Review: Jar's Basing Class II

Good Morning Jungle,

about a week ago Roman's second - and this years last - basing class took part in Augsburg, Germany.
Participants arrived from all corners of Germany and even Swiss.  It felt like a little family meeting with most of the painters already known to Roman. Thanks to everyone who took part in the class and made that weekend such a nice one.

We had a great time during the class and much about basing composition and its practical use was learned during the weekend. You can find the review of the first basing class here if you like to read it too. The basing class will return in summer 2015 with another topic/theme for the base and different material tasks for the students.

Let's jump Roman's brain now for the review ...

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Well, again I'd like to start with my aims and teaching focus for 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,
BrokenToad and Uschi van der Rosten for their support.



Thanks for Participating
I want to say big thanks to all the 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 and sadly two participants had to skip this weekend because of illness and work.

Thanks for additional photos
Thanks to Oliver and Jens for additional photos to this review.


Friday - Composition, Concept, random beauty
Now let's head over to the class content and what we did. This review will take a little different approach as you will find Oliver's comments and photos in between my blabla to see the students perspective too. Thank you, Oliver for putting this up!

A big thanks to the the first class group from August for their feedback. I tried to implent a lot of improvement from the last class to this class and I think it helped it a lot.

Again we started Friday in the "postapo-classroom". Did a lot of theory about a base, did some sketches and everybody got into some plans of his upcoming base using basic rules and thoughts of asthetic composition rules well known out of art history. Everybody had to draw a random postapo modern survivor model by Hasslefree to find his character of his base.

Let's see what Oliver got to say about that:

"Hello everyone. I had the pleasure of visiting Jarheads Basing workshop and will give you some insights. Friday evening was mainly theory. After some impressions to get a feeling for the topic "After apocalypse the nature takes the world back" everyone drew a miniature and should picture it in a typical scene. I found someone to exchange my first draw and got this lovely lady:

In my mind formed the picture of an explorer looking for lost treasures from the old civilization. And there is no better place to go than the sewers to do so. The next task was to scetch the idea and try to optimize it. I should not do it, but this are my conceptual drawings from this evening:"

Roman again. Well, some people think they can not or should not draw. I'd say screw that. If you draw something to visualise your thoughts for you the result does only matter for yourself. Oliver's sketches helped him to visualize his ideas, you will find out soon when we dig into Saturday. Everybody can draw such things for himself, no excuse needed there.

Friday's last task was "real life size basing". We took the theory to a test and it was also time to move our bodies to carry around all that gathered material.

 The group planned together ...

 Hero's were born ...

 Fun we had indeed ...

Saturday - material preparation, building of the base
Saturday arrived and we did start with a little theory again on how to work in different base stages. I explained the upcoming tasks to the students and work started right off. We worked in two groups, everybody preparing something important later on to bring all of it together.

The Friday night sketches were now a good help ...

 Concentration all around ...

Thanks to our sponsors we had a lot of material ready:

Some really feel in love with those Juweela bricks:

Oliver:
"On Saturday morning we started working on our ideas. My first task was to cut the socket and build up the wall. Afterwards the ground was covered and some scenery added. Some of the parts of the scenery were created by using plastic card and aluminum sheets. The final details were added to show how the nature comes back."
 
 




















 
Roman again. While everybody took their well deserved dinner in form of pizza delivery I had some bretzels and went through the students places to take photos of their Saturday achievements:

 

Well, me, the teacher was really impressed what this class achieved here. I could already imagine the mood some of these pieces would bring if they see colour on top.

It was a pleasure to see and help these grow. How the students came up with a concept on Friday night, transported it to their big material preparation and brought all of it together during Saturday.

The last hours of Saturday laid focus on detail work and making everything ready for priming on Saturday. Hard work on Saturday, but worth it I'd say.







Sunday  - Priming, Colour Start, Nature strikes
It was time to start with "sketch painting" the base and getting more into it. Preparation for bringing in the nature stuff soon! But Priming was first.

Oliver:
"Sunday started with priming the base and applying Jarheads cool wet in wet technique ..."

Jens - I mean one of the three Jensens at place, made some photos too with his mobile to show a little progress on his basework, very cool - thanks for that, Jens:

  
Roman again. Well, we took our time to paint on that base and in the middle of it there was more theory about how to plan and execute real looking natural looking greenery on that base, but honestly you can say that Friday and Saturday took their tool and the class was approaching its end faster than usual. At least it felt like. Now let's check for some results, shall we?
 

 

Summary from my point of view
Well, I was truely happy with the results the students achieved during this weekend once more. I was truely happy to see the feedback from the first basing class take a grip on the second one. It was my pleasure to see you at this weekend, see old friends again, meet new faces - hope they paint on and on ;) - and want to thank you all for being a part of this weekend, thank you for your time,  your patience and your will to learn from me. Thank you!

Keep on happy painting and basing!
Best Wishes,
Roman

 
PS:
Oliver: "A lot of pictures but I think you get an impression what this workshop was about. I am very glad that I decided to go there and will try to finish base and lady within the next week so I can show some final pictures."

Roman: YAY!