Miniature Painting Basing Workshop with Roman Lappat
Hansrainer:
"I’ve been planning to take one of Romans basing classes ever since he started offering them. Initially I was always put off by the fact, that he only offered them in Augsburg, but after my private coaching in December, I didn’t dread the long ride as much anymore and I had a good friend join me for the class and we managed to get a decent hotel. As an added bonus, the class ended up being held in the MV-Studio, just a few minutes away from our stay - and we were only six participants!
Having been there three months ago,I wasn’t just as excited as my friend Christoph to visit the holy halls of Massive Voodoo - still quite excited though, truth be told. As usual, we were the last to arrive there, in our excuse, everyone else had a much shorter trip to Augsburg. Roman had already prepared the studio and set up some additional workplaces, making room for all 6 of us.
As usual in Romans classes, the friday was an intense trip into theory land, learning about composition, mood and life-size basing… We had a lot of fun and the photos taken during the live-basing exercise speak words of it. As always, every new theoretical concept (golden mean) was supported by several practical examples, making studying seemingly easy. We learned a lot about how to use different implements to create guiding lines in a base setup, guiding the eye of the beholder to the desired focal point of the scene.
As an added bonus, we all got to huddle on the couch around Roman, unfortunately I believe that no pictures of that were taken. At the end of the day, I was rightly tired, head full with new concepts and eager to try some of them out.
On saturday
the base-building started in earnest: First of all, we all drew lots - and by lots I mean a miniature out of box full with Hassle-Free Miniature goodness - thanks for those by the way. It was a really good Idea to get the creativity-juices flowing. Everyone got a random miniature and should come up with a name and short story that the final base was supposed to tell in the end. And then we all went back to pen and paper (or pen and tablet) to start making sketches and concept drawings of our base-project. My concept was based on “the worst toilet in scotland” from the movie trainspotting. Just transposed into this post-apocalyptic world. The toilet would be the worst - but at the same time the best toilet - because it’s the only one left in Scotland. So Mark, the protagonist of the movie returns to the smallest room to find some peace.
With the concepts in hand, we set off building our bases, starting with the big and coarse elements and going into more and more detail, as the day went on.
Roman gave us a long excurse on the loads of different bits and doodats in his huge repository. I dare say, the MV-Studio is probably the paradise of every basing enthusiast - I mean they have TOILETS (model toilets that is). We also learned a lot about random placement and the effects of symmetries on the overall perception of a base.
Most of the day went by in a blur, we had nice conversations and listened to a lot of music. At some point Peter from MV stopped by for a few hours to work on his latest projects. We had really good food in a nearby restaurant - Roman forgive me, I can’t for my life remember the name :(
Unfortunately I got quite carried away with my base project and forgot to take any pictures during the construction process, suffice it to say, at the end of the day (coming earlier for some and as usual, later for me) we all had a more or less finished base construction. I ended up working some overtime, but I can say it paid off. Lesson not learned: Less chatting, more working...
Short interlude:
I have been a student of Roman for a few years now, my earliest class dating back to 2013. Yes, I know I am a Fanboy, but I have also been a teacher for years. It always impresses me, how good Romans instinct is, with regard to when to push students (and which students) to adhere strictly to the curriculum and when to let go of the proverbial leash. That is a rare gift, even among teachers and I can only recommend to trust him if you ever take one of his classes. It usually pays off, even if it feels wrong to begin with.
So, Sunday arrived and it was time to whip out the paints. After giving our bases solid 2-color base coats, we started setting the atmosphere (if you want to know more about this - see the advanced class - shameless advertising!) and painted our bases to the point, where we could start adding the finishing pieces, mostly greenery nature to the bases. Eventually, the day ran its course and we had to pack up.
Conclusion:
I had only been painting busts in last months leading up to this class, but I was hoping it would rekindle my interest in working in smaller scales again - and it did! If you have seen pictures of Romans beginner-classes, you know that base-building is a very important part of that already and I can say, the basing class adds a lot on top of it. It provides a solid theoretical foundation for the things done before and adds a lot of tricks and best practices with the different materials available for basing - be it things collected outside or bits unseen before (by me at least). Admittedly, this specific class had added charme because it took place in the famed MV-Studio, but I think it would have been equally awesome in the school it was planned to take place in originally.
Most important though: It was a fun weekend with nice people, good food and music!"
