I've been having a terribly hard time motivating myself to paint, if you've been in this situation what did you do to motivate yourself? I'm not someone who enjoys painting, but sees it as a necessity to play in competitive environments.

Look at the model(s) that you're about to paint, consider it's usefulness in combat. Preferably it's optimal use, FW shooting at guardsmen ect.

Then consider how wonderful it will be to use them for just that purpose and (for the greater good) taste the tears of victory.

I usually watch painting tutorials, but that might not work if you don't like painting to begin with, so I'd expect watching actual game-play videos might be more helpful.

The follow up question is, Do you know anyone or any group that does GOOD tau battle reports?

First of all, I have moved this thread to the lower concourse, since it is about the hobby aspect and not the gaming aspect of 40K.

It is difficult to tell you how you can find motivation, some use music or other entertainment for it, but that might be more a diversion from the annoying/boring part of the painting, like when you have to paint 72 Firewarriors at once. (not to mention the 15 Scouts and ~30 Kroot).

Here is what motivated me most:

I had painted only a few of my models (I think it was one Devilfish and 2 Teams of Firewarriors) and played a battle and noticed that the Firewarriors looked good next to the Devilfish, a few days later, I painted my other 'fish and a Hammerhead in the same colors and fielded them in the next battle and in that battle the motivation/muse striked me, the more models I had painted in my uniform colors the better they looked, so I took the time and painted my whole army, it took quite a lot of effort, but it was worth it.

You might want to pick an easy paint scheme and paint the models you do not like so much first.

My models have been painted like this:

I lined up a whole team of Firewarriors (12 plastic spacemen), I base-coated them chaos black, then I painted all models armor, after they had dried I added a different color for the clothes, again I waited till they where dry, then I added some details in an other colour and after that was dry I added some sept markings.

This mass production took long and was not much fun, especially since I was not done yet, I used the same mass production for my Scouts, Kroots and Gue'vesa but after I had finished those, I could paint the Battlesuits, they are bigger and easier to paint, I really enjoyed it and I forgot the exertion of painting the smaller models.

And so I had finally painted my whole army in a simple scheme which made them look far better on the table.

Later I did some improvements here and there on the models.

I tend to work on models not even related to my tau collection. It evolves my painting by working on something new. In addition by doing something different it often develops a new technique which I can in turn use on my Tau project when I charge back.

Upcoming battle is always a motivation
For me, I used to paint in front of my computer, with some crappy movie playing. Also a good conversion is yelling to take it and płace Against one of my friends.

I had this same issue until recently, I would paint about one firewarrior every 3-4 days, painting slowly and carefully rather than how I originally did, quick and sloppy. Having about 30 firewarriors left to go, I was kind of not feeling great about it.

Then, just a few days ago I was playing a game. My uglier, poorly painted firewarriors were almost an embarrassment for me, so I removed them as casualties first. When I had my ~5-6 very well painted firewarriors left, it was like "whoa, THAT looks impressive". Now I am trying to churn out 2-3 a day, with that same high standard of quality, because it was just a beautiful moment for the greater good when all the ugly models had died. Spend the time and do it right.

Also, one thing that makes a lot of people hate painting is they keep making mistakes they have to fix, or they can never get their models how they envisioned them or whatever. If that is one of the reasons you hate painting, then just keep at it. It is that simple, the more time you spend at it, the better your models will turn out.

Are you familiar with the 10,000 hour rule?

I'm kind of in your boat too. I recently recruited about 4 dozen more fire warriors from the good ole' au'ebay sept to add to my already painted 3k+point cadre for 6th. I'm having issue with getting them to the table top painted. I work full time, am married and have a 4 yr. old boy. So my hobby time is few and far between. I just painted all the helmets and shields to match my existing Fire warriors in the mean time. I'll base them next and get to the armour soon. I find a sporting event aka football game a nice distraction and/or background noise. I am by no means a tournament player but I do play at the local GW occasionally and on my own table w/ friends. Personally can't stand players with unpainted models nor ones that jump ship to the latest and greatest army every other week. I feel your pain, best of luck!!

When I'm painting "normal" models, like Firewarriors I don't look back, I look forward. I look how many models I have painted already, and how beautiful they turned out. That helps me to keep motivation big enough to go forward. To see the rest of my army is a big motivation bump.

As I started painting my army, there were no painted models, so I looked on ATT at those great painted armies. I wanted such a beautiful thing too. So... I catch my motivation from looking at painted models.

With my new XV9 Hazard Suits, there is motivation enough, and I can't wait till I can start painting!

