Roman Lappat first private coaching about miniature painting

Book dates for your private coaching in miniature painting with Roman Lappat!

 "Aloha Jungle Readers,

below you find an in depth-report of my Private Practice lessons with Roman down in the deepest Jungle of the Massive Voodoo Crew. If you get bored while reading just jump to the end to my final words. These are the most important!

First of all let me introduce myself in a few short sentences. I´m Thorsten and 30 years old and started the miniature hobby round about 10 years ago. It all started with gaming and less painting but shifted more and more to the painting aspect during the years as it is just hell fun and satisfying to see a miniature come to life under your brush. The passion for the hobby was born but progress in painting skills came slow and on the hard way due to time shortness and absence of capability. A push into the right direction was necessary. 
2010 I joined one of Roman's beginners classes in Wuppertal and for the first time I made three to four steps forward at once. I practised the learned lessons and made some more progress but finally reached again a point where a little (or a little more...) help was needed....

But how did it come to the Private Practice you may ask yourself? Well, in december last year I had my 30th birthday and my sweetheart wanted to make me a real overwhelming birthday gift. So, crazy as she is, she contacted Roman and here we go! What shall I say? It was really overwhelming and I was speechless when she gave me my present. It took me a moment (or two, or three...) to realize what happend... Wohooooo... what a stunning present! Is there anything better in the world for a miniature painter? Can´t think about anything...

Time past by and at the end of May the big day finally had come. The plan was to stay two days at Big Kongs lair and experience his massive painting aura and in my baggage was a voucher for several hours of direct, private, helpful and wise painting hints and instructions.

I arrived at Augsburg main station at 2 pm and Big Kong was already waiting for me at the platform and gave me a warm welcome. ... Wohoooo (again)... 2 full days of painting lay in front of me... what a massive surprise at the beginning! Thank you the first time, Roman

We left Augsburg main station where little capuchin was waiting in the big banana rolls royce to pick us up and bring us to Big Kongs headquarter (thanks for the lift Raffa!). Two young ladies were awaiting us and shared our painting sessions during these two days. Of course I mean Roman´s young kittens, just to be sure nobody gets this wrong... ;)... by the way... you are the star in the flat if try to eat some cereals in the morning... milk seems to rule the brainwaves of this young ladies...:)

Arriving at Roman´s flat we didn´t waste any time. Big Kong was keen to get the painting party on and started to beat the jungle drums with all his power. First a look into his cabinet, some oh´s and ah´s and questions from my side. The Rhino is really amazing and to see it in real life was awesome! We headed straight to the painting table where everything was well prepared: Miniature and base, paints, a well cleaned airbrush ;), my own professional light, and everything else you can imagine. First step was a talk about my homework. I had to paint up a Brekk as best as I could. Roman had a in-depth look to my painted Brekk and gave me a lot of hints how to improve the overall look. Then he took his brush and started to do the first voodoo of the day and showed me how he would improve the skin tones. Basically it all comes down to light improvement, cleaning areas and increasing contrast. It is just eye opening to see someone do it instead of reading about how someone would do it.
I think this was the best way to start the following days as we got to know each other better and Big Kong started to relax more from minute to minute. He was a little bit nervous in the beginning (as I was too!). I was his first private student but he managed the situation absolutely professional and the fact that he takes care so much and thinks about it in advance just makes him more likeable. This took us about an hour and afterwards we started with the Enigma Troll (Roman painted a historic 75mm germanic warrior). Some cleaning, smoothing of areas and priming had to be done. Even at this stage of preparation tons of ideas, hints and material suggestions rained down on me and straigt into my brain. I had to use pen and paper to ensure that no precious information got lost in the nirvana of my mind...

After preparation work we started with the skin. First "conditioning" (a really important word during this two days) of the skin areas. We used an airbrush to speed up the process and to ease our work. Thereafter we started with the Kong way of happy painting... making a draft of the light situation directly on the miniature using the wet in wet technique. Although I already knew this from the beginners class it was good to see it again. I always used to much water during this step what makes it more difficult and time consuming. Good to erase this mistake.

