 Hello everybody and welcome to another hobby cheating video and today we're going to talk about what I think are the two most important things if you really want to improve your miniature painting and that is exploration and repetition in the proper order of course. Now this is going to be a little different because I am painting something on screen and don't worry I'll pop up with a little overlay of exactly what paints are being used and so you can watch how I actually paint these skeletons in case you want to replicate this. But recently I saw Richard Gray shared a single test mini from one of his cursed city skeletons that was done in this really nice style that was really focused in laser focused on the placement of light and value in his non-metallic metal and I thought it looked really cool and I thought you know I really need to practice non-metallic more on gaming figures establishing a way to get it done in such a way that I can actually be happy with what I get in a relatively quick amount of time. I often paint non-metallic metal on display figures but I usually avoid it on gaming figures for a host of reasons but I thought let's use this opportunity to practice really practice to explore specific light placement to really understand value and how I want the lighting of the figure to be cast. At the same time I thought let's also explore something a little different than what I normally do you know I often paint over Xenothol not over black I know he paints over black I often paint in very bright colors I said let's try something pretty dull so let's pick a dull scheme. So this was an exploration of lots of different things that I wouldn't normally do and I think that that's really important you have to sometimes be willing to break your habits we all have them we all have these heuristics these shortcuts we use when we're painting oh this is a belt let me get out my belt color this is a skull let me get out my skull color and you can see as what I'm showing right now these skulls are done in a mix of deep camo green and cloudy sky which is a sort of warm pseudo bone color but the fact that they're using green instead of brown as the undertone was an attempt to say hey can I unify all this fig together constantly just exploring with these figs these aren't part of any army for me they were just a fun chance of something that came along with Kerr City to really just see what I can do and to work on areas that I want to work on it allowed me to work outside my comfort zone something that we all should do once in a while if you're in your comfort zone you're not learning that's the unfortunate part of it and it becomes really easy especially after you've painted for a while to just stay in that zone where you know what you know and you know that you're going to achieve some level of results close to what you want right and this can happen all over the place maybe for you it's base wash layer maybe it's particular recipes you use on particular parts of minis like I mentioned earlier maybe it's not trying things like non-metallic metal whatever it is that's fine for a lot of our painting not everything needs to be a growth opportunity if you don't want sometimes we can just paint stuff for armies and for fun and that's okay but when we want to learn when we want to grow when we want to advance we have to take ourselves outside of that comfort zone because otherwise you're never going to actually learn anything painting more and more figs over and over again using the exact same techniques sure you might gain a little brush control or something like that but for the most part you're not improving now there are things we have to accept when we push ourselves outside of our comfort zone when we explore all right when we take these risks and those things are that we have to accept that it will take longer you know the first skeleton I did here when I was learned when I was testing out the scheme it certainly took me longer than it would normally take me to paint a single skeleton you have to accept that you'll fail when I was first messing around with this there were things I didn't like about it there were elements that I wanted to change to keep pushing myself on you have to accept when you're trying new things you won't always succeed that's okay there's nothing wrong with that because that just means you have to accept that it will take multiple attempts right the reality is is that if you're wanting to push yourself if you're wanting to try new things like I was here right where I'm really focusing on trying to differentiate the elements working up from black using this dull palette but still making the figure interesting just lots of different things I was exploring with these figures all while sort of inspired by Richard Gray's original skeleton inspired by I certainly didn't try to copy his work exactly although there's absolutely nothing wrong with that and it can be a great technique for learning but I had to accept that I wasn't going to nail it the first time and as a matter of fact each of these 10 skeletons though as you'll see at the end they look pretty much aligned certainly from the perspective of a unit they're close enough they would look fine sitting on the table there are differences between them areas where I tried to push highlights maybe a little higher and didn't like it or tried different things or different steps right because this was in itself a learning opportunity and I had to accept that to get it right would take multiple attempts it wouldn't be something I would just pick up and do because this was about learning it was about working outside of my comfort zone and breaking the habits that I have the way that I paint the steps that I use and I like to think of myself as a pretty explorative painter someone who doesn't really get hooked on the same heuristic shortcuts and biases every time but I will say this lesson there this attempt or whatever we want to call this this exploration really did open my eyes as to just how much I do rely on certain things unconsciously of course we all do because when I was forced to go back and really think about things from the ground up in this way I saw just how much different my painting was when I was really being mindful about every step and that's the last thing I'll say about this phase about exploration because that's going to really transition us into the next one is that when you're working it's often easy to be mindless about it what I mean by that is those heuristics don't just give us predictable outcomes they also allow us to turn our brain off and if we really want to grow we have to be mindful about what we're doing now eventually though you can't just explore forever because you have to get a new skill then after that you have to build that new skill you have to move out of that exploration zone and bring that new skill into your comfort zone and that's where repetition comes in as you're going to see in just a few seconds I've got one skeleton to where I wanted and then I did it again and again and again as you move from learning to practicing as it becomes less of a skill that you're just trying for the first time and more of a part of your overall repertoire now it's important in that learning phase to retain that mindfulness to keep thinking about what you're doing at all those steps don't just let it become unconscious reflex when you don't have it all the way down yet stay engaged with what you're doing think about where am I putting my brush where am I placing this highlight you know this was a real mindful exercise for me because I had to really look at the fig and think deeply about where exactly am I going to place every little bit of light in this metal and then I had to do it again and again and again and again and again and again right now when I was practicing especially focusing on things like the metal I kind of ignored the rest you know some of the other parts you don't need to work on everything at once focus on the thing you're trying to improve you're trying to explore you're trying to learn and don't worry about the rest focus on that one thing make each figure that you're working on an opportunity to continue building whatever that new skill is that you're working on now at the end of that project there's one more vital step after all this repetition once you've done all that once you've done this over and over again as I you can see me doing here on all these different skeletons checking the light placing everything in making sure I like where everything looks one two three ten times there's a really vital last step I think we often skip and that last step is appraisal looking at your work and really trying to see where did you fail where did you succeed so putting all of that work together and understanding how'd you do give yourself a grade see where your opportunities for improvement are and take that into your next project so there you go I hope that helps and explains how exploration and repetition can be used to grow your skill in the hobby this was certainly a really fun project for me if you like this give it a like subscribe for additional hobby cheating in the future but as always I thank you for watching this one and we'll see you next time