Not OP, but I was also replying and had thoughts along a similar vein.

I'm 44 and have had countless hobbies over my adolescent and adult lives. Some I've taken up multiple times, some I've visited multiple variations on a core idea (e.g. aquariums/planted tanks/dwarf shrimp tanks). I've learned (and subseqeuntly forgotten) a tremendous amount, and spent an unholy amount of money. Most things have not stayed with me.

Miniature painting is one thing that I think might last me the rest of my life.

I think it boils down to a few factors:

- miniatures aren't alive; I don't need to care for them, so the worst that can happen is I break or scratch something. This keeps my anxiety/concern/guilt largely out of the equation.

- the feedback cycles are fairly short; I know almost immediately if a paint stroke was good or bad, if my brush is too wet or too dry, etc. A single project is normally just a couple of hours, and then it's done and I can view it as a completed whole.

- the product occupies little space and it's trivial to keep around and compare to work done before and after and see progression and evolution over time. Also, if you're prone to collecting things, just keeping the product on the shelf next to other things becomes an ongoing source of reward.

- if I absolutely fubar something, I can buy or print a new mini for a couple bucks or throw it in some Simple Green overnight and brush the old paint off. Most of the time I can just paint over the issue.

- paint, brushes, a wet palette, minis, airbrush, etc all add up, but you can have an amazing setup for under a thousand bucks, and you can transcend the realm of mortals for $2K. The ongoing costs after that are manageable unless you're into Warhammer. You can get started and do some really fun and cool things with a $50 starter kit.

So there's some higher-dimension graph with effort, frustration, reward, feedback latency, etc, and for me at least painting miniatures tends to sit in a happy area.

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navbaker 19 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> the product occupies little space and it's trivial to keep around

Haha, I have found this to absolutely NOT be the case! Each individual mini only takes up and inch or so, but they multiply and between them and the brushes/airbrush/paint racks and the ever-increasing grey Pile of Shame, it’s not a small amount of space taken up!

It is an extremely rewarding hobby with a low bar to entry, though, and I agree that I will probably never stop.

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leetrout a day ago | parent | prev [-]

How hard is cleanup in order to keep things usable? I love the idea of painting minis and models- especially learning the various weathering effects but it seemed like it would take a lot of energy to keep everything functional.

	▲	nathan_douglas a day ago \| parent [-]
		Trivial, honestly. And I'm not a particularly disciplined or functional person. The overwhelming majority of hobbyists use acrylic, which has no meaningful smell and can be thinned with a drop of water. I haven't had any issues with staining or the paint going where it's unwanted, and you typically only use a few drops at a time. Sometimes I use a dry palette and sometimes a wet palette. The dry palettes are plastic and cheap on Amazon. You rinse them off in the sink. If the paint dries, use a greenie or a brush - no problem. The wet palette just needs to be wiped off with a wet napkin before you close it up, and to have the wax paper replaced when it starts to rub through. If you get the sponge dirty, it's a sponge - just fill it up with water, squish it, maybe use a little Mean Green/Simple Green/etc to clean it up. The airbrush is a little more involved, but I dramatically overestimated how much of a pain in the ass it would be. Most of the time the cleanup for that is 3-5 minutes and not unpleasant. Occasionally it'll need to be broken down a little further, but it's still not a big deal. The mechanism isn't nearly as complex as it may initially seem. Brushes aren't a big deal to keep clean. You'd destroy a bunch, but you'll learn over time what not to do. Just don't start with the (comparatively expensive and arguably barbaric) sable brushes, start with garbage quality brushes and treat them as disposable. Rinse them, use a little brush soap, and don't brutalize or drown them and they'll last longer and longer and maintain a better quality, then you can upgrade. Nothing else really comes to mind in terms of labor.