you and something great is created (well, at least to one's self!) Freddy, here is one of those times I just got lucky! While not a gaming piece, it does serve to inspire me at times when I just can't seem to get motivated. What do you do to get "inspired" to paint?

I really dislike having to wait for a batch of new figures to paint. When I order them, I am really pumped to get to it! My mind's eye image is active and I can just "see" what I want them to look like. Two weeks later, when they finally arrive, I have lost that image in my mind and have to struggle to find what had inspired me so much. Seeing other people's work on the internet can be inspiring; especially when the figures are displayed in really great settings. My problem is that I miss living close to a retail store that actuially stocks figures! My old store, Attactix in Aurora, Co. USA was just such a store. We carried whole lines of figures in many scales and periods. I really miss seeing the excitement of a new customer who finds exactly what he had been searching for, in the "flesh" and can take it home with him today...be painting by 8pm! Closest I can come to that here is finding a box of Hat or Zevzda and spending hours just amazed at the detail. I can remember what the old plastics of the 60's and 70's looked like and still be as excited as I was back then.

I blame my parents. I am a hoarder! I tend to keep everything! By buddy here, Scott, really gets on my case because I don't keep it all sorted. "If I sort the stuiff out, I will never find anything I am looking for!" But, alas, he is right- I need to put like periods and scales together. This will knokck off severl hours of just "looking" for that one pack of 1 by 3/4 inch bases I KNOW I have....somewhere, or those two packs of Pendraken I bought years ago just for this time to finally get them fielded. By the time I DO find what I am looking for, I feel I have accomplished something! (but lost the motivation to accomplish what I started out to do....paint the little fellows!)

I hate to admit it, but it took me a whole year to paint up just one box of Perry French Napoleonic infantry, despite they stood and stared at me daily for over 300 days, on my painting table. They are so nice that I guess I hoarded them so I could do my best to do them justice. (No, it never entered my mind that I could always get more...it was these pimed fellows that wanted to get done, first! Why buy more when you haven't painted the one's you already have? (OMG, that sounded just like my wife!)  So 2 more boxes of Perrys and 3 of Vixtrix Austrians (hey, those frenchies will have to be opposed by someone), I finally found my way back into the smaller scales (with tricornes) where I can produce more units for the effort, and start playing games again, At least I will have figures to paint when I get the itch to do larger scale Naspoleonics...whenever that time comes. (And it will come!)

So I type this in anticipation of the arrival of more figures....again. This time, a bit more motivated to paint as I have surroundeed myself with uniform and order of battle information to keep me in the game. If they don't come tomorrow, I will try to shoot some pictures and post here. 

Thanks for reading my ramblings!