Sunday, December 4, 2016

Experiment: Introducing new blood #2

Welcome to the follow-up of my previous post where my boys where able to select their own version of coolness. It took a while to find the miniatures, but once they did arrive all was ready to start painting.

The deal was as follows They would paint their own miniature completely in base colors first and afterwards apply various whashes. In between the fases I would correct various parts and finish the highlights.

You might wonder why I helped and I realize it is not an easy question to answer.

I wanted to achieve two things with this little experiment. The first one - getting them to experience what is needed to completely paint up a miniature. The second one - own your own cool miniature to play games with.

I thought if I didn't correct their work they would possibly complain about how their miniature looked in comparison to the other miniatures. That and I must honestly say that my own tendencies for perfection might had to do something with the decision.

We've played some games and had fun, but I later realized they are still far too young to be seriously painting anything. As a dad you kinda want to share this love for miniatures, but you also know you cannot force it. In a way this little experiment confronted me more with my own expectations and whishes than it had any effect on the boys.

For example: a week or two after we painted them they didn't even remember they had miniatures at all. No matter how you look at it, that kinda hurts.

I decided to drop the effort on the kids department and let them make some effort themselves. If they're really interested they will come someday and when they do I'll remind them of the miniatures they have painted.



4 comments:

  1. Hi Dreamfish,

    I completely empathise with you about your desire to get your kids "into" your hobby....without them being overly interested.

    The thing that I had to remind myself was that I was around 12-14 years of age before I started to paint...and really badly at that :)

    My son has just turned 10 and I've tried a couple of times to get him interested in painting, but I think he just doesn't have the required attention span at this age.

    He loves roleplaying and looking at my minis, sometimes giving me quite useful opinions on colour schemes or kitbashing additions :) which is encouraging. At this stage though, I've decided to let him do his own thing, at his own pace. If he becomes interested later on to paint....cool, but if not, then that's just the way it's gunna be.

    I can't force him to like it and I've had to realise that he's his own person....not a carbon copy of me. I was really disappointed when he wasn't into LEGO like me as a kid. I'd saved up a whole bag of it from my youth, hoping he'd love it too. For him, it's no big deal....he'd rather read instead, which is fine.

    He does love to play battles with the minis though, so there's still hope :)

    Cheers,
    Optimus.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Optimus, thanks for the support.

      Now that you've mentioned it. The attention span of kids seems surprisingly low nowadays. My own memory of when I was 9 years old isn't accurate or objective, but I do remember playing adventure (point & click) games on the Amiga. Changing floppies 2 or 3 times for each screen change did require some fair amount of patience.

      Of course the technology at that time forced me to have patience. These days it seems to be more about instant satisfaction than ever before.

      Oh well, I'm going to follow your advice and let them do their things, at their own pace, which is actually the only option available.

      Delete
  2. It is a bit of a battle to compete against video games. One of mine has the patience to paint, the other doesn't. But both have developed a passion for Pathfinder/D&D, despite its mathematical demands! My advice would be soft encouragement to get involved, but at the end of the day, leave it up to them.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hey There !
    My name is Joshua Stawiarski Co - Editor Of TalkWargaming.com

    Sorry if this message is presented in a spammy way as I’ve been but a lot of wargamers it seems are hard to contact .

    I wanted to inquire about if you would be interested in selling published content you’ve already created that's on your website to us over here at talkwargaming.com as we are looking to diversify our content to expand our readership.

    If you are interested or have questions we can go over more details at: editortalkwargaming@gmail.com
    Put In The Subject Heading : “ Wargame Creator ”

    Looking forward to hearing from you,
    Sincerely,
    Co - Editor Of talkwargaming.com

    ReplyDelete

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.