Hobby exploits 2020 and onward

On the weekend of 10-11^th September, I did my second workshop with certain Marco Frisoni. This time the theme was oil painting and the event was held in the centre of Dublin in Academy Plaza Hotel. The venue was surprising but in the end worked great, we had conference room all to ourselves, big tables for 13 participants and plenty of light from Marco’s own lamps (I believe there were more daylight bulbs than painters in the room).

What was even more different from previous workshop is the fact that this time event was ‘powered’ by Big Child Creative, Spanish company producing high quality large scale (75 mm) models and busts. As you can imagine we were to paint large model, precisely this one:

The event started at 10 am on Saturday, with very quick introduction we instantly got into building our models. I guess I didn’t write it in my previous report but building and painting in larger group always has inspiring effect on me, people who 10 minutes ago were complete strangers to each other, with different backgrounds, different nationality and language spontaneously help each other, discuss ideas, share tools and paints, general ‘kumbaya’ feeling all around.

This time I don’t have too much to say (or show for that matter) regarding painting. Most participants was new to oil painting (although had great achievements in acrylics) thus Marco referred basic rules of using oils, differences between types and some brands, markings on the tubes, use of different medias and additives etc. He also presented two technics of using oil paints on the mini, and we started painting. The hotel didn’t put any limits on the amount of time we could spend in the room so we finished painting well after 8PM.

I went for complete oil technique, and at the end of the first day had this to show:

On the second day, many painters started work around 9AM, and with brief lunch-break around 2 we’d worked until late afternoon. This is where it got me:

To sum up the knowledge presented on the weekend, I guess at this point I have couple of years of experiance with oils under my belt and yet Marco managed to surprise me some with pieces of theory and skills that I didn’t realize were there to discover  (like use of pure oils – not oil paints). The topic is so vast and has such a history behind it that after those two days I want two weeks or months more!

After painting, we obviously paid a visit to a local pub and did some well-deserved whiskey tasting.

Anyway, another workshop, another great weekend and tones of inspiration for the future. Thank you Marco and the gang for the great time.

In previous entry I sowed off my Daturazi painted for contest, the other one was painted over a year ago (also can be found in this project blog). I also finished two remaining witch soldiers, so bellow you’ll find their photos and all happy family.

I had a pause from competitions I usually take part in. I returned in June with 3 minis (one of contests wanted participants to paint fire teams).

I haven’t won any prizes for quality of painting, however, I was lucky enough to get random prize from Bromad Academy guys.

So here we go:

1. Bromad Academy q2 2022 competition theme Booty – I painted Daturazi and got very nice comments from the guys:

2. Mayacast q2 2022 competition theme Fire Teams – those are old minis for ultra-heavy infantry of Morats – the Sogarats – I got shootout from both hosts with very nice comments from Tom complementing my brush-painted NMM on the blade, which in his words brought back his memories of recent visit to Louvre and renesanse paintings he’d seen there. I almost blushed.

Some long overdue projects.

First ceane Agent with spitfire, according to my spreadsheet I bought the starter for ISS (his a port of it) in September 2016, and finished last mini of that starter (save for this one) in June 2017. I was long intimidated by this dude – he is such an iconic mini, I tried to paint him several times, added some colour here and there, but never got around to finish him. Until last weekend. There you have it:

Haidao with combi rifle, again part of Invincible army starter bought in February 2020. All his friends (save for one) from the starter were painted before end of that year, 2022 allowed to move both unpainted Invincibles to painted stock.

This weekend I attended said workshop in Dublin. The event was set up in Underworld Gaming store in south-western Dublin, and we had 8 attendants from Germany, Wales, Northern Ireland and Ireland (although nationality split was even more varied).

The main theme of the workshop was the method of painting preached by Marco, which in the nutshell comes down to establishing values of light and shadow on the model with only white and whatever colour primer is useful for your desired colour scheme, and then adding colours with transparent paints on top of that sketch.

