Jar's Beginner Class, painting workshop

[MarcellusWallaceParticipant]

Hello everybody!

I haven’t posted much lately, so i thought it’s about time to get something in here!

As you know i’m pretty new to painting. You might also know the guys from Massive Voodoo located in Germany (mighty good painters, their site also offers lots and lots of tutorials, step by steps and general inspiration). If you don’t, check out their site: http://massivevoodoo.blogspot.ch/
They also offer all sorts of workshops throughout the year, one of which is “Jar’s Beginner Class”, the workshop i attended recently.

It’s a workshop for beginners, regular painters and professionals all alike. It’s a workshop to learn Roman’s way of painting. Getting into his head basically (not literally). I just wanted to share a quick overview about what we did here, if you want to see more of it, check out the review on their own site (link on bottom).

It took place in an old cellar of a medieval citadel in Berlin. Superb atmosphere, right temperature to paint and lots a crazy delicious food!

So friday evening we got introduced to color, light/shadow, composition, art history, painting styles, lots and lots of materials to create beautiful bases. Really it’s more of a painting in miniature form. Which we also started to create that evening, lots of fun basing, learning new stuff and just trying out whatever is in your head. My base started to take shape and i got an idea what it should become until it grew to that kind of ancient swampy demon portal.

Next morning we finished up the base, primed everything and created a sketch of the base (painting the general atmosphere on it), after some more details it started to look how i imagined it.

Then we put the base aside for now and worked on the miniature. Every now and then interluded with some theory and learning from the master himself around his table. After deciding on the color of the demonette, we went into the shadow.

On sunday (some of it probably saturday night) it’s all about zenithal lighting, blending, contrast, saturation and color now as we went into the light and after that worked on some details of the face.

Step by step we worked our way through all the different stuff left, getting the face done, creating a smooth color transition on the claws, leather, metal, hair.

Then in the end it was time to put some more details on the base (getting it all wet and shiny, add moss and other stuff) and finally get the miniature on there to gather the fruits of our efforts.

Can you spot the frog?

This is not a finished miniature, mind you. It’s about 80-90% done, but it’s as far as we (i) got during this weekend workshop. I learned a lot, met many great people, dreamed of colors, toothpicks became my friends (some not), i saw how much fun painting can be, how perfectionism stands in the way as mistakes are neither bad nor hard to correct and that everything happens for a reason.

All the other projects; as you can see the creative juices flew unimaginably:

Not only did i learn lots of techniques and practices them, i also learned new ways to think and see the world!

Remember: Colors are your friends, light and shadow guide the way!

Cheers!

Link to the longer (many more photos :D) review on massive voodoo: http://massivevoodoo.blogspot.ch/2015/06/review-mvs-jars-beginners-class-berlin.html

[Universal HeadKeymaster]

Wow, this really looks like a fantastic class and something I would love to do. And what a location! Thanks for sharing the experience with us MW. And a fantastic result you got there.

[WonderSlugParticipant]

So jealous. There’s nothing like that around here. I’ve always wanted to do a class like that.

Thanks for the post.

[Author]

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