posted by roman, jarhead, kong

 
Sometimes ... 

I sit there, painting.
I sit there and sometimes I search for the joy of painting.
That is normal, it comes and goes like rain and sunshine.
Always. Up and down with this joy of painting.
I just decided not to stop painting when rain falls.

I learned from it over the last years. Healing comes from painting on, even if you are not happy with your own results over weeks. What helps me is asking myself why I am not happy with my results and most of the time the pressure on my results arrives from the outside, not the inside of me. It is about time management (how often can I paint and do I use the time I got right?), it is about pressure from painting for a contest (will my piece be good enough to be entered in the contest? Can I take part in this contest and maybe will I manage to take part in this one too with another project?), it is about settlement of my own claims (the more you know about painting, the more you learn to see the unfinished and unsatyisfing areas), it is about what others might think about your latest piece and if you ask yourself many more reasons for such rain.

As I paint on, I let change happen, for example in painting a display piece or some gaming figures or another scale or a topic totally unknown to me. Some are good, some are not the best gaming figures I have ever done, some are boring, some are cool, some are epic. This is just normal. I for my part can say I am not able to paint the best I can all the time - the more important question resulting from this fact: Or do I paint the best I can all the time? Answer is: Yes, I do. I am no machine, sometimes I am strong, sometimes I am weaker, sometimes I am epic, sometimes I am boring and that is why my pieces turn out the way they turn out in the end.

Rain and Sunshine, both is beautiful and has its very own melancholy when it comes to look at the joy of painting. Important is to get something done, to be proud to get something finished. A creation by yourself. That is the key to paint on. If you can find this inner peace than your painting will be sometimes good, sometimes epic, sometimes boring, sometimes strange, sometimes better than before but most of it all it will be always yourself. 

I am nearly crying. No I am kidding. But honestly this feels right and I encounter these moments due painting over the last years over and over again. They come and go due different reasons, different moods and different challenges life puts at me once in a while and in fact I am sure that everybody else knows these moments. Sunshine and rain.

I do not have a total non-painting time, that is one thing that makes me happy and unhappy at the same time. I am happy about those moments of painting, the ones when you feel struck by a lightning of Zeus himself and are becoming a monster of creativity or those where you feel like Gollum and hunt for fish. Sunshine and rain.

I am happy that my mind always paints,
I just have no control of the colors my heart is choosing!


Musical Interruption - posted before but I really enjoy this song lately.


What I learned - again and again - that I had to change something on my workbench. I am not a person for color tables orpaintracks. I did once build my own (read here!) and lately used the cool painting tables from Hobby Zone, BUT I am getting mad to see so many colors in front of me. I have to choose which colors I want to use and want to pick it out of my old black color transport box, I want to search for them, maybe find another one in between ... I want this too be complicated and I want to save my precious view on colors for a longer time. It really felt I did grind a campfire. My eyes feel normal again after I solved this unique problem again and went back to my roots ...



While I am sitting here writing this today will be another home day working on the ultrafinal-final-final things at the Figure Art - Artbook with Raffa. Really we were so excited to see this project having so much success with all your help and I know from my part that I always feel guilty conscience that it isn't ready yet. Honestly, to you all out there supported us on the book you will get something marvellous and unique and we will make you as happy as we can with this project and I for my part have to stop with guilty conscience, rather I should put out a big and MASSIVE thank you to Raffa for bringing the project to birth some months ago and his neverending, concentrated and precise work on that kept the books growing in the last weeks. He is the driving force behind the project. He is the Brain, me is the Pinky. That is the truth.

Thanks for your patience about the book and if you read until here thanks for your patience too!

Now to some WIPs from Sunday where Raffa, Andi, Bene and I enjoyed about 4 hours in the studio and some from yesterday where I was alone at the studio. Raffa did destroy an old camera to find some new stuff for a SciFi base. You can find many things in there and if you are interested you are invited to check the basing with old electronics article:



Raffa got really fascinated by playing around with some parts of the old camera, in fact he went mad. Some photos, all done by him while using my camera and the lenses of the old camera. Believe me painting while a madman runs around you is not easy ...




 
I have finished the Chaos Space Marine (gaming piece, will hit ebay soon), remember back that I wanted to write an article about him to explain how I used watercolors on him and again I failed. Somehow the article can not be written yet to show it on a complete figure as I am still not sure what exactly I am doing there. I have to seperate the process from the figure and prepare the article in a more techniqual way. Sorry for those who are waiting on it - you need more patience. I finished an old figure by Ylead Games (do I remember right?). Found this guy on last years Painting Crusade selling table, where everybody can sell his stuff eh does need anymore. What matters is that this guy is truely epic, epic armour, epic shield, epic helmet, epic sword, epic coat ... truely epic. It was fun painting him as the sculpt was very unique. When final photos are done I will name him "King Epicles".

I took some painting time on the Lizardman but he is still far from finished, mainly the skin is totally lacking in contrast but this will change soon and then I will do all the details I planned for the figure, or maybe not who knows :)




Much text, sorryio - enjoy painting and read less :)
Keep on happy painting!
Best Wishes
Roman