Hey there ladies and gentlemen, dear painters!

Today i will again talk a bit about "them feelings", as i experienced my first "i give up" moment on a miniature. So what was going on?

I painted the priest from Raffaele Piccas range "Forged Monkey". The miniature itself ist really nice, sculpted very well and the cast was near perfect. So we see a good foundation for painting a good mini here, do we? My plan was to convert that little guy into a jedi knight, yeah! I wanted to settle up a story very close after a fight where the jedi just destroyed a droid, it crashed into the ground near him and there are 2 parts of the droid cut off by his light saber.

Painting wise i wanted to achieve high contrast through cold-warm colors (blue OSL by the light saber and brown colors on droid and robe). But the quality-goal was not to bee top notch as this was going to be a relaxing piece after GD competition.

So let´s first look at the pictures and then we will examine why this is bad and what happened.

So now we talk about what i don´t like on him:

The OSL effect is pretty much a mess, it is chalky, it is not smooth it just does not look right. On the ground, i like it. On the robe.. well no! But the main point i dont like here is the face. Holy cow i had a huge struggle with the face, i made it 3 times and it still sucks!

Don´t get me wrong i KNOW how to fix these things! Soft blendings out, making things smoother, building up highlights in the face. But i just could not do it.

So let´s look at possible reasons:

- The mini and me were not good friends!
So what does this mean? For me it starts with the "purchase-reason". At all of my minis i have the feeling that i have to get my fingers on it BADLY! Like i really want to have it. With this mini it was different. I was at a workshop, the mini was there, the price was low. Easy buy. But no mini i would have purchased in normal circumstances (not downrating the mini here, it is still great!). So we might have a first motivational flaw here. Then a problem occured most of you might know. The mini looks great but you have less joy while painting because because you don´t get familiar with the sculpt. You can not do anything against it.

- The quality goal was not top-notch.
I realized this on tabletop projects. If i want to do a mini "quick ´n dirty", it just looks like shit. It is not easy for me to pace my work up and maintain quality. And that is what you see here. The mini is probably 8 hours of painting and it looks crap. The lesson i learn from this: in future i stick to my way of putting everything i can into my actual project (wich also is the reason for improvement on every new mini).

- I have "more exciting" projects on the horizon i really want to start with. Maybe this was also a demotivating factor.

So finally i said to myself: Okay, stop here. Head on to the next project and give this miniature the status of being the first one i gave up upon. This jedi now stands in my cabinet, telling me that i am still a young padawan and have much to lear about painting and about myself. :)

Cheers to you guys!

Hey there ladies and gentlemen, dear painters!
Today i want to show you my finished Imperial Fist Standard Bearer.

I entered him slightly unfinished in the German GD 2013 and he got me a finalist Medal. After GD i finished it completely and worked out some minor mistakes.

Now i am absolutely satisfied with him. I hope you like it!

Here you can vote, if you like:

Link Putty&Paint

Link CMON

And here the Pics:

Hey there ladies and gentlemen, dear painters!

Today i want to tell you a bit about my experience of the GD 2013 in Cologne, Germany. It was my first GD ever and i will reflect the feelings i had after the event. I will not cover up the Event itself with pictures etc. because you will get a really detailed article here:

Masterminis.net

and also probably a report here:

Massive Voodoo

So let´s see how the GD turned out for me. The title says "after "losing"". I put "losing" in quotation marks with a good reason!

So at the event, i entered five entries. Nurgle Dreadnought in 40k Vehicle, Black Knights in Fantasy Unit, Demonette in open, Theoden in Lord of the Rings and finally my Imperial Fist Standard Bearer (pics will follow this week) in 40k Single.

All five got a finalist medal (wow those are stylish!). But none of them placed on the trophies. In that moment i was quite happy with my result, 5 Medals in this hard competition ist HUGE! Everything was fine with my fellings. Till the 3,5 hours ride by train back home. That was the time, the bad feelings kicked in.

After an event like this you always have a devil and an angel on each of your shoulders, constantly whispering and tearing your mood into all possible directions.

