May 25, 2013

Pimp my box


Today I was in the right mood to pimp my wooden transport box.
I really like the colourful mexican death masks. So I thought this could be a nice idea for my box.

It was great fun to paint it!



Would be nice to know if you like it as well ...

Best wishes
Colouristo

May 22, 2013

Dwarven Reinforcements

posted by Androsch

Hi!

I finished another proud member of our silent collecting member's Dwarf army.

It's Bör Dragonbane by Avatars of War.
I tried to give him a creepy look by using more desaturated colours than usual, but still only so much that it fits with the other models. I think it will work, take a look:











May 16, 2013

Massive Voodoo - Private Practice - Colouristo



Dear Guys,

Me and my Pumpkin Painter friends Lisa “Morgaine” and Andi “Androsch” had the great chance to have an impressive private practice session at the jungle of Massive Voodoo.

With this report I would like to share my personal experience gained out of this remarkable session with the two well-known masters Roman & Raffa.
For additional impressions of the session please also have a look at the reports of Morgaine and Androsch on our Pumpkin Painter blog.

MY BACKGROUND
First of all I have to tell you that I am a kind of rookie regarding painting miniatures. Years ago I was a passionate painter using the pen and aquarelle colours. But due to my intensive business travels and my kids the free time is very limited and priorities have changed. Nevertheless, due to my great friends Andi (Androsch) and Kurti (Darkezekiel) I started to learn about this wonderful hobby and they gave me the best possible support to develop my first skills in creating my first ideas.
THANKS MY FRIENDS!

I really love to be creative and so my interest in this hobby nearly exploded. It is the perfect combination for me of sculptures and painting.

Together with my first experiences gained during the very helpful “Jarhead’s beginner painting class” I was now in the position to put my ideas into reality. This means, my biggest interest is to tell a story with each of my mini’s. This is my way of creativity within this hobby. So my focus was more on the scene than on the perfect painting execution. Easy to say if you have just painted 4 figures so far :) !

To be honest, based on the very good feedback to my starting figures including the first rewards on Herzog von Bayern and Monte San Savino I felt great.
But during my last project I got more and more the feeling that I am not really able to handle the dilution of my colours right and that I used the dilution each time in a different way. In addition, I have to mention that I love to and that I was used to paint in a very realistic way.

Now you can maybe imagine that I was not completely satisfied. I am quite ambitious in all things I do, so I knew I had to satisfy “my thirst for more”.

The solution to this was clear – the only way is, to learn from the best and also passionate painters – Roman & Raffa!

THE BEGINNING OF THE PRIVATE SESSION
The biggest key success factor of our session were the people involved – Roman, Raffa and very important to highlight also Anna & Anci! They created the basis for the unique atmosphere of hospitality which is so needed to ensure big improvement.

I brought some pre-prepared figures with me, and EXTREMLY HIGH EXPECTATIONS!!!
Which scene will I create, which figure will we choose for the private lesson, how far will we complete the figure & the base, how good will I increase my skills, what is really possible, and so on …

And what can I say – Already right from the beginning I learned a lot!

After telling the masters my endless expectations and what I think of the level of my skills, Roman & Raffa gave me their thoughts and what should be the focus of my private improvement.
AND THEY WERE COMPLETELY RIGHT!

Based on their recommendation we chose the wonderful figure of “Bugne – L’ogre moussaillon” from figone.

Their next recommendation followed soon: Concentrate on the figure within the private session and leave the base for later. Uupps. This was not what I expected. But I trust in them very much, so I had to slow down my inner over-motivation. Not so easy if you know me :)

PRE-PREPARATION
Also during this phase I improved immense in my skills and my inner believes. I knew already that a very good pre-preparation of the figure is a must to achieve an excellent result. But so far I had the impression that this part is not one of my strengths and that I am not patient enough for this for me so “boring” work.
And again a huge change happened to me. Using the right materials and tools it was much easier than I had experienced so far. The result was exciting to me, and it was unbelievable for me. A big step of motivation for myself!

After the right base coating my figure looked like this:



THE PAINTING
I do not want to tell you all the secrets we learned in the private session, because I think this is the value and business of Roman & Raffa. They shared already a lot with us in their Massive Voodoo blog. But the focus for my private session was “The right process to create my figures” and to learn “The correct painting techniques”.

So I started with a short sketch of my idea … which looks like this, also including my whished colour scheme:


Would I be able to achieve my result looking like this, and with good quality? Oh, always this ambitious inner force!

Now the journey goes on and I followed all advises from the masters.
Just have a look of the following pictures to get your own impressions.
Honestly, I gave my best and it cost me a lot of energy to keep this level in line with my expected results.






THE DEEP ABYSS
In between I had a strange point in progress. I got completely lost, and I had the feeling I had no chance to find all the different colours of the skin I needed to do my first shadows and highlights.
I was afraid, that my choice of the skin basic colours was too complicated for me. And I started to feel uncomfortable and got the impression of losing the control.



Immediately Roman & Raffa checked my situation and they gave me the perfect inputs and support needed at that situation to gain the needed self-confidence.
WHAT SHALL I SAY – IT WORKED !!!!!!!




The figure became more and more lively. And I started to realise, hey some cool improvement is happening to me.
Suddenly I had the strong feeling, things happen the way I wanted it. Finding the right dilution and the right brush movement was much easier than before.

THE FINISHING
Roman & Raffa shared their thoughts with us regarding their so called “Last 10%” and it was astonishing to see the difference in the result following their ideas.

THE SUMMARY
I have to say it was absolute mind-blowing how all of us have improved from our personal point of view. Even our so experienced Andi improved a lot. And it was great for all of us to get the personal feedback from our teachers.

