Workshop Review - Aschaffenburg, Germany

Aloa,

it is time for another painting class review.
As you - our readers - might recognize we are in the early start of MV's "year of the painter". A year in the jungle that is focused on sharing articles, painting thoughts and helping other painters outthere. 2014 is also a year with many painting classes to come as this is a big part of helping other painters to improve.

Peter and I are working hard to plan the next round of painting classes. The last one we did manage to plan to finish was the one in Aschaffenburg, Germany in which twenty students attented.

Many thanks to Thomas, the main organisation power behind this class. He is a member of the gaming club "Asgard-ab" who are a bunch of cool guys. We can only speak of those Raffa and I were able to meet there as some of the members attented the class. It is said the club counts over 40+ members and we also had some visitors during the class who have been to a tabletop gaming tournament during the weekend. I was told that they meet up every week for games and painting. So gaming and enjoying the hobby is big in Aschaffenburg thanks to the guys from Asgard-ab:

A big cudos goes out to the members of the Asgard-Team who helped so much with setting up the class, offering a great catering during the class and helped to clean up until the end of the weekend.
Thanks for the kind feedback so far in the german forums, I am really happy that everyone was able to take a big amount of "learning" from the class. I can give you a little glimpse of what the participants think (sadly only in german):


"Ich kann nicht anders und muss hier mal ein dickes Lob an alle Beteiligten loswerden.Ich kann mich nicht erinnern,das die Stunden beim Malen schon einmal sooooo schnell vergangen sind,Wie an diesem Wochenende. Für mich als zwei Farben schichten und Wash drüber Typen, war das einfach eine Irre Erfahrung, mal eine solche Herangehensweise ,an ein Projekt zu erleben.......einfach nur toll.......als wenn mir einer Freude am malen Gespritzt hätte ;-).
Felix"



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"Ich habe so viel gelernt und es hat nebenbei auch noch ne Menge Spaß gemacht. 
Daffl"

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"Für Anfänger UND Fortgeschrittene ist der Workshop nur empfehlenswert,
da man hier nicht nur Neues lernt, sondern auch Altes nochmal gefestigt bekommt,
und sicher auch einige neue Sachen dazulernt.
Shejtan"

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"Hilfreich ist auch, dass es sich Roman nicht einfach macht, indem er einfach Vorgaben an die Teilnehmer weiter gibt, die dann 1:1 umgesetzt werden sollen.
Roman versteht es in diesem Workshop drei Rollen gerecht zu werden - man verzeihe mir an dieser Stelle den Bezug zu den Rollen einer Führungskraft.

1) Leader: Er vermittelt über den gesamten Workshop hinweg eine positive Einstellung zu Farben und zum malen. Über die theoretischen und praktischen Inhalte bekommt der Teilnehmer SEINE ganz EIGENE Idee davon. Es packt einen einfach die Lust drauf los zu malen, nicht weil man muss, sondern weil man bock darauf hat seiner Miniatur mit dem Pinsel Leben einzuhauchen.

"Wenn Du ein Schiff bauen willst, dann rufe nicht die Menschen zusammen, um Holz zu sammeln, Aufgaben zu verteilen und die Arbeit einzuteilen, sondern lehre sie die Sehnsucht nach dem großen, weiten Meer."
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Der Nachweis an dem Wochenende für mich war, ohne mit den anderen Teilnehmern darüber gesprochen zu haben, dass trotz der anstrengenden Tage (bis ~24.00 Uhr am Freitag und Samstag) der Großteil der Teilnehmer schon wieder um 09.00 Uhr an ihren Plätzen saßen um zu malen, obwohl es offiziell erst um 10.00 Uhr los ging. Wirkliche Pausen - wenn nicht zum essen - hat sich auch kaum einer gegönnt.

2) Manager: Roman hat es auch geschafft, das die Teilnehmer am Ende ein respektables Ergebnis mit nach Hause nehmen konnten. Dazu gehört bei den vielfältigen Inhalten und vor allem bei ca. 20 Teilnehmern, die alle unterschiedliche Ansprüche haben, eine große Portion Organisationstalent!
Klare "Ansagen" und/oder Vorgaben gab es nur dann, wenn es wirklich notwendig war (z.B. bestimmte Farben nicht zu nutzen, da nicht geeignet).

3) Coach: Für mich neben dem Leader die wichtigste Rolle an diesem Wochenende. Es gab keine klaren Vorgaben wie wir die Base gestalten sollen, welche Farben zu nutzen sind, etc. .Die Verantwortung für die Base und die Miniatur lag ganz klar beim Teilnehmer. Auch ich habe mehrfach probiert mal eine klare Ansage zu bekommen, wie ich jetzt am besten weiter mache, um die Verantwortung an Roman abzugeben. In der Regel, hat er mir allerdings die Entscheidung nicht abgenommen!

