 Hello everybody and welcome to another hobby cheating video and today is going to be a little something different. This is the 400th hobby cheating video. So today, instead of doing anything painting wise, I'm just going to attempt to share with you all of the best lessons I can offer over all of my time in the hobby. Let's get into it. I've been painting for 25 years, 10 years professionally, and made 400 videos on helping you with the hobby. One piece of advice I have, the one thing I want you to take away from this video above all others, paint every day that you can. In the long term, after thousands of hours and figures, you will not only learn, but you'll create things, beautiful things, ugly things, so many things. The long term benefits of daily practice and art as therapy and creation are all well proven. The rest of this advice I'm about to offer is based on nothing more than my own meandering experience in this hobby, but seriously, paint every day that you can. Life is short, creation and art and hobby is beautiful. Enjoy the potential of learning every day. This hobby journey is amazing because there's always something more to learn, to practice, to improve. That road never ends, and it's for that reason that this hobby is so incredible. It doesn't have an end point. There's no professional league. There's no retiring when you're 30. With this hobby, it will stay with you for your life, and there will always be another hill to climb, another mountain to conquer. You are not as bad at this as you imagine. You might not be as good either, but you should never be comparing yourself to others. Comparison is nothing more than the thief of joy. The only comparison you should ever make is you right now to your past self and how far you've come in the hobby. Paint your brushes after every painting session. A little bit of masters and soap and some water can really go a long way to keeping your brushes happy and really extending their life by a tremendous amount and saving you a lot of money. Don't worry about failure. You will fail. You will not paint a perfect piece. It will not be as good as you imagined it could be. Failure is just the first step in the road of knowledge and an essential one at that. Paint one thing every year that truly scares you. Something that challenges you, that pushes you, and takes you outside of your comfort zone. You'll learn more on that one piece, trying this new thing, navigating this new figure, working through something that's really difficult than you will on a thousand space marines. One thing every year that scares you, that pushes you, is the key to really unlocking the next big step in your hobby journey. Add more contrast. Seriously, no matter where you are, just add more contrast. Don't be reckless with criticism and feedback. Just like you, everyone else is on their own place on their hobby journey. Maybe that's ahead of you, maybe that's behind you, but if they didn't ask for feedback, then don't give it. Remember the compliments that you receive and forget all of the insults and criticisms. If you can actually do that, well, tell me how you did it. Thin your paints. Remember two thin coats really is often very good advice and helps keep those base layers nice and smooth and clean. Thin your paints. Keep every miniature you create if you can. Each one is a step on a long journey and a living memory of where you were in your hobby and in your life. When you look back at your work a year from now, five years from now, 10 years from now, you will be amazed at how far you've come and marvel at how far you still have to go. Each one of those pieces is a precious step on your hobby journey. Savor them and save them. They represent who you were at that time, where you were in the hobby and can mean so much in understanding just how much you've grown when you can't see it yourself in front of you. Get some good lights for your painting. Bright, diffuse, 5,000K, something in that range, like an architect light or anything like that. You will miss your eyes when they don't work properly anymore. So spare them and get a good light. Don't feel bad if you don't like painting the popular figures, playing the popular game, or painting in some particular style. Your hobby is your hobby, not anyone else's. Paint your figures however you like in whatever style you like, with whatever colors you like. Don't get hung up on useless details on particular ways that someone else or some book or some group tells you you have to paint. This is meant to be fun. But more importantly, this is your creations, your art, your journey. Make it fun for you every day you possibly can. Take the time to scrape and sand your mold lines and get your figure prepared. I know it's annoying. I hate it too. We all hate it. But spending that extra five minutes can do so much for your model that another 20 hours of painting can't do. Prep your models well, it'll make the later process a lot easier, and it'll make your painting a lot better. Maybe you'll win awards in your career and your hobby journey. Maybe you won't. Maybe you'll paint tons and tons of armies. Maybe you'll struggle to get one faction on the table after five years of working on it. Maybe you'll get bored with army painting and decide to move up to larger scales or busts or something completely different. Maybe you'll happily paint tiny little soldiers for the rest of your life. Whatever you choose to do in the hobby, don't congratulate yourself too much, but don't berate yourself either. Way too many people beat themselves up over what they do or don't