Improve your miniature painting with Roman Lappat's workshops!

"First to say, it was amazing to see the guys again after the beginner class in Erlangen in 2013. Since then I had the private coaching in my mind, tried to practice with some minis by my own at home and then I was very excited that I got the last spot in 2014 for private lessons. Like a self made pre-Christmas gift I arrived Tuesday in the morning cause I got only about two hours to drive to Augsburg from my hometown and was a bit early. Roman arrived at the studio at the same time and so we took a nice breakfast break and talked about my minis I brought with me as a reference to my "state of knowledge". Easy beginning.

My personal goal for the class was to improve painting metallics and maybe go for advanced light situations if there is enough time. In the conversation Roman and Raffa found out that the metallics are quite ok but I had a problem way earlier in my projects. It's about planing my minis and planing color areas.

Well yes, I haven't planed areas before... on no mini so far. I was painting minis just by intuition and doing color by color which lead me sometimes to good results or to dead-end roads without an idea to go further and then I lost my joy with it. This happened fortunately not that often but sometimes.

Second issue was that I started my minis to colorful. With this in mind, we couldn't use the mini I took as a WIP to finish during the coaching. Options were to prime it again or to do an new one and we choose to do the tribe Chief. Roman haven't painted him before, too. At first sight we thought it threw us back in the timeline but it was perfect to get an idea about the planing aspect. First time in my painting live Roman "forced" (sorry for this word) me to make a sketch of the mini... Well not one of my strong abilities.

I have to say, it gave me so much! Thanks mate to push me out of the comfort zone After that we startet airbrushing. I have a bit of knowledge about airbrushing so this step was relatively easy. Little side note: Roman wanted to see my progress and Raffa told him that he "hears" from my spraying style that it is ok, all of us laught really hard ;)

Generally speaking the chemistry and atmosphere in these two days was perfect, I had the feeling despite we met the second time ever we are on the same wavelength and know us for much longer time! Really good jokes, nice chats and easy listening to good music everybody enjoyed while painting as mad Thanks guys for this!!!

But back to topic: After airbrushing the skin we started to bring the base colors with the brush to the different materials like the leather strap and the helmet. After this step we did the eyes and started with the shadows and the highlights. Highlights shadows shadows highlight... Like Roman tells in every step by step at the end of day one after 12h of intense painting and learning we left the studio and I went to the hotel. 

Unfortunately there are two hotels in Augsburg with the same name and I (how should it else be) took the wrong one so I had to go another 15 mins by car straight trough the city at 11 pm.
In the morning of day two we went on with the face, pushed harder on the details and it felt like time flies while finding new details by new details! After noon we started with the metals, also many things to learn. Sadly I think I forgot many things right now because approximately 18h of intense brain filling since then took its toll.

Second day was also 10h of painting and learning and so in total it's about 22h of pure painting joy! After the coaching I started to improve my sketching skills and I think I'm on a good way. My sketchbook is always with me ...

Finally I have to say it was an intense, nearly perfect two day information "power fueling" of my brain and worth every euro. If it's possible I maybe take another two day brainwash ( ) this year after some practice at home. Thank you guys for the two days and hope we will meet again soon. Great pleasure to learn from you! Many greetings to the jungle and I hope it was not to bad to read the wall of text."

- Andy

Improve your miniature painting with Roman Lappat's workshops!