Using this first draft Roman showed me how to increase the light situation, how to place the lights and shadows at the right spots, how to clean everything up and make it look like a real good painted miniature. Sounds easy you think? Maybe, but this was the hardest part for me and it was just awesome to have Roman at my right side. So I could pester him with questions every time I needed his support and this was really often at this stage of the lessons. With his help and hints and demonstrations I finally managed it to reach a level that was (for me) unimaginable at the morning of the same day! I experienced my personal Bäm² somewhere between 11.00 and 2.00 o´clock in the night. We painted until ~3.00 o´clock and I managed it to finish the skin before we went to bed... tired but happy...

Morning of the next day came quite fast but after a decent breakfast with coffee and pretzel I felt ready for the hours to come. Next thing was to prepare the other parts of the miniature. Roman helped me to find a color scheme. The next few hours I was busy bringing paint to the leather parts, the trouser, the axe,... conditioning these areas and so on... less help was needed at this stage but nevertheless Big Kong was around me all the time, ready to answer my questions and to give me a helping hand.
Around midday we started with some lessons on how to paint special textures (leather, cloth, stone, earth, metalls...) always brushes in hands and doing it directly on the miniature. So we spend a lot of hours and time just flew by. Brush stroke after brush stroke I worked on my miniature seeing it coming to life in my hands. I just forgot time and nearly fell asleep somewhere around 3.30 in the night.

We started at 9.00 o´clock the next morning. Roman still full of energy to teach me some things and we made a final hour of power painting. He showed me how to bring some finishing touches to special areas so giving the miniature the final Wohoooo-look. This is my next homework: finish the miniature! I definitely will!

Before I had to leave we made a short visit to Raffa and I had the opportunity to take a closer look at his cabinet. Really stunning! I also had the possibility to see him at work using 3 brushes to paint 2-3 miniatures (can´t remember) at a time! Couldn´t believe it! Roman told me before that he painted his Demon Prince by attaching the brush to his forehead and bonding his hands to his back. Thought it was a joke, but now I believe my friend!
By the way, did I mention that he used his left hand to play Diablo 3 while painting this 5 miniatures with 7 brushes in his right hand....

The both of them brought me back to Augsburg main station where I finished my Big-Kong-Experience. It was just great! Epic! Awesome! Massive!

Final words:

To my sweetheart: 
Thanks a lot for this great gift! You made it real and until the end I couldn´t really believe this to happen. It was just awesome. I love you!

To Roman: 
Roman, I owe you for the great time! 
It was really, really massive for me. You opened my eyes and gave me (again) the possibility to do some big steps forward in my painting skills. It's up to me know to complete it - as painting skills are like a muscle one has to train and train and train again. This, I also learned from you! To reach a level like yours (which I certainly never will) is just hard work. It might look easy but one has to be willing to invest a lot of hours.
I want to say "Thank You" to you for your hospitality, your generosity ,your heartiness, the great chat we had during our painting experience, and everything I might forget now. I´m not exaggerating now and I mean every single word by heart. Everyone knowing me personally knows that I´m not easy at hand with such words but you are a great person and you deserve them!
You and Raffa keep on the good work you are doing with Massive Voodoo. I believe that there are great things coming out of the jungle in the future!

To all the jungle readers out there:
If there is ever the possibility for you to experience Roman at either a private practice (don´t know if he will do this again) or beginners or class or advanced class: Use it!
It will help you a lot to improve your painting skills. He is a great teacher and to have him at your side for a few ours is superb. You can ask questions and he will develop your skills according to your personal level. The private practice is worth every single euro. I don´t want to speak about prices here as I think it it is more than ok and compared to the free industrie out there... ok, stop,  I didn´t want to talk about it... :)

Thanks for reading so far and keep on happy painting,
Thorsten"