Summer Sprint

GenCon badges came in the mail this week.  That's the point that August starts to feel very real.  It looks like it's going to sell out again, so I'd expect to be welcomed by this sign.

GenCon2017 greeting.  Expect it again this year.

Work was threatening to send me on business travel the week of GenCon.  I was keeping my head down and not reacting to the not-formally-announced trip, but was prepared to throw down an approved vacation slip from months and months ago and practice my best "are you kidding me?" look.  As it turns out, that trip got deferred to mid-August and the showdown was averted.

Anyway, I'm very much still in the middle of GenCon prep.  I have a few days off over the July 4th Holiday and am hoping to get the long-awaited project #1 (aka GC1) completed this weekend, then move strongly into the DropFleet Army prep for my battle at GenCon.  There is so much to do, and I paint so slowly....

But after a slow early June, I've accelerated and there is still hope.  As I was painting this week, I realized that my methods have really changed over the past year.  I've written about this before, but I happened to stumble across some Shadows of Brimstone minis that I finished just before GenCon last year, but never based and thus never declared "complete."  They're okay - certainly tabletop quality - but I kind of rolled my eyes and sighed.

I can't convey how much Miniature Monthly has changed the way that I look at the process.  

I'm nowhere near a master.  That takes practice and probably more innate talent than I have.  And I'm still using a mix of styles and methods.  For example, I don't like using a wet palette, which is heresy.  Some of the things I'm doing actually cost me time in the long run, but end up being lower risk by adding steps.  (I can jump in with both feet and risk completely ruining a model, or I can sneak up on the finish I want).  

But on the current-unnamed-project, I'm using the Airbrush to prime, basecoat, and provide initial highlights.  That's not something I was doing a year ago, but got comfortable with through KDM.  New to this project: using a Sotar 2020 airbrush to shoot inks and washes for shading.  Before the Miniature Monthly boot camp, that would have been unthinkable.

Last night I was using 2-brush blending to add a colored wash into the shadows of my current figure.  One brush to slide the wash into place, another damp/clean brush to erase the seam between colors.  Super simple, but not something I knew about until earlier this year.  I experimented with it on the KDM Watcher, and am using it full-force in the current GC1 project.

My task this afternoon is to work on the face of one of the female models.  I hate painting skin.  But I now have a decent understanding of the tools and theories I need to employ.  (That doesn't mean it'll look great, but it does mean I've got a better chance at success than I did before....).

Back to these guys ... soon. Very soon.

This is all Miniature Monthly.  Recently, I upped my tier to the top level.  This gives me a monthly 1:1 session with Aaron Lovejoy.  It's expensive and I won't keep it very long, but I needed to jump start the Dropfleet project, and he had an opening.  We did our first session last week; about an hour with him on Google Hangouts talking through the project and watching him doodle in photoshop changed reinforced some things I was already planning and changed the way I was thinking about the fine details.  An hour with him saved me hours of fussing and cussing and will speed up the entire project.  

I just need to get GC1 out of the way and shift gears to it.