This is a scene that I am designing myself to practice what I have learned so far. I have hit a bit of a dead end because I am delving into texture painting. This project is taking longer than I had originally thought it would so I am procrastinating pretty heavily on it, lol. I haven’t touched this for almost a week. I only bring this up because I wonder if others experience this on projects as well.
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Looking good!
And yes, every project takes at least 2x time then you planned. Even if you think you are smart and will double your initial estimate it will still take twice the time you estimated. Don’t know how it works, but it’s not only with blender, but with every project I was involved in my life or I’ve seen in my life 
. Of course you can cut features to make it on time, but overall 
The thing that worked for me to finish projects, especially hobby projects, is to be stupidly stubborn and persevere 
. Plus doing at least 15 minutes of the project even if I don’t feel like it (usually 15 minutes turns out into a few hours - as for me the hardest part is returning/starting doing things, especially that I can do game-dev related things at nights, after whole day of work).
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That is one very finely detailed project you have there. I clicked on the image a couple of times to see it full size, and you’ve done a really good job of modeling it.
Unfortunately, I have no experience in texture painting, as everything I’ve ever created over the years I’ve been working with various versions of Blender, has always been UV mapped, and then textured in Photoshop.
I look forward to seeing this when you have it textured to your liking. 
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Oh all the time. I have several projects that Get to some point where something blocks me. It can be a simple and non Blender as not able to get the reference I want. Time wise I spend months of hours every or most evenings, not hours.
My view on your great modeled scene is why texture paint? I have never used it. That looks to me to be ready for adding pbr image textures. Once you start to colour it in with wood textures, brick and stones, earth etc. you will have a big step forward.
Once the current items are textured then there is a whole scene to fill with clutter, even peopel perhaps eventually. Keep going!
In some ways the weekly challenge is a discipline in getting to a 'good enough end point by its time limits. When things are a hobby there is no deadline, like there may be for work.
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Another idea is to use simple colors or a color palette texture and do it in a stylized way if that’s your thing.
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I want to try texture painting because I have been play Skies of Arcadia for gamecube again lately and I can’t help but notice that alot of the models in that game are very simple. It’s the painting that brings everything to life. It inspired me, that’s all. What I might do is try my hand at painting the water that I have planned and keep everything else simple and see how that works.
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Mixing styles can provide nice results 
Game engines have to use every trick they can get away to simplify geometry - and textures are doing a lot of work. Sometimes they are being done in external tools (from photoshop to substance painter), and sometimes they are being done by making really detailed model, painting it and baking it down to textures…
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I have a few methods to work things like this out. Sometimes I’ll work on a “warmup project”. Something that I know is small and simple that I can whip together in 30 minutes or less, like this:
Or I look for inspiration for how I want my big project to look, a color palette that I like, designs similar to mine. Usually once I see something I really start to put a theme together.
Other times I’ll open the project and play with some procedural texturing on some object and see if anything happens that I like. I might keep it that way, do that work for nothing or trigger an idea for painting.
Once I’ve got that inspiration, then move into really adding something to my big project. I always just plan to do 1 thing (like paint one window frame) and that usually turns into doing more. If it doesn’t become more, then I’m happy with the little push to completion.
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I don’t know which course you are following or where you are in the chapters.
Texturing using online stuff or creating one in and image editor, involves UV-Mapping.
For sure you need to learn that, look up online tutorials and or continue in the course.
Some people want to go faster than the pace in the course.
For texture painting, you need to learn how Blender does this. It’s not difficult but you need to learn some basic steps. Also involving UV-Mapping but also relates more on material nodes. Because texture painting is not only colours but also shadow maps (ambient occlusion), bump maps and all other sorts of material properties. And after that, maybe baking them into one or two image maps to be used in a game engine.
We like to see your progress in this. Most of us like to see how others are doing so that we are learning from each other.
And above all have fun. Sometimes you need to start another project to take some distance from a bigger project. Maybe, texture a simple cube to learn the process …
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