Review: MV's Jar's Advanced Class in Augsburg, Germany

"The MV "Advanced Painting Class by Jar did its name justice: I feel that my skills to use colors as a means to create atmosphere have skyrocketed. Jar's carefully crafted exercises made me observe colors in nature and instrumentalize them in order to tell a story. Before the class I only applied color to surfaces, but now I am starting to learn how to bring the figures alive. The intimate class size allows for plenty of questions, and painting with fellow modelers manifolds the learning effects." 

- Diana

"The Advanced Painting Class was my first Workshop with Roman and I can totally say it was worth it! I Think I was able to make a big step foward in my painting skills and especially in my understanding of colors. But most importantly Roman taught me how much fun it can be to paint miniatures.". - Florian

"Also erstmal ein großes Dankeschön an Roman, war mal wieder ein geniales Wochenende." - Hajo

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Well, 
Roman held his first Advanced miniature painting class,
a class that takes the students deeper into Roman's brain, after his famous Beginner's Class.

The themes and topics plus schedule is getting more complex and after Roman took about 2,5 years to work on the concept, make thoughts, collect stuff, think about how to explain something, break information and steps down to a level that everybody can understand and follow what Roman tries to explain in his class. You can believe, when we say that Roman - even as a very experienced teacher - was nervous about the concept premiere. 

Main topics for MV's Jar's Advanced Class:

- Learn to paint atmosphere in a Miniature Project
- Learn to keep all harmonic
- Doing a small conversion to make Hayden personal
- Learn simple, but very effective rules for a gaming base
- Learn to paint skintones
- Learn to paint black and white
- Advanced Color Theory
- Advanced Blending Techniques
- Advanced Happy Painting Methods
- and more!


First of all 
a big thanks goes out to Hasslefree Miniatures, who supported the class with a big bunch of "Hayden", which were actually perfect for the class concept. Dem Haydens, dem Haydens, dem Haydens! Check 'em out! Dem Haydens.

They got great miniatures, check them out here!

Well, atmosphere, what is that? 
It's an ambient, a mood, a feeling that you get when looking at something. It takes your miniature project from being a just painted miniature to a storytelling, emotional piece. Easier said than understood and the hardest part is how to create such in a good working order to have easy acces to the use of atmosphere.

For example, different atmosphere's from Fallout 4 - Artbook

Like being said already Roman was truely a little nervous,
 not that he would fail as a teacher in the actual class, but if the thoughts he made and the material he had prepared will help to explain his concepts well enough. This was truely exciting for him. Luckily he got company from many Advanced painters who came as students to his class and as Roman already knew most of them all of them were speaking the same language.

Many thanks to the fourteen students
 who travelled to Augsburg to be a part of this class and make it happen. Thanks for the great 2,5 days with you and thank you all for your support in my work, teaching and art!

"I paint for some years now and have joined serveral classes in order to boost my knowledge about colors and the general way of painting. All of these classes left their mark and helped me to develop my humble skills. But today I have the feeling that Roman´s Advanced Class helped me to trespass limits and that it opened a whole new world to me. If you want to learn about atmosphere and want to understand how to implement it into your way of painting miniatures, this class is a "must-do". Thanks a lot to Roman for sharing his lessons learnt and the knowledge he got out of them." - Peter

"Der WS war echt klasse, hat mir wirklich viel spaß gemacht und ich hab wieder enorm viel mit genommen, als Gelerntes." - Johannes

"I had the gread pleasure of visiting Roman's first try for his advanced painting class in Augsburg at the end of April 2016. Since I have visited several of his other classes I knew that I could expect some great new insights despite the fact that I have not painted regularly at home in the last weeks or months." - Oliver

"I really enjoyed the workshop, since then I'm seeing way more colours and colour shades and I'm constantly thinking which base colours I would mix in what ratio to get that specific colour. Furthermore, when looking at people's faces I can see the trisection (yellow in the upper part, red in the middle and green or blue in the lower part) that Roman talked about in every face." - Andreas


We did meet up in Augsburg
 in a well known place for MV workshop's: The "Staatsinstitut für Fachlehrer", where Roman did his studies to become a teacher. A great place to teach and being a student as the room is perfect and big enough. Many thanks for the good collaberation.

Before we did start painting on the miniatures there was time for building up a small gaming base for Hayden, information to it delivered via presentations on the projector and talks by Roman. After this we converted and prepared the models for painting, before ... well, no it was not time yet to paint on the models themselves. First Friday night and Saturday morning was packed with theory parts. Roman was such a happy teacher as he saw the results  from his students.

Every student recieved a big paged Handout
 with all necessary information and tasks to fullfill, of course step by step. Some of the beautiful results that helped to understand the theory behind "painting atmosphere", including wolves and Haydens:

After these dryruns, we went for the models and also tackled many of the advanced topics the class had in stock, like skintones, white and black, metals, painting technique, all the time under the influance of atmosphere.

"This was surely the most interesting workshop I have attended thus far. Its contents were thoughtfully chosen, the course was well structured, and I really liked having the opportunity to spend much time actually painting under Roman's guidance (instead of having to listen to theoretical monologues). As is typical for Roman's workshops, you could feel his enthusiasm and and love for painting miniatures all the way. At the same time, Roman ran the course extremely professionally and along a systematic concept that aimed to take all of us towards the course clearly outlined goals. In this, Roman always catered to the participants' preferences and abilities, taking those by the hand who needed a little more guidance, while allowing for a little more free time and space for those who prefered a bit more autonomy..

I particularly liked the 30 page handout that includes not only a number of working sheets for the individual painting practices (wolves, Hayden-color schemes, tattoos, etc.), but also a number of comprehensive summaries and excurses on Roman's thoughts concerning the main topics - just perfect for re-visiting and refreshing the course contents afterwards!" - David
(read David's full review here! - german language)
  
Time went by and very fast Sunday arrived. 
As Roman did not paint up a model himself during the class - but had two painted versions of Hayden with him - he had plenty of time to help everyone on his individual skilllevel, help with their specific idea of their atmosphere and help if a technical painting issue occoured.

Roman is truely a very happy teacher by looking on the weekend's result. As a teacher he set his goals and also his teaching goals that he build up step by step and he got convinced by all results, no matter the different experience levels of his students. It was just great seeing your models grow up to this!

 Thanks to Oliver, Hajo und everyone else who supported this review with his photos!

"Auch für den Workshop noch einmal vielen Dank. Es macht immer wieder großen Spass an Deinen Workshops teilzunehmen." - Jens 

"Es war ein sehr netter Workshop mit Euch in Augsburg. Das Thema "Atmosphäre malen" wurde durch aufeinander aufbauende Inhalte klar und verständlich präsentiert. Hat mich anfänglich der praktische Teil der Farbtheorie (malen mit den 3 Primärfarben sowie mit schwarz und weiss) aus der Komfortzone gerissen, konnte ich dann bei der Bemalung der Figur das gelernte schon besser und schneller umsetzen. Der Besuch des Workshops hat mich auf alle Fälle beim Bemalen von Figuren wieder weitergebracht. Durchaus eine sehr gut gelungene Premiere des "Advanced Workshops"."
- Peter

"I can recommend the workshop to everyone who would like to inhance his painting skills and especially the theory behind putting a miniature in a good ambientic setting." - Oliver
(read Oli's full review here! - german language) 

Well,
Roman wants to thank everyone involved in this class once again and after the feedback from you all is already included, after Roman reflected the class schedule and results and changed small things here and there he will soon start to find new dates for his Advanced Class.

Thank you all very much for such a joyful experience of happy painting!
Keep on happy painting!