I have shown my stuff to many friends and relatives and like to see their reaction when they realize it's not "toy soldiers" after all. Also have made gifts of my work to friends and they seem to be genuinely pleased.
I guess my experience has been different than yours Wayne...
About 20 years or so ago, after I'd split up with wife #1, I was in the early stages of dating this one woman when over lunch one day the conversation turned to hobbies. So I told her about
this hobby. This would have been either date no. 2 or 3 (can't remember exactly) and at this point I'd been to her place but she hadn't yet been to mine, so she didn't really have any proper concept of what "model figures" actually involved. She didn't say much by way of response, and the conversation moved on.
Not long afterwards she came to my place for the first time (and no, I didn't invite her over "to check out my stash"
) and she clocked the cabinet in the corner of the hallway, containing my painted figures.
"What are all these?" she enquired. So I explained.
"Actually that's really impressive" she said.
"All that detail stuff. I had no idea. That's amazing". She then went on to tell me that I'd (quote) "nearly blown it" when I'd told her about my hobby over lunch a few days prior, because she'd thought it sounded totally nerdy and massively uncool - a "toy soldiers thing" that only proper sad-lads would be into (words to that effect anyway).
She was partly right of course - because let's face it, this hobby
is just a tad nerdy!! But I also consider it a genuine art form that takes a decent level of skill to do right. Which is something that few people outside the hobby understand or appreciate, and so find it easy to dismiss and/or laugh at the whole thing.
The moral of the story? Don't hide your modelling light under a bushel. Because once they see what it's all about, folks might see it in a different and altogether more positive light!
- Steve
POST-SCRIPT: What happened to the woman, I hear you ask (her name was Joanna by the way)? Well, sadly it ended after just short of a year, essentially because I wasn't ready or willing to commit to a wife #2 at that point in time. And having in the meantime met someone else who became wife #2 I've been off the "dating scene" for some years now, so have no idea whether my painting (which though I say so myself has greatly improved since Joanna's day) would still be a feather in my cap with the lay-dees
. I'd like to think it might though
.
