all right. All right. Here we go. All right. We'll give it a second to catch up out here and make sure it's actually working. All right. So chances are people are seeing us right now but they but I don't see us yet. That's how this work crazy world works. There it is. All right. Hello everybody and welcome to another interview with the time joined by Anthony Rodriguez, a pirate monkey painting. Hello sir. How are you doing? I am doing fantastic. Like we were talking about earlier. I've been excited about this since we talked about it at GenCon. So. Yeah man. You were one of the judges there this year.  You've painted for competition. You have won tons of awards, painted some amazing pieces one of which is up on the screen right now. We're going to look at a lot more of your art later. You are somebody who I've just I've loved the what you've been doing with your art for for many many years. I'm just I'm thrilled to have you on the show. Hey, thank you. Yeah. Thank you so much, man. Really really humbled by the kind words. I really mean that too. It's it's I'm still relatively like new artists and so receiving like compliments and accolades is something that I'm still learning to you know receive the the right way but and you know I I'd love to say the same thing about yourself. I really only got introduced to your work this year. Like I've seen you running around places you know at Hans and you know I knew that you're everybody that I've talked to has said that you're incredibly you know nice kind guy excellent excellent teacher and yeah it's just you know this even though it's a small world sometimes past just don't cross right so. No I get it like I mean you know we are our mutual mutual friend Anthony Wang like I didn't really get to sit down and talk to him until like not this year like basically earlier this year yeah yeah anyway let's talk about let's talk about a a lot of different things today we're going to be going through your journey I'm really excited because you have done just what I love about the pieces you sent me is it's this wonderful mix of stuff and if all of you visit Pirate Monkey painting which although again links to all Anthony's socials and to his site to his Patreon all of that is down in the description I would highly encourage you to go check those out but what you're going to see is just an immense amount of variance in your work what I love is you know we've got stuff like right now I have a more historical piece up that maybe people would think of as a more maybe a more classical bust right but then when you look at the stuff that you've done you've got things that are very exploratory and impressionistic you've got high fantasy pieces you've got like you know traditional games workshop stuff it's all over the map and I love it you just you seem to have such a wide variance of interest like if it's in this hobby you haven't want to paint it I think that's awesome yeah yeah for sure and you know a large part of that comes from the fact that like when I was you know we'll talk about this here in a second when I was coming up through my journey I kind of hit a stopping point and this was I'm trying to think it was probably 2013 late 2013 early 2014 where I was just like I don't have any more miniature painting tutorials that I feel like I'm learning from and so I started looking at illustrators and they were like look at the old masters and then that's kind of what led to trying more exploratory stuff like like you were saying like impressionism you know painting in pastel like Van Gogh I've even done a study of a surrealist bust that was originally done by Dolly that I you know kind of did on my own on a bust myself so there and it's just fun not not trying to push the boundaries but just like what you said exploring and having fun right right well that's a good place to start let's start with your journey in miniature painting I think that's that's usually where we begin on the show we begin at the beginning so how did you get into miniature painting like what was the what was the impetus there so it's it's kind of like a two part story the first part kind of takes place when I was you know 12 13 years old and then I picked back up later on in life when I was when I was young and when I was a kid my mom was sick and we were out Pennsylvania my family traveled around quite a bit when I was young and we were at a mall kind of like it was like I want to say like a few days after Thanksgiving or something and there was a game's workshop store my brother saw you know the I think it was the battle from a crag you know starter boxing he was like that looks cool I don't know what it is but I want it and he ended up being really good at the game I ended up really enjoying painting and all the stories and all the lore and everything sure um so I really got into that um really got into that when I was you know that age entered into youngbloods at Chicago I think was Chicago 2006 okay um games day and I got like best runner up in youngbloods and then you know girl started to look more pretty and you know I got more involved with school and choir and all that um you know just didn't really have the time or the you know the money at that age to really invest into it um and so yeah you know I got out of it and then I'm trying to think I'm pretty sure it was 2013 like late 2013 actually around this time um my then girlfriend uh that her and her family played D&D okay and she was like hey you know we need some minis painted for this campaign that we're playing can you help out with that a little bit and um you know she you know because I talked to her about having done it when I was a kid right and so I was like yeah of course like you know I might not give it a try you know I really wasn't doing much um I was in the Marine Reserve the Marine Corps Reserve at the time and kind of going to school and working part time so I had a fair amount of free time to kind of play around with and so I did that loved it bought back into it um try to get into war machine hordes wasn't good at it at all um and yeah from there it wasn't it didn't take too long for me to get into like a master class um and so I went and I took my first master class and you know kind of saw not a different side of it but just that like oh hey there's people that take this very seriously right but then on the other side like hey there's people that make a living doing this too that's really cool um kind of proceeded to get into things like painting Buddha um just watching you know miniature painting tutorials on youtube most of 2014 I