Staying Unfocussed

I read a number of other peoples blog and plogs and a recurring theme seems to be the question of how do people stay committed to a project.  I feel I've done pretty well on this over the years, I played and painted the dwarfs for pretty much 15 years non stop (ok a big break in the middle but was commited to that army when I did paint anything).  Since I branched out and started with the WE (branched out, da dum cha) they were originally intended as a 'quality painting' project.  Unfortunately I got really bored of them really quickly and just shelved them.  I then started gaming regularly again which led me to looking at wanting other armies to play and I bought the lizards to have as a 'quick' project whist I could concentrate on the woodies.  Then 8th came out and blew the whole gambit by utterly changing how armies were constructed.

So what did I do?  I went back to my dwarfs painted up enough to get them on the table, played a few games, got bored of them all over again and wanted a new army!  That lead to me bashing out the WE next because I happened to get hooked on painting a few of their models again.  Then I got hooked into the lizards and got them really going, plus I picked up some Malifaux, Epic, 40k, Skaven and doubtlessly some other stuff.

I think had I tried to stay with one army I'd have really struggled, I'd get bored painting the same thing over and over and the shelve the project.  Instead I've got my scatter gun approach which keeps me desperate to paint something new all the time.  Last week was a slow week, I did an ogre to show a clubmate, a couple of bret knights to try and come up with a scheme for when I do the army (project Pokemon* continues).  This week saw me finish off a third bret knight and then bash out 40 skaven and I've got 2 malifaux models on my painting table for when they're done.  Before the ogre it was WE's.

I have a tournament coming up, I've got a choice of 4 armies I can bring out for it, one's a bit limited but the others I can take virtually everything from the books.  The most common question I've had on my painting is how on earth I can paint so much and stay motivated?  The answer is
1. so much because I've set my standards well below my best, mass army painting = mass army paintjob.
2. Because I enjoy painting a variety of different stuff so it doesn't get stale.


* Gotta catch 'em all - I want a painted version of every army