Stop Being Afraid of the “Ugly” Stage

A lot of painters fear the “ugly” stage.

You know the one I mean. When the blends are harsh. When the brush strokes are obvious. When the colors don’t quite sit together yet.

That fear often makes people slow down too early. They try to make every step look presentable. They soften contrasts before they’re fully built. They play it safe.

But the ugly stage is widely misunderstood.

Let’s look at Konrad.

On the left: about twenty minutes of painting.
On the right: 7 hours later.

At first glance, the difference seems huge. The finished version looks smooth and finished. The earlier version looks rough and perhaps a bit out of balance.

But if you squint your eyes and just look at the face you'll see that they’re not that different.

The structure is already there in the early version.

The later hours are mostly refinement. Adjustments to color temperature. Smoothing transitions. But the core decisions where the light hits, where the shadows sit - that was already made early on.

There’s an old quote:
“If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”

The ugly stage isn’t meant to look finished.

If you judge it by the wrong criteria - smoothness instead of structure in values - it will always feel and look like a failure.

When you understand what the ugly stage is for, it becomes much less frightening. It becomes a phase in your process with a clear purpose.

That’s something we’ll practice deliberately inside Foundations of Miniature Painting.

We don’t rush past the structural phase. And because feedback is part of the process, you’re not left wondering whether what you’re building makes sense. I'll take you through 6 weeks of structured demonstrations with weekly assignments and live-streamed feedback.

We start April 6.

Enrollment closes April 3 at 23:59 CET.

This is the final week before we begin. Once the cohort starts, we move forward together and I won’t be opening enrollment once the course has started.

If the ugly stage is something that’s been holding you back or if you feel unsure whether your structure is actually working - this workshop is designed to address exactly that.

You can read more about it here: