WIP, WIP, Hooray! Let's Hear It For The Paintbrush Punks

We are all - at heart - deeply insecure people. If you don't agree with that then I fear you might be a certifiable psychopath and you should probably pop along to your local psychiatrist. If the tabletop hobby blogosphere is to be celebrated for anything then it should be for works-in-progress photographs, because it is these humble offerings that allow us all to bask in shared doubt. I value these types of picture more that anything else: certainly more than the flashy, semi-professional looking snaps of squeaky clean, cartoony miniatures, in all their finished/finalised glory. 

Scibor Minotaurs WIP

Sometimes I do like to look at pictures of models like that, but without the in-progress views granted by genuine hobby blogs, it's difficult to fully appreciate them. I want to see from others what I see when I down paintbrushes at 11.30pm under the pool of light from my daylight bulb and say to myself - 'what the fuck does that look like?!' - before going to bed with the three most reassuring words repeating in my head: work - in - progress.

I also like when fellow hobbyists share photos of their 'finished' work, not in a sense of triumphalist completion, but in a sense of artistic abandonment. These people aren't following a formula, either technical (smooth, cartoony) or regimental (just getting the rank'n'file done) - these are the paintbrush punks - where expression matters more than perfection and where the terrier of doubt nips at the heals the whole way along.