The workshop spanned across two days (Saturday and Sunday), 8 hours each, although some of us started social part on Friday, supporting Dublin’s publicans heavily experienced during pandemics.

Saturday class stared with short introduction from Marco (BTW I couldn’t believe what his real-life background is, certainly it isn’t fine art). After the introduction Marco made a lecture on colour theory and contrast, and how those ideas subscribe to his painting method. The lecture was supported by reference materials Marco had printed for us. Of course everyone was free to ask questions and comment.

With theory done (ca. 2PM) we went for a quick lunch and with our stomachs full were ready to start painting. But before any paintbrush touched any mini Marco had one more challenge for us. He asked everyone to tell a story in which their models find themselves. Moreover we had to write it down with detailed description of lighting conditions, weather, ambient mood of the scene and emotions of the character for the sake of comparring it with final result.

Marco recommended colour of primer to fit each of our plans and maybe boost the effect, he also had number of similar minis with different light situations sketched on them, that helped to understand theoretical concepts better.

In our sketching of light we were limited to brush only, although Marco had his airbrush and helped out in moments of emergency. This is what I came up with around 6PM on Saturday (brush only).

You tell me what is the story behind it.

Sunday started a bit unlucky for me. I was late (thank you Dublin bus) and missed presentation on TMM, and had to ask Marco to help finish my light sketch on the back of the mini with airbrush. After that was sorted we started with colours. Everyone brought all the transparent paints and inks they could muster and that included Marco. Suffice to say we had more paints than most game stores ever saw. Marco also had his own-made mediums which pretty much turned every kind of acrylic into contrast paint. Throughout the process Marco was very responsive and kept watchful eye on our progress, helping out with conceptual and physical parts of the job (yes, my mini has touch-ups made by Marco Frisoni with his own hand)

I finished the day with this little guy:

Real quality (smoothness) would require more time and more layers of paint, but all the lights and shadows, as well as all colours are already there. I wont push him any further to keep him as illustration of my progress during the weekend.

All in all the workshop was great fun and brought improvement to my painting and certainly impacted the way I think about painting. On top of that, everyone I met there ware super nice and supportive – painting in group has its own quality to it.

After the experience I had during the weekend, I’m sure I’ll be looking to participate in many more similar events. Thank you Marco and guys.

Corvus Belli introduced new concept of REMs with Long Ya models for Yu Jing in December last year. While I appriaciate creativeness, I don’t like new design, I don’t think it works for that particular profile. Thus, I decided to substitute them with Momoyama Drones from Unit 9. They look all right ant their weapons correspond with what you would expect on Long Ya model, only thing I did was scale them down to 77% so they would fit 40 mm bases.

Painting was very basic, black and white oil over sombre grey under-paint, the yellow is my typical Yu Jing recipe.

One thing, the weird white clouds around their ‘feet’ – this is superglue I Used to attach them to the bases, it is virtually invisible IRL, but quite pronounced on the photos.

With this one I tried to be super-neat. I also used much more powerful lenses in my visor (or chick-magnet as my wife calls it).

Painted with oils (over acrylic base):

1. Yellow – oxide brown to bismuth yellow, over sun-yellow base
2. Mechanic parts – black wash, white highlights over sombre grey base.

When I started painting this one he was considered pinnacle of offensive game in whole the Infinity universe, now after the changes in fire-teams composition rules he is just powerful. Still the mini looks amazing.

Last month, like almost every last month of each quarter I focused on working on some small competition pieces. This time I had some Yu Jung on the table, so decided to do alternate pose of Cpt Qiang Gao from Defiance set and Liu Xing hacker from Invincible Army starter pack.

I was quite happy with my performance until I took the pictures seen bellow. They looked awful! Messy as hell. I use my magnifying glasses while painting, but even with them I can’t see all the spots and nasty streaks seen on the photos – it must be my eyes.

In the end I haven’t participated in any competition this quarter, at least I have two minis painted on very average level…