Happy New Year & WIPs of the month - January

Hey jungle painters,

first of all, the MV-team wishes you a happy new year!
We hope, you have enjoyed your New Years Eve party and are already back at the table with your brush in hands :-)

The last two weeks have been very silent here on the blog. Everybody of the MV-team had some need of free days to recharge the batteries. But we were not too lazy at all. I can promise you, we have already prepared some very cool stuff for 2015. You will love it, but I don´t want to tell too much at this point.

One of these bigger actions 2015 will be our second Bananalicious Painting Contest for which you have time until 22nd April 2015. So start with your projects, we are eager to see them!

Roman is already packing his stuff the painting class in France (16th until 18th January). I´m sure it will be a cool weekend. Further we will announce the painting class roadmap for the first half of 2015, soon. Beside the class in France there is already a class in Blumberg (13th until 15th March) prepared. More dates for more classes will follow :-)

As always: if you like to have Roman visiting you hometown and holding a class there, feel free to check here: CLICK

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Peter's WIP of the Month

I also want to introduce you to a new monthly article series. Inspired by Roman´s "Kong´s WIP thoughts" I want to share my actual projects with you and tell you my ideas behind them. I also want to share my problems with you and how (if I did) solved them. This is not meant to be a monologue, but more some kind of exchange with you! I´m eager to hear your comments :-)

So, what is on my desk at the moment?

Thorag the Savage by Raúl Grearcía Latorre

This is small, but nevertheless very nice bust. I started it in December when I was looking for a project where I could further develop my style of painting. I love dark, brownish and desaturated colors as it´s easy to achieve a more natural look with them. This is sometimes even a matter for jokes from my close friends, who want me to use more brighter colors ;-) but I don´t care and here I want to push exactly this to a good looking result.

As you see, I have already started working out the basic sketch. I like the combination of green, blue and brown. At this point I usually have only a basic knowledge of where my journey will lead me in the end. But this is something I really enjoy about painting: it´s a process of freedom. So, let´s see what happens. I´m just sure about one fact: like in the promo-paintjob I will use a nice, colorful tattoo in the face.


Medusa by Allan Carrasco

This bust is a quite old and long time companion on my table. It has seen different colors already as I find it hard to discover the right spirit in it. It´s my first female bust/miniature and has some difficult spots. Painting a female face is a complete different approach then painting a male on. You have to be careful to not use too hard contrasts and focus on a clean paintjob. I found this page helpful.

In my mind the Medusa is beautiful and somehow ugly the same time. So, I want her to have a pale skin and a face to fall in love with instantly. To create a contrast to her beauty I have to keep the snakes on her head as dark and threatening as possible. And here we have another difficult spot: the snakes are so well sculped that it´s a pain to paint them. They are twisting and almost moving. During my last approaches I had to concentrate so much while working on them. This time I want to paint every snake with a marking like that you can see on the right side. More concentration is needed, but I think I have found a proper way ;-)

The bluish-grey areas on her shoulders are a special idea I had at the beginning. I wanted to create the effect of old stone, which is crumbling off her skin. I will repeat the effect on her face, too. At the moment this is just the base color to have the area covered. If the effect will be done, I hope it will support her unnatural appearance.


So, these are my thoughts. Feel free to tell me what you think in the comment section below and if you have any questions, I will try to answer them :-)

Cheers,
Peter