Matthew Snelson

Right, well I've been away from the paints for over a week now and the withdrawal has been dreadful.

I've been in holiday, that thing where you go away and have to have a good time. LIke it or not. I couldn't take my mini's and gear with me so I've just had to withdraw. I took a sci-fi book with me from the Heresey series and as I'm painting Dark Angels it had to be "Descent of Angels". This has duely inspired me, but my anxiety has got so bad recently my shakes are almost uncontrollable.

So now I'm in that catach twenty two. You know the one, you relax by painting mini's and they help with your other strains. But you have to leave it for a while, and there's no safety valve so that knot in your stomach builds. YOu control that little obsessive voice that keeps pleading for a release for a stress that has no cause. And so the shake starts, and if you know what I'm talking about you'll know how frustrating it is.

The only real solid cure is calm, peaceful mental focus, the sort given by mini painting. But you get to a point where you can't paint because you're hand is shaking from the anxiety so much you know you can't hold a brush, and so, weirdly enough, you start worrying about wether you'll ever paint again, and that just makes everything worse.

Reading does help when you're away from your mini's, but how do you deal with getting abck into the saddle, and the rythmn of regular painting.

I think I know a cure of sorts....

I saved a boxed set on the sprue before I left, and a couple of tanks that need base spraying. You may have done this yourself, the "steadier" or focus point to bring you down gently from being away from a hobby that is not just a past time, but an intrinsic part of keeping your sanity.

So over the next couple of days I'm going to constrict some scouts and spray some tanks, and hopefully that'll cure my shakes...

Strange but true, don't you think?