Last weekend I've been once again to Berlin. This time it was for an one on one workshop with my buddy, master in law, and this time teacher GeOrc ( https://www.facebook.com/pages/GeOrc/299036349581 ). If you didn't know GeOrc yet, he's in the painting hobby since 1998 and since then he horded a heap of golden, silver and bronze demons at the Golden Demon competitions. He's well known for his smoooooth blendings and especially for his NMM style (see some old works on CMON here http://www.coolminiornot.com/artist/GeOrc?browseid=6806572 -he didn't stop painting, just stopped posting them there as he moved to Facebook).
Back in 2008 there was a campaign at http://www.das-bemalforum.de where some of the best fantasy painters in germany were looking for trainees, so I applied and GeOrc became my mentor. Well out of this grew a friendship and over the years we visited each other several times. Well as I've never made it somehow to one of his beginners workshops in all these years I decided to ask him for a weekend of private tutoring. And as I know this is hard work and even if we are friends I paid him of cause.
We started last friday and painted all the weekend till sunday night, as I took one day off on monday.
I let him choose the miniature for the workshop, so that it would have optimal surfaces for showing me his techniques. He chose the champion of nurgle plastic model and as we planned to make a small conversion I suggested to go for a version devoted to our beloved bloodgod KHORNE. GeOrc remembered an artwork in the chaos army book which we took as an inspiration source. I got a new copy of that miniature for me and he took an already painted one for him which he decided to decolour. Decolouring a miniature was the first lesson I got that weekend. He just took the first glass with solvent in it he saw and put the miniature into it. But as he forgot that the last miniature he decoloured in there was a tin miniature, the wrong solvent was in the glass and the plastic miniature started to dissolve. The first thing that came to his mind was http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbxxZFjT5Ug#t=0m32s (0:32-0:34). It taught me as experienced you are, you still will make stupid mistakes. After drying the miniature and letting the solvent in the miniature surface degas it looked like his plan for a small conversion turned into having to make a big conversion...
Well kind of a positive side effect was that all edges were gone, so he didn't have to deflash the miniature. So after he sculpted all over his mini and I made the small conversion on mine, this were our results on saturday noon (mine is the left one):
After a presentation about colour theory, light theory and his painting technique in theory we were ready for painting. He first showed me his technique on the skin and explained his choice of colours, dillution and how and why he was holding the brush like he did (angle of brush on the miniature and pressure). So I tried it myself. Here and then I let him have a look onto my miniature, he looked me over the shoulder or I looked him over the shoulder to get some advice. It really helped and after some hours of painting I seemed to get a hang of it. This was the status at Sunday noon:
During the weekend we only made few pauses, just to grab some food in a restaurant as there are quiet a lot cheap and delicious restaurants on the street were he lives. So in total we were working on the miniatures on friday from 8 pm to 3 am, saturday (after breakfast in a restaurant) from 11 am till 1 am and on Sunday from 9 am till midnight (including breaks).
This was the result at Sunday midnight:
He was nearly done, but as I still have get more practice to become faster there's still a lot left to paint on mine.
At the end of the weekend I was really satisfied with the result on my miniature and with what I learned. As years ago he already once showed me his technique and as it already had flown partially into my own technique back then, I remembered some things I had forgotten till then. So I got refreshed on points like how he puts colour onto the wet palette and take it from there with the brush (meaning also the dillution+dillution check on a tissue), with wich angle of the brush at what moment with how many pressure and into which direction do I pull the colour with the brush on the miniature and some more points. Till then I just painted like I felt it was right, meaning I observed the colour how it reacts and pushed it as I felt it was right. But his advices made me think more about what I'm doing on the miniature, gave me more control and hopefully after some more practice it'll become natural to me and I don't have to think about what I'm doing while painting.
I can only suggest to you people to do an one on one workshop with him or visit one of his classes if you want to learn his way of painting. During the years of painting experience he really thought about what he was doing all the time while painting and tries to put it in words in the theory part of the workshop and when he gives advices. He explains it really well and it helps you to get a feeling for your brush and the paint.
If you want to visit a beginners workshop with him there's on at the end of Novembre in Hamburg:
http://www.tabletopwelt.de/forum/showthread.php?t=165292
Or you can just contact him via facebook or so for an one on one workshop.
That's it from my boarder of the colour sea, hope you enjoyed reading this post.
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