went to my first adepticon crystal brush and you know got to meet a lot of the a lot of the painting people you know from Europe that came over um I'm not a person either that really fanboys and so and I've lived in other countries and so that cultural divide wasn't as significant for me and so it was very easy for me just to just have a conversation with somebody like Ben Komitz um or even Kiril Kanaev or you know just I mean just a lot of the people from Europe that were coming over and that was kind of the other dip into it where I was like oh hey these these guys are just like normal people like I can just hang out and have conversations with them sometimes and you know like they're incredible and of course that was inspiring too but um there's kind of like a shift that happened and I was like okay I'm really going to get into this um you know I I'm I'm sure kind of at that time to my relationship was degrading a little bit and so I was just trying to find something to fill the time sure um and yeah so later that year I went out and I had a masterclass with um Alfonso Banshee yep and that was incredible I had already kind of dipped my toe eye opening I suppose to a degree right it was relatively eye opening the the first day was like a refresher course for me sure and a part of the reason why I say that is um probably a month or two after adepticon I was running out of resources from the miniature painting world and um thankfully the Google algorithm was like hey check out this this guy his name is Noah Bradley he's a illustrator who does work for uh Wizards of the Coast magic gathering yeah sure um all that good stuff and that was really my first introduction to um master studies and some more of the more not fine art like maybe illustrators and fine art kind of theories of how to learn and so probably a month or so maybe month or two before I went out to Colorado for that you know workshop with Banshee I really dipped really heavily into color theory compositional theory just a lot of these more yeah and so the second day though was really where I was starting to feel pushed and Alfonso was great too because I showed him a lot of the work that I had been doing before the master class and he was like if you keep doing this and you use what we talked about in this class like you're going to do very well because you know I don't know how much you know about Alfonso but he does a lot of illustration and drawing and painting outside of the miniature side of things for himself I'm very jealous of his illustration ability to completely rank he's great it's terrible too because he thinks he's terrible and so it's just like no listen man like you're good at this he compares himself to like masters though like master like you know people have been professionally just doing illustration for like 20 years and so it's not it's not a fair comparison there's always a bigger fish there's always a bigger fish exactly and if there's not a bigger fish and there's somebody that does something completely different than you and they're incredible at it and you know you wish you could do that right right so yeah so after that it was pretty much just you know the the relationship with that girlfriend ended and I found myself with more free time than I knew what to do with right and so you know it was kind of a slow dipping into but I started to escalate the amount of time that I was spending studying and painting probably from like you know before that happened I was maybe painting one hour maybe two hours a day if it was a good day and then it started transitioning into four hours a day you know and then it started to shift into like you know three or four hours of miniature painting and an hour or two of study and then it got to the point where it was like I would wake up in the morning it was two hours of you know drawing and master studies I would work my ten hour shift I would come home and it was another two to four hours of master studies in miniature painting and so I was really pushing myself I was really grinding out a lot of hours in the days that I had off I was probably painting anywhere between six to I would say you know six to eight hours sometimes I would do more right so almost to the point that it wasn't healthy but I have no problems admitting that just because I didn't have anything else to do I wasn't in a great place psychologically and I knew that if I didn't occupy my time then I would slip into something else that wasn't as favorable right you know it was great too because I had time to exercise and you know hike and go to movies and I had a lot of you know money that I just I wasn't spending a ton of money because I wasn't like you know if you don't leave your house yeah it's great yeah and I'm not the kind of guy who's like yeah it's Friday I'm gonna go out clubbing or go to the bar that's just not my not my style and so yeah then later that year my my brother and sister-in-law were in town for the holidays and I was like hey I've been thinking about this I think I might want to go to Europe and kind of just travel and explore and just kind of learn and just get out kind of start fresh right you know when you've been in a relationship that long and it just capsizes and you kind of need a little bit of a fresh start so I think that's one of the best things that a person can do and I've always wanted to go to Europe right and and so they're like great idea go for it and so yeah I pretty much just spent the next four-ish months three and a half four-ish months and I had already been saving but I just was pushing even harder to save and so yeah went to a depth con that year and what was it mid or early April I think I hopped on a plane with a one-way ticket to Dublin and then to England and that's where I you know found myself in Europe for like six months I think almost that's so crazy yeah I love like I had known you had done this but I never knew the details and so I'm so fascinated by this so you're over there yeah like almost six months you're what like biking around just hanging out with artists learning from is that the idea yeah pretty much like I literally used a full tourist visa to England and a full tourist visa in the the European visa area called the Schengen zone and so and yeah before I had gone over you know of course I had gone back into like I was telling you exercising and I had kind of fallen on the idea of something called bike touring essentially you just have a bike you put bags on your bike and you like your bike all over the country right so that was you know that was like one of the