"Wer einem Manne einen Fisch schenkt, gibt ihm für einen Tag zu essen. Wer ihn das Fischen lehrt, gibt ihm ein Leben lang zu essen."
China

Ich persönlich finde es viel wichtiger, dass ich auch zu Hause weitere gute Ergebnisse produzieren kann, wenn ich auf mich allein gestellt bin. Alles andere wäre für mich eher "malen nach Zahlen". Sobald die Zahlen fehlen wird es schon schwierig.
Michael"

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Thanks to Raffa for driving the car with all the stuff we packed and being a cool addition to the class-athmosphere once more. I missed him lately, so codus to you. It has been a really cool weekend.

Well, talking about the weekend this review will be a little different than the usual ones where I sit down and write my impressions. I want to thank Oliver for taking a lot of photos and writing up his impressions of the class, his own review, in english. So it is not my review, this is the review of Oliver that you now read. Thanks for that as I think it is always important to see such a class from the eyes of a participant, rather the person who holds it:

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"Hello everyone,

this is Oliver and I was a participant at Jarheads Workshop in Aschaffenburg, Germany in February 2014. After this really awesome weekend I want to give something back to Roman and therefore at least write a litte report how the weekend felt for me.

I will go through the weekend in a chronological order, adding some jokes or stories and of course a lot of pictures.

So, when to start? On Friday I left work early at about 12 in order to have some time to pack and organize a few things still missing. I new Daffl would pick me up at about half past two, therefore there was no time to spare.

Everything went according to plan and I was pretty sure that I have everything, except for water colors, with me. About half an hour before we should arrive in Aschaffenburg I ran my checklist. Colors? Check. Brushes? Check. Modelling tools? Check. Photo Box and Camera? Check. Purse? what? where is my purse? .. a really good start for this weekend. I could confirm that I left it on my table but this would be an interesting weekend without any money. I learned that the other folks are just great, they helped me out without any hesitation or making a fuzz about it. Thanks guys, you are really great!

At 18:00 the course officially started and Roman gave a little speech. Afterwards he showed a few presentations giving us some inspiration and idea what this course will be about. The first step after these introductory lectures was to get a daemonette, clean it and put it together. Everyone was highly motivated and after a short amount of time everyone had a little lady in a boring grey in front of us. (Unfortunately there were no "hers").



After this small excercise the fun started. Roman showed us a few things how to construct a base, opened his boxes for us and gave us two advices. Let your creativity flow and most important: HAVE FUN.

In my case I just browsed through several boxes and found a fancy bit with a chainsaw and some angles. In my mind I saw some postapocalyptic things forming a path where the lady could walk along. Adding a spring and a cylindrical tube formed a relic from better times. Adding a path of stones and half a tire finished the construction. At this point I was pretty sure I would hate myself for this on the next day.. so many stones for edge highlights...

 





















Roman did a great job as a lecturer. During our working times it was always possible to just go there and get a little advise.



Around midnight we finished a last presentation and could go to sleep, beeing excited and tired at the same time. I had some weird dreams about colors and contrasts.. If they do not go away I will have to consider going to a shrink..

Saturday startet with a 5 stations course. Add small details to the base, polish it, grap a little animal, something I just forgot and: paint a color circle only with the 3 base colors yellow, red and blue. My first picture was taken at around 12 when we finished priming our bases with black and white.

After this step we learned how to paint a wet in wet brightness contrast on that base. I for myself chose a cold blue base with the idea of putting a bright and warm lady on it. As you can see the participants hang on his lips during the lectures the lectures.



Incredible how much effect could be gained by just painting one color in different grades of brightness on a base ...


After painting the initial brightness contrast we added new colors for different materials. I used the opportunity to mark the spots I want to be rusty and added edge highlights on the stones.. on every single one of them...



It was getting late on Saturday, but at least two things we wanted to achieve before going to bed. We chose and painted the skin of the lady in our chosen basecolor at about 50-75% percent brightness and started adding the shadows. Roman said several times that this is not very rewarding and we will hate it. I have to slightly agree. It has not been the most fun part, but it has not been nearly as aweful as he told us.

The next morning started with adding the lights to get a higher contrast on the miniature.

Afterwards many little steps followed to reveal the beauty of our ladies. But I have to admit, I was so much in the zone that I forgot to take pictures and cannot recall every single step. But I think the result is good enough for my showcase, especially considering that I have learned so many new things in this three days.

And last but not least, my final lady:

Thank you for reading so far and I have only one advise for you: If Roman holds a workshop close to you: Just jump on this opportunity and enjoy a delightful painting weekend with a lot to learn.

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Roman again :)
Well, what can I say. Thank you Oliver for your impressions and the time you took for writing this up. It was my pleasure to see happy faces again on Sunday as Saturady was - as promised - the most exhausting day with not many rewards while painting on the ladies. Raffa and I recieved two surprise visits from friends who live close to the class. Very cool! Here are some more photos from during the class:

For sure we did a group photo of all of us and in the end we were able to take some photos of the results of the weekend. We did not manage to take photos of all figures as some participants had to leave a little earlier. I really enjoy to see those photos. To see what can be done during Saturday midday to Sunday late afternoon. Different painters of different skill levels taking steps further ...

Thanks for a great weekend an d all the helping hands sorrounding this event!

Keep on happy painting!

Best Wishes
Roman & Raffa

PS: You want to take part in one of MV Jar's Beginner classes??
Check this link about the next ones available!