Heyho Jungle Painters,

Finally I am able to sit down to write the review of this cool weekend in Vienna, Austria.
It took me a little while as life caught me busy the last two weeks with different issues, including my dad having his wedding and my new glasses arriving - now I see the world in Full HD again and that change needed some time to be understood. Whatever, less blabla - straight to the superfunky Vienna Class, the second one, this was the first one back in early 2012.


I was starting on Thursday from Augsburg, Germany with the train and already the first train was delayed. Yay, a good start for 4,5 hours of train ride. No train on my track, yay.


Arriving in Vienna during late afternoon brought me to Andi and Waltraud, two good friends of mine and I was truely happy to see them again. We do not see us often, but when we do it is so cool. They both managed to make me feel at home in the first second and Waltraud made one of my favourite meals, Schnitzel of Vienna for dinner. Yay, all the train issues were forgotten in a glimpse of an eye. Thank you both for your friendship and your hospitality again. I know you are in the middle of your move right now, but if you find the time to read this, know that: Best of luck to you with it and I can't wait to ring at your doorbell for another time :)

Well, my second big thanks goes to Michael and Peter who organised the class upfront. Michael is a member of the "WOW Keepers", a big gaming and hobby club in Vienna. Thanks to them too for offering a place to have the class and for not rolling a thousand dice this weekend. Many thanks!



If you get inside the dungeons and catacombs of the WOW Keepers lair you find hobby madness in every corner. There have been two long dungeons, one which was used during the class for presentations and the other one used for the painters area.


In the first room we had one table for miniatures everyone brought and if you check the following photos you can find a lot of eye candy there. The Miniature Painting Force in Vienna is strong, no doubt and with the support from the painting gang of Graz this table grew to a magnificant collection of really cool models. From really cool gaming models to Golden Demon winners, much was placed there.








Another big thanks goes to the sponsors of the class, those companies who help me with their support to bring a happy painting time to different locations:


Big thanks to Vallejo Model Colours too as we found a big surprise and colours for every participant to work with during the class and to take home. Many thanks, Michael for organising this again and a slow bow of gratitude in the direction of Vallejo.





Explanations on Friday after the theory of Basing. 



Ok, to the class and into the dungeons. We started Friday with theory and basing work. This mess was nothing compared to the later on mess on the material table.
Bases grew and fun was pretty obvious if you look at the results.







Working in the dungeon. No Goblins here, yet.


On Saturday we started straight away with some final preparations. I am in need to say that the class holds not as many demonettes as the usual classes as half of the class participants took the class for a second or a third time, some even for a sixth time, Andi and Kurt, eh? Special thanks to both of them as they teamed up to be my back-up team for helping the others. Thank you for your help guys!

Finally after lunch the painting started and base ideas did recieve their first gentle colour sketches.

We worked further on the bases to get used to new techniques before we jumped to the figures themselves during Saturday evening. Now the colour theory jumped in and everybody was his own boss to choose which colours and with it athmosphere he created with his project.
Constantly on the walk I was to help here and there, pointing out directions and chatting with the students about their progress. Michael, let me call him the madmen, set himself the goal to paint mostly all of his gaming Blood Bowl Miniatures and even more. He recieved some tips and tricks to improve them even more during the weekend:




 Me explaining something ...

A big shoutout to the gang of the Pumpkin Painters from Graz, Andi, Kurt, Lisa, Hanna and Oli who took a ride to Vienna and even harder travel issues to be part of the class. I was happy to be able to spent some time with most of the Pumpkin's as we slept at the same place.


I am very happy to call them my friends and from a Miniature Painter's perspective I want to say how proud I am of their constand progress in the skills of Miniature Painting. See you in July on Kurt's wedding!


During Sunday we painted on, worked on details and brought the whole picture of our projects even more to one solid athmosphere. We all even managed to paint good eyes, except me during the explanations.


On this photo I want to point out Peter, so far my oldest participant of the class. He is usually painting historical figures since a long time but took the advantage to take part in the class to get some insight in Fantasy Miniature painting. Thank you, Peter for the nice chats and your bravery to do this step.













Well, let's see what the jungle painters did during the weekend, eh?
I will show you the projects as I made photos of each during Sunday late afternoon and explain a little bit of the individual projects to you. Please remember that these projects are not 100% finished, most of them were started during the class and we took it as far as we could during the weekend.

First, let's start with Michael, who did paint up most of his Skaven Blood Bowl Team and some additional Dungeon Explorer Manga Miniatures for gaming with his kids. You can find his gallerys of photos here!










































This monster of a Marine was this participants class figure and his goal was to get an introduction into Oil painting. Looking forward to see this grow as I feel the potential of a powerful and athmospheric miniature project.




Up and to the left you can see a cool creation by the Vienna Painting Jesus. It really was a pleasure to see it grow with colours. I always felt I was not able to tell him much or help him in big steps as this participant is already painting really good, but here and there I think some hints and tips took home.






Well, this repeater of the class charged a big monster of a model and I was truely happy how it grew during the class. Remember, you can go mad with dirt and stuff on some areas, but it is a great contrast if you keep important areas sharp and clean.

This participant painted on some models beside his demonette during the class, but all in the same colour scheme. Check out his company, called Templates and Widgets.





Another repeater of the class had his fun with this wall and painted on a really tiny Darksword Sorceress during the class.



 Powerful glowing stones sorrounding this demonette.

 This class repeater had some serious questions on how to paint leather on big surfaces and we worked on details here and there to get the last out of his paintjob. Like her a lot.

This participant had to leave during Saturday afternoon until the evening and missed most of the intense painting time on Saturday, but I'd say he caught up pretty good, eh?


This one reminded us both to Diablo, Act II from its athmosphere:






This first timer of the class had to leave earlier on Sunday to catch a train, there was Snow planned for the base and I am looking forward to see it up there someday.

And a final demonette, wasteland base style. Sorry for the blurry photo, she is the only figure I catched blurry :/

Well, that's it, I guess you can see how much fun we had.
Again a big thanks to everybody involved in the good time we had in Vienna, Austria.
For me it was time to travel home on Monday morning, but not before we had a relaxed evening.



Keep on happy painting!
Best Wishes
Roman