This is what the devil said while driving home:

- "Losing" sucks badly!! (Quotation marks again, yu see?)
- What more must i do to place on the demons?
- Are these competitions a thing i really want to do?
- Why am i stressing me with competitions?

This is what the angel said:

- I got stunning reactions on my works while the competition and the evening before. Also from absolutely reknown painters!
- I like the challenge in competitions.
- I am a rather new painter, painting for 3 years now. Time will come, where will I be in 3 more years of improving?
- I get motivation to more dedicate to projects and will get rid of "rushing" mistakes.
- 5 FINALISTS! YEAH!

I like them :)

 So finally my mood is getting up again and i really pull much much motivation out of this "loss". I met awesome people from all over the world, i got insane feedback, and i had a lot of fun! In future i will dedicate more, diving deeper into my project´s themes, concentrate more to not rush, and simply continuing to do that things i think i can never do.

So this is it with all those quotation marks. I did not lose! I won in so much aspects. I learned many things about myself, i met great people and i gained much motivation to proceed and work harder. And attack with nice projects next year (if there still is a GD).


So lets all have more love, more fun and more happy painting!

Hey there ladies and gentlemen, dear painters.

Finally i want to show you a quick pic of my Standard bearer´s Banner front side.

It is nearly finished, just need to do some minor color tweaks. The motive symbolizes the gate of the emperor´s throne room.

A socket-label telling "Builders of gate and throne" will say what the 2 banner sides are meaning. I like the result. What do you think?

Hey there ladies and gentlemen, dear painters!

Second post today (out of 3). Here i want to tell you about the Painting Buddha DVD Set in the supporter version.

So let´s hop right in!

First you have this huge, nicely designed and high quality box!

When you pull of the heavy-paper-super-glossy-sexy sleeve, you get this awesome magnetized content box:


So what is in there? At first, a thank you Card and two booklets about "Who we are and how to be a better painter" and secondly about "preparing our resin miniatures". Definetly very useful for starters.!


Then of course the 6-DVD set. No need to say how awesome this is. (Review of the DVDs and Miniatures when i have wathed it!)


Nice buttons. I love buttons!


The Steelbox containing the minis.


And of course the minis and base themselves. Really great cast and quality! Expect a more detailed review in future!



Now get your chance and order your supporter´s box here: http://www.paintingbuddha.com/ and be sure to join the revolution here: http://masterminis.blogspot.de/

Hey there ladies and gentlemen, dear painters!

Today i want to talk about my impressions of the beginner´s painting class by Roman "Jarhead" Lappat. But i will not tell you the whole time-table stuff and what we did in detail. I will tell you about what you learn and what this workshop does with yourself.

An other review with timing and many pictures can be found here:

Review by Baphomet (Peter)

So at first, let me tell this was a beginner´s painting class and some of you might know i am not a beginner. :) Roman jokingly said he does not believe that he can teach me new things. Holy cow, how he could!

1. What i learned for my painting:

First i learned a more comfortable way of painting bases and bring them to life and link them to the miniatures to tell a story. I will definetly integrate the new workflow to my everyday base painting stuff.

And second i learned much about pushing details and contrasts further and getting a feeling of "when is the mini finished"? There is always room of improvement on little details. :)

2. What beginners learn:

In this workshop a beginner learns the most important aspect of the hobby: fun! Painting is fun and colors are your friends, you don´t have to be afraid to do something wrong. Grab a mini, grab some paint and off you go!

For all who are still asking themselves if they should participate in a beginner´s class: DO IT!

3. What everybody learns:

In the beginning of my painting "career" i concentrated much about color receipts when i was painting stuff. For example, when i wanted to paint wood, i watched at minis with good painted wood. But instead you should look into nature, open your eyes. What does wood looks like in reality? And then you can try to bring this look to your mini yourself.

Nature is your greatest teacher. Everything is out there, all these inspirations. Just open your eyes and you will see awesome stuff!


Let me tell you how much i enjoyed this weekend with all the mini painting, discussing, learning, eating and of cours coming together. If you are not painting.. definately give it a try and show it to jour friends, maybe let them join the hobby too!

Regards, Solmar