Review: Private Coaching with Kyle

Hello jungle passengers,

it is about time to sit down with a cup of coffee and write down another review.

About two weeks ago we had another private coaching session. This time with Kyle from Canada, who lived in Turkey and now lives in the UK. He did travel from the UK to sit down with us in Augsburg in the MV headquarters.

Kyle is also known for his cool blog M R Lee's Painting Emporioum where he blogs about his personal experiences in the world of miniature painting. I can only recommend to you to check that blog of his as it is always a good read, a really kind person behind it and it is great to see how the man of the travelling brush grows in his painting experience. Massive Voodoo got to know Kyle personally since last years beginners class in early 2013 where he already travelled from Turkey to Augsburg. Kyle summed up "our" little history in one of his blogposts pretty cool with funny photos and even funnier text - click here to see it!

At this point there would be some personal thoughts of Kyle himself about the private coaching, but as he is so crazy about blogging he already wrote his own review - click here!

So it is up to Raffa and me to write our perspectives of the coaching and as Raffa is heading for a week of holiday this Thursday the task fell on me.

The private coaching started with several emails between us, talking about the topic Kyle wanted to conquer, deciding a miniature, talking about bases, talking about his travel plans and so on. Several Emails hit the road to have him with us. On a Tuesday Morning the private coaching started and we took the time to talk about the Bases Kyle brought with him. His homework was to create a base that would fit to Figone's new Apocalyptic Maulg version and he arrived with three bases in Augsburg.

Before we did start we took some time to have a look on Kyle's projects that he brought, had some talks about them and this helped us both to see from a teacher's perspective where Kyle's experience level is at the moment and which points were important to talk about and where we would like to put some improvement in later on.

One of Kyle's goals to learn via the private coaching was a better understanding and handling of the overall athmosphere of a miniature project and a base is pretty important when it comes to that. So we sat down and pushed Kyle out of his usual comfort zone, by asking him how he tackled the bases he brought, about their background ideas, about their stories and soon we discovered new ground that could be tackled and if understood could bring a base to bigger glory instead of being just a side product of a painted figure. After our talk and with a load of cool basing material Kyle improved his base and enjoyed adding more detail to it which later on, when the figure will be on top of it connects the figure even more to its environment. So we even gave the base some basic colours to have a clue where this road would lead before we did head for the main topic of the class: the miniature itself.

It was working time in the studio which was interrupted to get some food for lunch and Sanne's arrival as she sat down to paint figures on her own. We had some conversations about how to start with Maulg and soon the studio went quiet, just music playing in the background, everybody painting. Small breaks of explanations, in depth looks on how a specific topic is tackled and then painting time again.

 

Kyle's Maulg took big steps in the right direction on the first day and it was good to see that the talks about colour choices, area plans and overall athmosphere already took shape during the afternoon and the start of the evening. The evening break wasn't stealing us much time as we equipped ourselves with food and drinks at the supermarket during lunch break.

Tuesday was a long night and fun as Max arrived too to sit down with us and paint, chat, drink, plan on crazy base ideas, watching Sanne painting canvas, searching for cover because of flying colour drops from the other side of the room and well ... we catched some sleep in the end. The next day we started with facing other questions that Kyle had on different pieces than Maulg, for example on a big Alien bust and a Scuba Diver, before we focused on Maulg again.

 

Both of us, Raffa and I were proud to see Kyle's result after the two days of private coaching. While diving into the new Maulg version more deply the three of us found strange places on the sculpt, for example a belt that leads to nowhere and strange surface differences if you compare it to the original version of Maulg but all of those where conquered.

We are looking forward how all will come together after some more work by Kyle. How the base gets connected with the figure, how the small story that was found is told in the end and how "Fallout Outpost Maulg" is looking in the distance, dreaming of better days that once have been.

Thankful we are to Kyle that he took the private lesson with us. Thankful we are to Kyle that we learned also a lot during these two acute days of hard painting. We learned during this coaching that it is not easy to seperate friendship from work and we learned how to tackle this in the future in an even more professional way. Thanks for that, Kyle.

If you want to see more reviews or get information on private coaching with Massive Voodoo click here!

Well, nothing more to say from my side for the moment, but wait ... one important thing:
Keep on happy painting!

Best Wishes
Roman & Raffa