If you turn your hobby into a career, do you need a new hobby?

Hello lovely people. It's been a while since I wrote here. But since we are in these troubled times (mentioning pandemic I hope you are all safe and well), I am trying to use every precious moment to do something nice.

Therefore I am back to writing my blog's.

I will apologize in front for any of my English writing mistakes. But as having to check all the stuff with grammar every time I want to write was what kept me from writing, I decided to focus just on sharing my thoughts and sharing useful Miniature Art content with you all. After all, this blog is about Miniature Art, not literature. And I will write in the same manner that Mr.Craftworld and I are writing trough our daily post's on Craftworld Studio IG & FB, our stories, Youtube and upcoming videos for other platforms. ;)

To skip further information into my writing skills, let's start with topic I prepared for today

It is

If you turn your hobby into a career, do you need a new hobby?

Well, I will say it in Marko's and my name. We have turned our hobby into a career, but we kept it as our hobby as well.

Saying this I just want to answer to my (rhetorical) question. You don't need a new hobby. But of course, having interest in more than one hobbies or change focus to other hobby is something good as well.

It all depends on your personal preferences and your routines, hobbies, careers etc.. that are

shaped by your life journey and adventures.

This reminds me to add that as a professional miniature painters, both Marko and I still contribute to hobby community trough our daily posts. Either trough sharing works or just personal projects. There is a rule in some groups where professionals are not allowed to post their commission works, or to link their pages or channels. I understand this from aspect of self-promoting. Some people tend to be just boring with it..not all people are made for social medias promotions, hehe. (saying this in positive way not trying to be rude, it is a simple truth). But there is a aspect of not being able to share something personal just because you are a commission painter. So if anything is related to your page - it is self-promoting. And of course it is, but I think that is the good way to self promote your services, by simple being contributor to a community. At least by my opinion.

I mentioned this because of the recent experience by sharing to a hobby group and getting our posts deleted (even if the posts were not commission or work related - just hobby). Of course, it was done under the rule. I am writing this for the discussion of the topic only, it was our mistake sharing it directly from the page. No offence or bad intentions, just something to think about. After saying this I can just suggest to follow our and other artist pages directly to be able to see all the content we make as we will not always be able to share everywhere and reach you all.

So,

To make a little YT selfpromoting here:

Mr. Craftworld (Marko) and I were talking about "Painting Burnout" in our recent video.

See more here (after you read the blog ;), since there are many more topics covered in this video as well - not connected to my today's topic, so let's stay on track).

I mentioned "Burnout" as painting professionally and as a hobby means you are painting 24/7. Of course, that is not physically possible. And working as a Miniature Artist professionally means that you are managing your business through emails daily, trough social medias and other business tools as daily routines. So next to creative side (building, assembly, sculpting, creating and painting) there is business side that takes 50% of your daily routine.

In the video I mentioned above, Marko was working on his personal project. Working on a custom warband - hobby time - explaining it is something that helps him charge up batteries and load with inspiration for the commission projects. See more on this link (click on the picture bellow)

*Ps. I should work on my custom warband as well (as we will use it in gameplay for the campaign and world that Marko was making for his warband). But being the good padawan I am still working on sketches for my characters, as I want it to be good enough. Making them fit the ambience and storyline.

Back to topic. Mentioning that hobby projects help you charge up is one of the recipes that works for me as well.

These days I am working on few bigger commission projects, that are very cool and I have a lot of creative inspiration for painting them, and building them. But, there comes the technical aspect that even if I have results fast (with my painting approach) it still takes some time with repetitive steps in painting that makes some of my painting hours a bit boring, making me lose my inspiration from time to time.

*When saying my painting approach. And just overall Craftworld studio painting and lessons we gave over these years, I think students that were able to attend our classes will know what I meant. And for those who don't know, you will know soon (yes, it is a kind of announcement).

Marko Miladinović - Severin Steelheart

I am thankful that most of our commissions are based on our painting freedom. Because of Craftworld Studio style that both of us built. But there are always some moments where you feel the need of expressing through different project. Especially if you are on the last step (of the steps mentioned below).

When you have soul of an artist, you tend to create. And to make your creations there are steps.

1. Fun - inspiration and idea

2. Fun/Boring - cleaning and assemble progress (depending on where your creativity leans over to building or to painting - or both).

3. Painting steps from

• Fun: sketching, bringing idea to life

• Relaxing/Boring : Refining, blending, definition (this depends on whether you feel more expressivene at the moment or you just want to do the technical aspect to relax (in my case sometimes it is so relaxing to blend or just refine)

• Boring: Being there, but not there quite yet. You feel like you finished your project, but there are still more details to be refined.

*This is the part where I feel the NEED to charge up (to create something new).

Aleksandra Cvetanovski - Everchosen I am starting my new everchosen project. Wish me luck!?

So based on our "How not to burnout recipe" :

I wanted to start quick and nice personal project.

I asked our followers trough Craftworld IG stories should I paint this mini?

Most of you said yes. And for those who said no they had cool ideas for what to paint next as well. (Our community is awesome!)

So I finished with my working day and just slide to hobby time. So I decided to share the progress of preparing fast and cool project with you. I shared it through our IG stories (and got your feedback that it is useful seeing it). But knowing that from 24k followers only around 2k actually manage to see stories I decided to share it as blog post as well. Here I can write more also 😇

Before you ask, this model is made by Artisan Guild. They have a patreon page offering great pallette of miniatures ready for printing at home. For those who have a printer. We haven't decided on which printer to buy yet so we went for the option of having it printed by Excellent Miniatures. Impressed with quality I must mention that preparation of this model's is minimum (this helped with my decision as well, lol).

Then I opened Marko's treasure chest. Bit's box. One of them that have bit's for GW Lizardmans.

lizardman bits

Searching for something nice and appropriate for base of this little lady.

getting distracted

What we have here!?

After going through many bits, having fun and getting new ideas. Getting distracted as well…

I found one bit that I will use. Can you relate? Going through pile of bits finding that "perfect" one that you "need".

This was my planning process. (Patafix is a life saver. )

I said perfect and need under quotation marks. But it usually turns out that it is actually just the right thing you needed and it gives that charm to your project.

Then I got idea for the good composition and decided to start. I pinned the bit and made pin for the figure.

Of course, used the spare parts of used putties to save up new putty in later sculpting progress.

After this was done I finally sculpted my base. Fast and easy. Making nice display figure and having everything secured and ready for priming.

Next stage is painting. Care to suggest some ideas?

Thank you for reading. Hope you will find today's topic useful and fun read. Enjoy your painting, either work or hobby and stay safe.

*You can find this "Display model preparation Progress" in highlights section on our Crafrworld Studio IG

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See you all in next blog's and vlog's. :)

Aleksandra, Mrs.Craftworld