Thursday, April 18, 2013

Expanding The Library

In my opinion, wargamers are a natural mine of future serious painters. I was kind of a gamer back in the day, before I got lured into our little world of colour. That is why I consider that wargamers interested in the artistic part of the hobby should be carefully guided into the vast knowledge that exists around painting, which is overwhelming for them in most cases.


Classic old school gamer discovering his real passion: miniatures.

A few weeks ago I was imparting a painting class to gamers (you might remember my post on Festival de Espadas) and I noticed the big disconnection existing between gamers and painters. Even for tabletop painting purposes, there are a few things that I think are essential. To this purpose, I've decided to start a series of articles which will cover basic aspects of miniature painting, such as the palette, preparation of a miniature, priming, etc. I will continue in time to cover more advanced topics of painting.


The new incoming Library in Volomir's Blog

Even though there's tons of articles around the internet about it (the world is full of tutorials nowadays), I thought that I could do some good if I finished off some articles that I already have near completely written since long ago. All of the things that I will present here are obviously tips and tricks, basic stuff that most of the people already know (or don't), and also deeper thoughts on how I personally paint (there is no absolute truth in anything, this is no exact science). So, in the next few months you will find in the blog some articles talking about basic concepts of the miniature painting world. If you have any doubt or question about any of the topics, or if you want to share your own point of view and add stuff to the articles, you know you can contact me by either mail, facebook or leaving a comment in the blog. I'm looking forward to your feedback!

3 comments:

Chevalier de la Terre said...

Hi Volomir,

Love your blog and painting.

I think you make an excellent point here and touch on something I can identify with personally. That is, the disconnect between painting to "display" standards and painting for gaming standards. Yes, there may be some overlap here, but they are generally different things in my experience.

Now, there are many miniatures I will paint simply for gaming with: these are not painted to display standard because it is not economical, or the miniatures are too small, or there are too many, etc. They are for gaming with, essentially tokens where a decent paintjob is “good enough”. However, even though I would like to paint better, to a display standard on other pieces not necessarily for gaming with, the question is often "how"?

The problem for me primarily as a gamer, and I'm sure for others, is that many painting guides for the really good stuff (i.e. display painting) can show a progression from A to B, but not "how" it was done. For instance, a sequence of pictures showing how something was painted, but the "how" is where the difficulty lies. How was the paint applied? How was the blending achieved? and so on. These things might be "common knowledge" when you know how, but to an outsider it can be all but impossible to figure out how to apply the paint to get the same result from picture A to picture B. It is like trying to decipher a code, yet having a very limited base of reference to work from. If that makes sense?

I look forward to seeing what you come up with and enjoy seeing your posts in any case.

CdlT

Rafael García Marín said...

Hi CdlT,
I totally understand what you are saying, I have the same impression with what you say. It is very difficult to show how things are done with just text and photos, you need videos to prove that. Well fortunately last week I was in Berlin recording a DVD which I'm sure will be interesting in that aspect, just check paintingbuddha.com. I could record some small videos myself but I'm afraid the quality won't be as good as this one! Also, recently I watched a very interesting DVD on speed painting by Thomas David on Miniature Mentor, you might want to check that out.

Apart from that I hope that my articles and WIPs are interesting to you guys, both to display painters and to wargamers. I believe that wargamers can really benefit from a few tips and tricks to make their painting faster and better!

Guerric said...

I've just discovered your blog few weeks ago and it's amazing.

On this point it's nice to see a really good painter with this mind. Because I've used to go at some local convention and when you go to speak about painting with some guys who only do that and you say "wargame" or "warhammer" they just look at you like a retard kid.