Review: MV's Jar's Basing Class I

Good Monday Morning Jungle Painters,

about ten days ago - during August's first weekend - MV's Jar's Basing Class took place in Augsburg; Germany.

For Roman this was the world premiere of a new class concept, even he held many of MV's Jar's Beginners classes so far, this class and thoughts behind were not yet tested on students. Roman was really excited to see how the thoughts and class schedules might work out in the first round.

Before we jump into his personal review of the class feel invited to check M R Lee's Review of the class, from a student's perspective on what has happened: click here!

Now to Roman's brain ...

________________________________________________________________________________

After reading M R Lee's review I was not sure if I still would be able to write mine, as he did a pretty good one. And I was pretty tired/exhausted the last week and days. From the exertion in front of the class, from giving the class and from great days spent with friends. I was really full with tension before the class. Knowing I'd be able to hold the class from the teacher experience I so far gained, but still worrying if this new content would be easy to understand for the students.

Well, to start somewhere it is important to tell what I was mainly focusing on teaching during the class:

- Introduction of composition rules/asthetics
- How to use composition rules/asthetics on a base, in material parts, in detailing
- Building a base from concept to end
- Gaining a better look on the outside world and learning to see "random beauty"
- Basebuild-up with material focus on the topic "After the Apocalypse, nature conquers back!"

 

Thanks forsupporting and sponsoring the class
First of all I want to say big thanks to the sponsors of the class. These companies who supported the class with material and their help in making ideas real. Without those helpful hands the class would have not been the same:



























 













Additional thanks to Battlefield-Berlin and BrokenToad for their support.

Thanks for Participating
I want to say big thanks to all the 18 students who attented to the class for putting their trust in me and what I am trying to teach. I was really happy to see many friends and kindpeople among this group, painters I already know since several years, some with more experience than others, but I was about to raise their basing skills to another bar, no matter their experience level. At least this was my plan. Thanks for a cool weekend with you all.



Thanks for additional photos
Thanks to Kyle and Matthias for additional photo material of the class that you will find in this review. I was not able to take many of my own. Thanks for the great feedback you gave me during the class and public/private afterwards. I am really thankful as these points will make the class content and its development grow in detail quality for future classes.

Friday - Composition, Concept, random beauty
Meeting up at our studio we had some icecream or coffee until everyone arrvied and the class was ready to start. Not in the studio rooms, but in another room 15 meters away, I like to call it class room but honestly it looked pretty much like a post-apocalyptic setup.

We started of with a little introduction into the schedule of Friday night. Going deeper we talked about points that make a base look harmonic, how a base is build up in different stages, about composition aspects, known from art and nature and how they can be transported into your basing.
While I studied Art-History I often got confronted with such thoughts, I had to analyze paintings from the past with words and such stuff. Meanwhile these thoughts are in my blood when I do a base or draw something, but I wanted to explain what I am doing on my basework to others, mainly all not so familar with the deep content from Art-History. Not so easy I tell you. This classed started to take shape two years ago, when first ideas were born.

We made up our mind on how to find a concept for a base and which thoughts help to execute a drawing that shows this concept. A visualised concept can always help to make the work afterwards more easy and going forward without any traffic jams in the execution.

It was time to randomly pick some cool Hasslefree Modern Adventurers:

About concepting, already with the plinths by Sockelmacher:

  Random beauty:

Friday night went on and a lot of my thoughts that I put into presentations via projector were talked about and put to the test. My excitement did not get less, but as a teacher i felt more comfortable to see my peparations took roots in the concept thoughts of the students. A big thing for Friday night was still up to come: Real-Life-Sized-Basing.

My plan for the students was to put some of the composition rules to the test and do some exercises too instead of sitting around all the time. Moving around a lot of material to talk about basing composition and to understand, rather feel these "composition rules":

After this stage we checked back to the concepts a little bit more and called it a day. Goal was to find proper sleep for the big Saturday to come where we would build up the bases. I myself still had to pack some material as we were about to switch location for the next day.

More random beauty to be looked out for:

Saturday - material preparation, building of the base

After some theory again it was time to strictly jump into the preparation work. Using the concept as a guide through our plans it was time to sit down and get it all ready for the base build up. I was happy to see that everyone had a good time, following his thoughts on the concept, but on the other hand I realised that preparing the material was a hard task for the time it took as everyone was just like: "Roooaarrr, I want to build my base, NAUW!!!"

Theory again on Saturday morning:

 WTF?

All that sponsoring lot and much more is not on the photo - many thanks for the sponsors of the class again!

A small chair in big hands and Juweela bricks in action.

Saturday rushed by and while everyone was having dinner I sneaked around and took some photos of their bases in progress. From my teachers perspective I really, really was happy to see composition rules we talked about used.  Also the cool Hasslefree Survivors were a great help to tell the story and help to build up the base around them.

There was one skyscraper-base, two kids hiding from a raider:

Zombies around every corner:

 Raiding a dog food store:

 Powerful encounte:

Memories, back to the past, before the Apocalyps:

This student just went mad and took some time to use the Juweela bricks, but from one casual brick he created four of them for his special wall:

In collaberation with Kellerkind-Miniatures these were prototypes of lasercut rocking horses in 1:35 and 28 mm scale, specially setup for the basing class and one sprue was handed out to every participant! More about that soon.

The snipress on her journey through the postapocalypse world:

Under the streets, in the catacombs, many cool pieces from Pardulon here:

 This once has been a beautiful place, a bar to sit with friends:

 This guy is searching for his wife and kid:

 His sister is helping him:

Dynamic motion capturing:

Banana-Survivor breaking the wall:

My home is my castle:

A Fallout playground with tiny child-toys by Forged Monkey:

Atomic waste filled barrels by Secret Weapon Miniatures will make this base a place full of toxic plants, good that this guy brought his flamethrower:

 Another brick in the wall:

 A kids hideout in the catacombs:

Sunday  - Priming, Colour Start, Nature strikes
Everyone looked like he found a good pack of sleep that night when arriving early on Sunday morning to meet up for the final day of the class. It was time to start with "sketch painting" the base and getting more into it. Preparation for bringing in the nature stuff soon!

For those interested there was explanation on my way of "wet and wet - sketching":

... while others who already were familiar with the technique started
 just right away - painting time ahead:

While everyone was painting concentrated I prepared the nature stuff, thanks to PK-Pro for the amount of sponsoring on this one:

After some theory again it was time to explain on how you even can place the greens into the base by using composition rules that we have learned during the weekend:

There was plenty of time left for working on the greens and the Apocalypse everyone set up on his base got more and more conquered back by nature. This was a true joy to watch for me as a teacher to see the student's base grow like this. I am really looking forward to see these projects finished as we all did not touch the figures and just put all our effort in that one base during the weekend:

Summary from my point of view
Well, I was truely happy with the results the students achieved during this weekend. While the class ran I found some points in particular where I want to improve and work on the class' content a bit more, but that is rather common after a class for improving it. Again I want to thank everyone involved in that event for your time, patience and will to learn from me. Thank you!

Keep on happy painting!
Best Wishes,
Roman