Loved the latest movie, the great visuals, the connection to the animes, the additional story fluff and the music just kicks butt! Makes me want to smash color somewhere and I am pretty sure I will listen to this as soon as I paint miniatures again. Yes, I am not able to paint right now. Don't know why, but I want to know.

I call the stage I am in right now: 
Breathing, channelling inspiration, re-animate myself in sense of washing away many thoughts and habits that bind me to not feel happy. Interesting.

Speaking about painting miniatures and 2016:
Looking back on the figure projects I have painted in 2016 I can clearly see what I enjoyed there the most: A steep learning curve. I was so inspired of what I thaught myself about painting atmosphere and threw that all over my projects like a crazy gorilla with six arms. I really enjoyed that and painted plenty of projects that I did choose myself. A miniature or a bust was calling me, I quickly found my visions for the project and was able to apply them in a wonderful way of free happy painting. 2016 you have been amazing to me when it comes to painting. I burned my painting energies with focusing on learning more and more about strong visuals of atmosphere in my paintwork. Explaining stories with the choice of color and my brushstrokes. Powerful.

I was able to transport this into the early months of the new year and had some pretty much painting fun with some projects in  2017. I really had a great flow through my ideas, visions and projects. I really appreciate all the support from friends, collectors and other miniature painters. Everything worked well, I was truely focused. Then I finished a really big project that was very important to myself: Conan, by Black Sun Miniatures.



This project meant a lot to me. 
I was fascinated by the work of Frank Frazetta
ever since and 2016 was also a year where his work accompanied my thinking and color studies a lot. This project is a personal homage to his work, mainly in terms of color and ambience choices and personal achievements, but I did understand not much on Frazetta's way of working, I realized.

When I finished this project I somehow lost the spark of painting joy or felt an extreme lack of energy. Not that I think I somehow did Frank Frazetta's color work justice in my studies, nor do I think I learned everything about painting now. It is completly the opposite of it. I see more and more how far the horizons of learning to paint stretch to a neverending ocean of wisdom. Endless. I just hit another personal milestone, but somehow the energies to push my learning curve more and more did suddenly quit. A normal thing after a very productive 2016. Very normal. I just needed time to understand what is actually happening with my painting spirits. This took me a little while. Now I decide to speak about it on the Massive Voodoo blog, so far the jungle always helped me through different stages of my full time job as a creative soul. Why not now? I want to know why I lack in painting motivation on a large scale. I want to find new goals in my way of painting. What is there to study next? Superclean blending, I could try, but I am sure this is not me. Who knows. You see this ain't an easy question for myself.

Right now
if I only think about touching brush and paint I do not know where to go. No colorful vision do drop in. I can follow techniques that is for sure and techniques lead to blendings, smooth and rough ones. I learned to appreciate both when I know where to use them. All I can tell is that this is absolutelyx weird. Even after my weeks of relaxing from work on "vacation" there is no spark lighting up. As I said earlier I am pretty much looking forward to teach my upcoming weekend seminar about "atmosphere" soon. I am looking forward to the teaching aspect with nice and wonderful people.

Still, I did not touch a brush so far, but I quit on thinking this is something bad.
Everything happens for a reason and one day I will see.

Roman