Day Three: Saturday 26th March
I’m making a night in the bar followed by an early start something of a habit and I even had to set an alarm today to make sure I wouldn’t miss my first class. But I still had time for the essential two coffees before things got going. First up today was another NMN class by the name of Games Workshop Contrast – Non Metallic Metal Quick and Easy. A bit like the wet blending yesterday this was just a chance to get a different instructors take on the subject. But I have to say that there as nothing quick or easy about the process. It is essentially using Contrast paints as glaze to build up the metallic effect you are looking for. But the major issue I had was that you need to user the contrast medium to thin the paint down to a glaze consistency and I really struggled with this. I have no doubt that in the right hands this could be a really good technique but it’s just so different to anything I’ve done or can see myself doing in the future that I don’t think it’s something I will be taking away to practice. I think for me the more traditional high contrast approach I was shown the other day is the technique I will be putting my practice time into.
That was followed by Freehand for Beginners by Clay Williams this is a class I have been looking forward to and dreading in equal measure, because it’s free hand and it’s really hard. The courses itself was good and very informative although I have to say my price wasn’t very good. He had us painting a skull on a shield but the key thing was that he had us doing it in black and white. The idea is that you keep things simple so that you can concentrate on the free hand and you can then colour it later using glaze’s which makes a lot of senses. It was a bit like a drawing class where we started with a square and circle as the guide for the skill. Add in a triangle and two more circles to locate the nose and eyes. Then it was adding volume with highlights, miss and shadow before blanketing everything together. Like I say my output was poor but the process made a lot of sense to me and is certainly something I can use going forward.
That was the last of my classes for this year but I do have the Kill Team live event tomorrow and based on some of the conversations I’ve overheard I think we could be onto a winner with this one. Until then I’m going to have a good look around the gaming tables with 40k being in full swing and then just because it’s a Saturday I’ll partake of a few drinks. We’ve also decided that Saturday night is stake night so it’s off to the stake house later. So whilst this post is uploading on the super fast free hotel wi-if I’ll be tucking into a nice juicy stake.
