MMSI 2026

I’m not going to bury the lead. The “redemption arc” I worked really hard to try and turn into reality didn’t happen this year. I received a silver medal again this year which is befuddling and disheartening. The model that won the silver and was judged to be the best in my exhibit will probably surprise you as well but more on that in a bit.

At least some regular readers might recall that I had a bit of a meltdown when I received silver last time in 2024. I had some valid things to be mad about (some of which were still true at this year’s show, unfortunately) but I regret the way I handled it back then. One of my biggest goals this year was to handle the results better. There is an expression I heard someone say and I wish I knew who, but essentially it goes like: don’t enter into a painting competition if you can’t accept any of the possible outcomes. The reason for this wisdom is that you probably won’t win any given painting competition and its best to mentally prepare for that ahead of time. So that is what I tried to do this time and I think it helped.

I have seen this wisdom borne out second-hand as well. Back when I learning how to be a halfway decent painter on the Cool Mini Or Not Forums, there was a gentleman who lives in the UK who was very kind to me with providing useful feedback and is an excellent painter. He’s always had more skill than me/was always further along in the painting journey than me and I’ve seen him create some incredible pieces over the years. I’m not sure how active he is in the hobby currently but he’s a real talent and someone whose work I admire. When he started entering competitions in the UK including Golden Demon and possibly Salute (I can’t remember exactly which UK painting competition it was so it might a different one than Salute or one that no longer exists) and he got humbling results sometimes that I found befuddling back then.

I suppose it has been my turn the last couple of years as I haven’t been to match the success at MMSI of my first year. Here is my brief history of exhibiting:

2023 – Gold

2024 – Silver

2026 – Silver

Yes, that’s right. Grunthal got the silver and was deemed better by the judges than Lokaris. I am very proud of Grunthal. Its my first bust I completed and I did the very best I could on it. I would like to do the metal a bit differently on it but other than that, I think it came out pretty nicely. I did not think it would do better than Lokaris, however and I’m very puzzled by this result which I’ll talk about more shortly.

I already would have been puzzled at getting silver again as I clearly improved a lot since Minerva but getting Silver on a bust and it being better than Lokaris is wild. This is where I really wish I could see what scores the two miniatures received and what areas the judges think I could improve in. It is the one thing MMSI doesn’t do that I think would be hugely helpful for fostering growth in hobbyists who exhibit.

Needless to say, I’m disappointed that my best wasn’t good enough for gold yet again and that I’ve gotten two silvers in a row after getting gold on the first try. If only I had been awarded a gold this time and gotten two silvers before. That would have been much more satisfying and gratifying. Instead, I’m left scratching my head and needing to figure out how to get better from here to get to where I want to be. I also am unsure of what I’m best at painting anymore. If you look at these results, you’d say Warhammer, busts, and 75mm in that order. I’m not sure if that is really accurate and I feel that I have A LOT to learn about painting busts still. I also haven’t painted a proper Warhammer miniature in years now so whose to say if I still “got it” or not.

To be clear, I do not regret branching out from only painting gaming scale miniatures. I believe we should all challenge ourselves and try to learn new things when we can. I’ve learned a heck of a lot from doing so and while I might have gotten more gold medals if I kept painting Warhammer only, that is not the way I want to do things in creative endeavors. It is not as difficult to perfect a skill and keep doing it over and over to win acclaim. A real artist attempts new ideas and seeks to push themselves however they can. I’m not going to stop doing that even if I don’t always get gold medals or acclaim out of it.

So yes, I have no idea what to think of display painting at the moment. I was always going to set aside display painting in regards to more ambitious 75mm miniature projects for a while because I know that I’m going to be moving next year and I don’t want to start a project like that and have to press pause for potentially a month or two on it. I will focus on gaming stuff and the Monsterpocalypse diorama until I move and ponder over what direction I’m going to move in because I don’t have any answers anymore.

Normally I’d talk a bit about what MMSI was like but this year I had the unfortunate situation of arriving too early on Friday when there weren’t many miniatures setup and then too late on Saturday and most everybody had packed up well before the awards show started. So I really can’t say much about the quality of this year’s show which is a shame. I enjoy seeing everything people have worked on and so I’ll have to wait for them to post a photo gallery I suppose.

To wrap things up, I have been making steady hobby progress this past week but I’ll save it for next week as this is already long enough. You can look forward to two week’s worth of hobby work instead of the usual one.