do, what they paint or fail to paint, over their schedule, their life, how busy things are and what they get done. Your journey is your own. Paint what you can, paint what you want, have fun. Don't buy new tools just because. A good set of paints and a few nice brushes that you really know how to use, that you have become an expert in and understand their properties, will serve you better and be worth far more to you than any random gadget any day of the week. This community is the strongest part of the hobby. The friends and the found family I've made as part of this hobby lift me up every day. Your friends, your fellows, all of us in the community are here to lift you up. Whether it's the good times or the bad, it is this community that has gotten me through it. So many of the people that I value in my life that mean so much to me, I've met through this incredible hobby. We all perform this solitary act of miniature painting and yet somehow we all do it together. We all hit the same challenges in our hobby, in our life. At some point we run into these problems. But even though we paint alone, we don't face those challenges alone. This community helps us and it brings us and together we overcome all of those challenges that we meet. That is something above all else that I am truly grateful for every day that I get to participate in this absolutely incredible hobby. Seriously though, more contrast, just like it's more than that. It's really more than that. Practice non-metallic metal at least once. Even if you prefer true metallic metal, you'll learn more about light and what we're actually doing here in miniature painting on just a few figures in non-metallic metal. Then you will in all the space marine cloaks in the galaxy. Non-metallic metal will teach you about light, how it works, how it acts, where it falls, how it bounces, what it's colored in, all of that stuff. It's just one of the most distilled methods of learning. And even if you don't like it and even if you decide not to paint that way, just a few figures can teach you so much that will carry over into everything else you paint. Paint with true metallic metal if you like it more. Don't listen to the hobby snobs that tell you that true metals are somehow bad. True metallic metal paints are super fun and awesome. They're great. Use them if you like them. But use the lessons of non-metallic metal and what you learned. Integrate those shades and highlights. Just a few extra simple steps on those metal paints of adding some rich shadows and placing some fine highlights can make that figure pop and look so much more incredible than it would with just a base coat. Don't just wash that metal. Put some shades in there and some highlights in there and make it look amazing. You can do it. Go to convention sometime if you can. Adepticon, salute wherever you happen to be in the world. If there's a convention near you, try to check it out if you can. There's so much fun. Accept certain inalienable truths in this hobby. Rules for your favorite game will change. Old figures will be replaced by new ones. Paint companies will keep trying to sell you new amazing formulations and new ranges that are this time going to change your entire life. And you will improve if you want to. But you don't have to improve to make this hobby meaningful. Get yourself a wet palette, or at least try one out and see if they're for you. It really does make painting with acrylic paints easier. Don't spend too much time chasing perfection, especially when you start out. When you're beginning and for a long while after, you have no idea what a well-painted miniature is, let alone a perfect one. Your figure will never be perfect, ever. And that is fine. Perfection isn't the goal. If you're learning, if you're having fun, if you're creating something, then you're winning. Perfect isn't just the enemy of the good, it's the enemy of done, and it's the enemy of learning. Don't waste your time on perfection. Be careful spending all your time watching videos. Ironic given what you're doing right now and what I hope you keep doing with this channel. Painting and practice are still the most important things you can do. Watching and listening, in the end, they really only take you so far. Eventually, you have to do. Remember, you don't have to listen to every tip or follow every tutorial or do exactly what I say or what any other instructor or video says. That is what's worked for them in their journey, in their style, in the way that they paint, but it may not work for you. There are many valid roads in this hobby, all of which lead to painted figures and amazing art. Find yours and what works for you. But trust me, paint every day that you can. It's the one thing you'll never regret. Thank you so much, everybody. This is all the best advice I can distill down, and I know a lot of this is ephemeral. It's more about sort of how to live in this hobby than it is about some specific way to complete a glaze or what particular paint you can use, because I think in the end, it's easy to lose sight of those things. I hope you enjoyed this. If you did, give it a like. Subscribe for additional hobby cheating. Remember, we have new videos here every Saturday. We'll be back to tutorials next week, doing lots more fun stuff and helping you on your hobby journey. Speaking of which, if you want to support the channel, not only is hitting those buttons great, but there's a Patreon down below focused on review and feedback and taking your own next step. As always, I thank you so much for watching this one, and we'll see you next time.