Searching For Something [Bruce]

Last year a quiet whisper sounded out deep at the back of my mind, barely perceptible but there nevertheless.

Something here isn't right.

I was midway through my Krieg squad, using the momentum of each model to push onto the next, working to that competition mantra of 'push everything to your max'. Perhaps I hoped the feeling would diminish as the project neared completion, but instead my discomfort grew, a slight itch morphing into a constant gnawing.

I had done everything I should have. I got feedback from multiple places, implemented tough changes, made the piece sing. I'd even seen it win a local competition. I should have been happy, confident in my abilities.

But I wasn't.

There's a moment I remember vividly to this day. A bunch of us huddled together at Element Games Birmingham, taking a look at each other's minis, getting a sense of where we were in the hobby, what we needed to work on next. Simon was looking at the piece, examining it in that terrifying analytical way he's apt to do. In my memory, what I said to him was riven with nerves.

"It's good, right?"

Not a question of confidence. A question of bubbling uncertainty, that there was something fundamentally wrong I couldn't put my finger on, and that I had to hope I would be lucky enough for people not to notice.

Since that piece I've returned to it a few times, to look at it, to see if the feeling has shifted. While I've learned to find enjoyment in it, I still feel a slight pang of something off, something wrong. Not in a purely technical sense; those problems are more obvious to me than ever. It's too dark, too rough in spots, built on a base that came after, not before.

The real problem is that it isn't mine. Not my style. Not, ultimately, me.

After the Krieg I tackled Freca, exchanging a lengthy squad project for a single small miniature. In some ways, it was the best possible decision. The nature of painting squads is that you can't do it without understanding the totality of the journey, that every arm completed is met with the internal cry of 'only have to do that x more times'. Not so with a single figure, and not one that's small or made of resin. You're forced to take your time, to keep everything neat, to paint every surface like it's the last time you'll ever tackle it.

I was nearly done when the whisper returned.

Something here isn't right.

Though it never grew into the booming voice that the Krieg squad brought with it, I could still hear it, notice it, feel that uncertainty. Once again, the piece beat my expectations, giving me the gift of a Finalist pin and representing a genuine step on my journey. Through feedback with Albert I took some core takeaways forward to improve on. Yet despite all of that, I was still uncomfortable, still searching for something.

Maybe that's why I did the Big Robot. Penned in by brush and model, I was feeling trapped, increasingly desperate to find a way out, to navigate to some place of certainty from the turbulent waters I was held in. The robot demanded a scale modelling approach, methods and techniques I'd never tried, a systematic process that was more mechanical than artistic.

If I expected joy, I didn't find it in competition. I was left with the certainty that I'd created something cool, but not something I was particularly proud of. An exercise in workflows, not an exorcism of the demons that had come to inhabit my palette.

This is the part in the narrative where everything has to come together, right? I hadn't found a way out of my discomfort, but I was still painting, still learning, still understanding more about who I was and the approach I wanted to take.

Enter Bug-eyed Dripterus.

This project was built from the ground up to push me forward. I introduced methods I still use now: chromatic undercoating, high precision brushwork, shifting hues and bright values. It was a piece I didn't half-ass a single thing on, working to smash through my barriers, to get to where I needed to get to. I was certain people were going to love it, especially because that little voice, that quiet agony of something isn't right, had stayed silent. I was on the way to success.

The feedback was brutal. Not from the people who delivered it; they were accurate, giving me exactly what I'd asked for. The weaknesses on that model, a model I'd pushed to ensure was as polished as possible. The list of changes and fixes was perhaps my longest ever, necessitating lengthy repaints that doubled the length of the project and taught me something about humility. It wasn't a fun process. But it taught me something powerful about lighting, a piece of the puzzle in my approach that had been missing, something I needed to internalise.

The Spira bust that followed is already talked about at length in this blog, but it was the first opportunity to test my methodologies, my learnings, my improvements on a fresh project. That project has flaws. But there's something critically more important about it.

The voice was never heard.

Not once. Even on areas I struggled with, even when I wasn't sure of a colour choice or a decision, that gnawing sense of fundamental wrongness never materialised. I'd like to say this came as a revelation at the time, but I didn't notice, instead focusing on the looming prospect of Golden Demon and the work that needed to be done.

The projects that followed for Adepticon were the smoothest I have ever delivered. A workflow of preparation to execution that always felt enjoyable, always felt right. Not only was I painting with renewed confidence. I was painting with style, with a sense of who I was, the art I wanted to create.

And here is what I've come to understand, looking back across all of it.

That whisper was never about skill. It was never measuring whether my blends were smooth enough or my palette ambitious enough. Those are problems you can identify, problems you can fix. What it was measuring was something far more fundamental, and far harder to chase down: whether the work in front of me was honest.

Every piece that silenced the voice did so because it came from somewhere real. Not from an idea of what a competition piece should look like. Not from technique borrowed wholesale from someone I admired. Not from a desperate bid to please a hypothetical judge standing over my shoulder.

There's a version of this story where I tell you that I found my style, boxed it up, and now carry it with me like a calling card. But that's not how it works, is it? Style isn't a destination you arrive at. It's a practice, an approach to asking the same uncomfortable question: does this feel like mine?

I'll keep listening for the whisper. I hope you do too.