I really got use to painting in Alaska where it was -20 outside. It was sit in my room and be bored or get some Tau finished! I was able to get 1000+ points and a display board done in less than a week. I had a CoC that weekend so that really gave me the push. I really loved having my first full painted army (Started playing WarHammer in 1997) Now this weekend I have a "twin-Linked" comp to go to...so now I have to do 1,000 points of deamons and 3 battle suits. I am about to start right after this post. So I would say just set goals... like 4 FWs a day...then maybe a Tank/Suit a day or anything for that matter. Just break it up b/c I have got burned out before and I pretty muched gave WarHammer up for 2 years.

Do basic colors first on everything then add detail only after that's done. That's a trick they taught us in oil painting and, trust me, it really speeds up the process.

Here we go... I just got my girlfriend's first bloodletter started. Getting away from painting mechanical things is really making me a better painter. I mostly just dry brush all of my models so painting like this is all new to me good times!

I used a rather brutal method - no new tau until the whole army is painted.
It also stops the pile of models to paint getting larger faster than you paint them.

I find painting with a group of friends is always way way better than painting alone. Every so often, my friends and I meet for a day of working on our projects in each other's company. I find that having everyone else doing it really motivates me to get my stuff done too. For example, last weekend, I met up with a couple friends and I managed to complete a tank, start to finish. Typically, we will aim to meet in the early afternoon, do some painting, talk tactics while we work, order a pizza or something, and then do a quick and easy battle at the end of the day.

That's my problem. I've got so many models now that it's become a daunting task to paint them all. So now I've sworn to myself that I will not buy anymore models until I have the ones that I own painted. I went on a crazy model making spree when I got burned out from Tau by always loosing in 5th. So I decided to Dive into the Assault On Black Reach box, get a SM and Ork CODEX and about 2000pts of SM and 1500pts Ork. So I did get a little side tracked.

I think that Ork fits my play style a bit more than Tau but I absolutely love the Tau minis, and fully painted they look like the "coolest" army on the table, Especially if it has Vehicles.

Tau are the coolest because they literally are too cool for CC. They sit back with some of the best weaponry shooting while shamelessly avoiding a melee. They are the Indiana Jones solution to the Arabian swordsman in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Just shoot em'.

So now that I have gone and got myself totally overwhelmed with a sea of primed black minis from three different armies starting back at me screaming "paint me".

I think that I will go back to painting My Tau and having that be the first fully painted army. I have been working on it for over 2 years now so It's the closest army to being finished. If I keep this pace up I should have the other part of the Army done before the next Codex comes out. Now that's some real motivation right there. NEW CODEX and when we get it, Your fully painted army will be the envy of the Universe.

I don't like doing sloppy painting and I hope that no one else does. Come on people we pay way to much this plastic crack to just hash it all together. Oh, and don't forget to scape off all mold lines before you paint. You can guarantee yourself a crappy paint job even before you pick up a brush if you forget to scape off all the mold lines before you primer and paint.

Another motivating factor is that painting that I call painting "My time." Shoot I'm already giving up 9 1/2 hours working... commute included, 8 hrs sleeping, and with all the eating and other organic functions when do we get a break. I like taking at least an hour to do nothing other than what I want to be doing, and after and hour or so I'm in the zone and have made some real progress, and relaxed.

Another motivating factor, ask yourself this question, "What do I produce in life?" The majority of people are consumers. Consumers of media, i.e video games we play, books we read, internet we surf. The few of us WARHAMMER hobbyists are producers. We are creating real "Art." Not just a hobby no, much more than that... for me its an artistic expression, a unique creation, my masterpiece. The culmination of my lifes work. Tiny relics of Sci-Fi in 3D bursting with color and popping off the shelf.

Ask yourself another question. What tangible results came from the 80 hrs. it took for me to finish Final Fantasy VII the 65 hrs. to finish FF VIII and the other 50 hrs I put into FFIX before I quit playing it. The fact is I had no real world results for my efforts. I wish I could go back and use those hours for painting my armies. I probably would have all of the them done by now.

My point is that Painting is like the frosting on the top of our hobby cupcake which you can have and eat too. And the finished models look good forever! Not like a game file you can just erase.

Ah, batch painting at its finest. I do the same. I set up a stack of figures all at once, usually a dozen or so. Undercoat everything, let it all dry, leave it. Ignore them for a while (but make sure they don't get dusty!) Do the uniforms, then leave them. Do the armour...then do the guns. Basically, just paint one item on each figure. You'll find you'll improve just as you go, so save your commander for last

Once you've done the basics, brush on washes, and see the details come on out.

With this approach , you'll be able to knock over a figure in about 5-10 minutes each.