At the end I will bring you once again a comparison of my sketch and the actual status of my mini. I am more than happy with the result and very proud of myself following the path of Roman & Raffa, handling my inner ambitious forces, and also keeping my line of creativity to reach MY story.

I think not that bad for my 5th mini :)



I hope I will soon find the right time to finish my mini including the base. The first step in the right direction is done, the rest just belongs to me.

And what I learned out of this course:
YOU ARE ABLE TO HANDLE IT! JUST FOLLOW YOUR OWN WAY, KEEP SOME BASIC THINGS IN MIND, AND PAINT, PAINT, PAINT, PAINT, … AND YOUR PERSONAL DESIRED RESULT WILL BE THERE.

I hope my open words give you an impression of how wonderful this private session was. So whenever you want to improve your way of painting figures, I can just recommend you to join a private session with Roman & Raffa.

I would like to thank especially the two of you – ROMAN & RAFFA – It was an unbelievable experience and you definitely excelled my personal expectations!



And I also want to thank my Pumpkin Painter Friends who joined this private session and the jealous ones waiting at home. Thanks to you as well, because you are one of my main reasons why I love this hobby so much already. It is always such a pleasure spending time with all of you. (Lisa, Hanna, Sandra, Andi, Kurti und Markus!)

Yours
Oliver aka “Colouristo”

May 13, 2013

Massive Voodoo Private Practice - Morgaine

Hey everybody!

Back from Germany after a great weekend at the Duke of Bavaria (you will find a review about this truely special event soon here on our blog) I'm full of impressions and nearly bursting with motivation :) It fits perfectly that some of our Pumpkin-Crew arranged a private practice session with Roman and Raffa from Massive Voodoo directly after the Duke :) It was really a great experience and I'd like to thank you guys for these wonderful days!

Our private session started on Tuesday morning with our arrival at Roman's and Raffa's studio. Each of us took various projects with us and at this time we were still undecided which one would be our choice for the session. Finally I chose "Luz, New York" by Nocturna Models.

A quick shot of the primed mini:
I got it as a Christmas present from my parents and I was quite nervous about painting this figure because I really love the promotion paintjob. It has a strong athmosphere and fits the sculpt perfectly. I hoped that with Roman and Raffa backing me during most of the painting process I would manage to reach my personal high goals for this mini.

First, some quick words about the choice of color: I thought of a moonlight scene, so my colors are mainly cold and blue. As a contrast some parts will be painted in red, but also quite cold. At least that's the plan :)

Before we started painting each of us set our personal goals for the following days. Mine were to paint more precise, to learn how to organize the painting process and my special focus were on painting light and painting metal (this really is one of my weak spots).

The goal for the first day was to decide which color to use where and to apply the basic layer to the mini. We startet right of with our airbrushes and it was an important lesson for me where and when to use this painting instrument.


As you can see there where the first lights and shadows. Also the overall lightning of the miniature was created.

After long hours of painting and lots of explanations of our two coaches, at the end of day 1 the miniature looked like this:
I really have to admit, that the colors I used are a great deal darker and especially more desaturated than the ones I usually use and like. Especially the color of the face made me unhappy because at this stage it looked like a dead zombie to me. And this was not what I had in mind! But I stayed with the color scheme because I wanted to try and see where Roman's and Raffa's tips would lead me to. And I didn't regret it :) As promised the face (and of course the rest!) changed a lot and in the end I was really happy with it!
After day 1 at 2 in the morning

At the end of the session
On the second day we all needed time to wake up as the first evening was quite long and exhausting. After a coffee or two (or three, or...) the real fun began as we startet to bring more light and shadows, more variety and more highlighting to our minis. During the next hours I learned a lot about finding the right spot for the light and the corresponding shadow. I can't say I do it perfectly now but I think I understand the basic idea behind it.

Another important point for me was what we learned about the so called "last 10%" which make the difference between a good miniature and a stunning miniature. It's all about details and patience :) We only did a few small areas because of the time, but we could see where a bit more effort and a bit more time could possibly take us.
Current state after two days
So what's next? I want to finish all the remaining parts of the miniature and try to apply the "finishing tips" without the help of Roman and Raffa to the rest of the miniature. Also we worked out a great idea for the base (because the moonlight-idea needs a base to become apparent) and I'd like to finish the project with it.


And of course I'd like to test my newly acquired knowledge to other miniatures! I'm especially curious how it will work out on gaming miniatures and maybe a brighter color scheme :)


Last but not least I really want to thank Raffa and Roman for the great session! They really tried to help us as best as they could to reach our goals and to improve our painting skills. Thank you also for the warm and welcoming athmosphere during the whole session. I really took a lot of motivation for my next projects with me!

So stay tuned for the progress of this project :)
Morgaine




May 08, 2013

Blood for the Bloodgod

Hi,

after a great weekend at the Duke of Bavaria (we will make a report from the duke next week ) i´m painting on my next projekt. It is a chaos warrior in 54mm from "Forged Monkey".
It is a grat miniature with a lot of opportunities. There was nearly nothing to prepare before painting because the quality is very very high.

Here is my first wip photo:
best regards
Darkezekiel

May 02, 2013

Travelling


Hi!

I'm happy to announce that the whole Pumpkin Painter Crew is going to Germany for the Duke of Bavaria! (Herzog von Bayern)

Check back next week for an event report.


You can also take a look at this epic contest here:
http://www.kuenstler-figur.de/

Nice weekend,
Androsch

May 01, 2013

Woodelves project finished

posted by Androsch

Hey there!

I finished my P500 at tabletopwelt.de. Unfortunately I was 15 minutes too late, but nonetheless I consider it done. ^^

I did a treeman and 8 wardancers. This was a rather quick job, since I was completely running out of time again.




Regards,
Androsch