Home again,
after two really awesome painting class weekends in Hamburg, Germany Raffa and I arrived home safe. Catching up with our mails and calming down before we head to the Scale Model Challenge in eleven days. Tomorrow our trainee starts working and we are really looking forward to welcome her at the blog soon. As you can spot: busy times but not too busy to not take the time to write a proper review of weekends that have been a great time.



First of all, 
a big thank you to Shifu Heiko and to his Wu Dao Kung Fu School in Hamburg, Horn. This time really felt special as the friendship to Heiko grows bigger and bigger and he offered us such great hospitality during the whole time. Often we mentioned to him that being at the halls of the Wu Dao really feels like a second home, which is a great thing. Thanks for everything Heiko, your friendship and the way you help the painting hobby evolve by providing a great place to be at for a class.


If you live in Hamburg and want to learn about Kung Fu, the Wu Dao is your place to go. Even we were able to see, feel and understand a little knowledge of the Kung Fu Magic while our stay at Heiko's. Thanks for strengthen our minds with really cool Kung Fu Magic moves that you only can believe when they happen. OVER 9000!!!!!



Most important gratitude goes to our students who took part in the class. They made it happen. Thank you for being a part of it and thank you for your unstoppable will to learn and walk the way of the Miniature Painter.  Thanks to everybody who took a longer trip to travel to Hamburg, for example Kyle from Turkey or Martin from the Netherlands. Thanks for the support! Sadly we missed two more participants as they told us they won't make the car trip because of illness. We missed you!

Thanks to Steffen aka Sockelmacher.de for providing plinths for the class and having some cool individual pieces with him during the weekend. Check out his store if you are in need of a plinth that fits your new project perfectly.

Thanks to Michelle for being just as awesome as he is and thanks to Kyle aka M R Lee, the madman who took both weekend classes, but more about him during the review.




Well, let's be honest: The weekend was a blast.
From the early beginning when we all meet down at the bar from the Wu Dao to the very end on Sunday night. It felt like a family meeting as most of the people who took part in the class knew eachother already. So Athmosphere was definatly over 9000!!!!

From the teachers point of view: Raffa and I were still very excited to have the class up in the North. This class was the third time we held our BÄM² class so far and our goal as teachers was to take everybody from where he was standing and bring him further in his painting skills. That was the plan and Raffa and I really have been stunned by the fact that sometimes at the class, the group of students were painting quietly for hours. Total concentration mode and it was a pleasure to see everybody rise in their skills of miniature painting.

The BÄM² class is our so called "advanced class", which takes everybody who took part in Jar's beginner's class to an intense training on their skills and showing a guideline on the happy way of painting that leads to BAM. We explained in theory about the important things but did not repeat ourselves from the Beginner's class. It just went deeper. We were very happy and proud to see that all participants took their time to train at home and so these lessons were just unclear to Leo, the cat ... but he loved the laserpointer:


Brekkalicious: our Friday night quickly jumped into practical work as this was what this class is about. Brekk's were prepared and gently converted:


For a lot of our participants this was the first time painting a bust and we were happy that Brekk is such a good model to teach on. Different material areas, different techniques needed, difficult light situations and a character full of Brekk comes together in this bust and all which is revealed when being painted. Everything starts with a good plan so everybody did plan his Brekk by the use of the theory lessons we explained before:


Painting started on Friday night and took us close to midnight. The night was way to short and Saturday appeared so quick. Everybody had his Brekkfest before the class and we went on, painting.

 In between Raffa and I orbited the students while they worked to search for problems they might have while painting, for example: Dillution problems, Brush-Movement, etc. ... this quickly went into deeper individual coaching. Ten people in such a class with two experienced teachers works really well when it comes to the task of finding the detail in minor or big improvement options for different painters on their actual skill level. Again, my biggest respect for the discipline we had in the class. This was just plain awesome. Here are some impressions of Saturday ...














Saturday lead us pretty far in the figures. Due the different techniques we described in the class and the time amount we were able to use for private coaching the results were already pretty nice to look at on Saturday night but Sunday should bring us even further. It was time for the detailed detail work.




Sunday wasn't timed perfectly by us, thanks to the feedback of Kyle after the class, we recognized some points to optimize the class flow even more. Still it worked out in the end but we our heads already worked on how to transport Kyle's feedback to the next weekend.

The class went by but not without painting at least many hours. Every Brekk turned out very individual: from the irish Brekk to Shrekk over Punker-Brekk different characters grew out of the masses of smiling ogres. Sadly Steffen had to leave earlier so his Zombie-Version is not on the group shot. Let's have a look on the results:



So far we heard from the feedback of the participants that they really enjoyed the concept of the class. Mainly the big amount of time which was available for us to coach individual. Raffa and I were really proud of the results that they achieved.

After the class was over, we all helped cleaning up the place and did the big feedback circle. We are  very thankful about the feedback you gave to us after the class. This helped us to improve the class during the week even more. Thank you all very much for the moments we learned from you. Special thanks to Kyle at this point. Check out his blog, where he also shares his experiences about the classes and much, much, much more!

It was time to say "Brekkbye" on Sunday evening but before that Heiko, which is not only a Kung Fu Master, also a professional photograph offered us the oppourtunity to go mad with playing Brekk! This was the fun part compared to the hard teaching of the class ;)











You can see how stupid this all went, but we had a big amount of fun, believe that.

Well, what a blast we had. 
Thanks to everyone who made this happen!

Monday we visited Hamburg city with Steffen, Kyle, Heiko, Michelle, Arne and spent the day pretty relaxed. See you soon with a little report on how Raffa, Kyle and I did spent the week in between the classes and what happened with the class itself due some serious feedback from Kyle. After this there will be the second BÄM² review ...

Stay tuned and keep on happy painting everyone!
Best Wishes
Roman & Raffa