goals of the trip and something that I did quite a lot of when I was there so um so got over to England flew from Toronto Toronto to Dublin and I found out that there is like a $300 price difference if instead of flying to London Heathrow or one of the other London airports if I flew to Dublin I could get a ticket for about $650 and then from Dublin to London it was like 40 $40 nice yeah and instead of 1200 right right right right so I probably saved like four or $500 on travel expenses and that was enough for me to say I'm not going to spend the money here on a bike and take it there I'm just going to buy a bike there um and that's what I did um after a few weeks of uh I had a friend um Jack Crow I don't know if you remember him or if you are are aware of him uh he was one of the painting Buddha guys had gotten to know fairly well really really lovely guy he you know I he's kind of been out of the community for a while now but I hope he's doing well um but yeah so he he let me stay with him um for a couple months it was it was like two two and a half months but you know he was I don't want to say in a bad spot but he was just kind of almost in a similar spot that I was where he was just kind of in a reorienting kind of headspace yep and it was really great because the creative energy that we both kind of gave to each other was fantastic you know we would usually spend most of the day in the studio painting and working and there wasn't really any pressure to like work right um or pressure to produce it was more of a you know sometimes we just sit for hours and talk you know art theory or philosophy or books or movies and that kind of stuff and kind of ideas and how to pull those into you know a more visually creative medium um and then also lots of like we would go and hike around the countryside and you know he he lived kind of way outside of London and absolutely beautiful countryside um and yeah that was that was quite a few that was a couple months um and then one day you know we were walking around on the countryside and I hurt my ankle pretty badly um actually kind of like rolled it both ways and I know it sounds crazy but I guess it's a thing and I did it um and so I was pretty much on that bed rest but I was I was pretty much on a couch or in a chair for um about a week and a half ish and it still wasn't great it was still kind of weak but like I ordered my bike to a place in London and um so I was like alright time to go get the bike downtown London like it was my first time too taking the London underground system on my own because you know Jack had a previous engagement so he couldn't come with me and um and so yeah it went downtown got my bike you know figured out all the hours that I could take my bike on the underground in which rails I could take my bike on the underground right and um had my first little adventure of like cycling in downtown London which was a blast I'm kind of an adrenaline junkie okay as you're saying it must be if that was an enjoyable experience yeah and so I was like oh this is the best um it was a little bit crazy you know I kind of get in traffic and I kind of knew you know I'd have the google maps in my ear kind of saying like you know turn left here and I would kind of I was able to navigate fairly well and get to the underground thing and then that did most of the leg work until I got back to that area and um yeah after that it was really just kind of resting and I think I had about a week and a half maybe two weeks before I was leaving for France and so I kind of did a small build up um of like alright today I'm gonna do you know 10 or 15 pounds in my bags right and I'm gonna cycle 10 miles or something and then I'm gonna you know I'm gonna do like 20 pounds and I'm gonna cycle you know 15 or 20 miles or something and so I was able to do it and kind of get used to the different balance of the bike and um I don't know how much my bags weighed when I actually left but they weren't light I know that much um and yeah then I went to to France um over to Paris I went over to Paris and I was on my own I was really on my own um from then until I got to Spain and so Paris was incredible um kind of going back to London Jack took me to a lot of the art museums and our gallery met a lot of the the miniature painters from that area um and we actually went to the games day there in um oh where is it it's kind of like up in Coventry yeah Coventry I think yeah and um it was really cool because it was like um it was 2016 in the last games at Benzio was 2006 and so it was kind of a ten year full circle of like hey like it's been ten years and I'm back doing this in the place that like when I was a kid I wish that I had I could have gone to right right and so um that was great um entered a entered a piece but nobody had thought to tell me that like games workshop had become very strict about like the color of the skin for the orcs and so I painted the orcs skin like red oh yeah sure they were like oh no like you may as well just not have entered because they're they literally renamed them green skins like if it's not green it's you know it doesn't count pretty much it sounds like whatever um anyway that was a great conduit because I got to meet a lot of other people yeah sure from the European community I got to meet Volamir um there's a guy Perceful um out of the Czech Republic um some more of the Spanish guys the Polish guys well that's just it a lot of those like a lot of the main land European guys will come up for that you know for that fest for that games day because again just like you saw with the cheap flight from Dublin they can basically hop a cheap same day flight that morning for not many euros at all go up there compete go home that evening right it's a one day trip like it's so cost effective for them it's the kind of experience that you don't have here in America no and I mean it would be it would be equivalent from flying from like maybe Chicago to um maybe like Dallas like it's not very far like even from Poland like from Poland to England like it's not a long flight and their their airfare is very affordable their travels very affordable so so many of the child was saying it sounds like the rocky movie for painting yes it makes me think of Pokemon 2 and it was kind of funny because Pokemon Go came out when I was in Europe and I was like oh yeah I can travel around and actually become the Pokemon master absolutely absolutely um but yeah so had that experience went to Paris um I had one of my rules when I was traveling solo was like I don't want to you know I couldn't afford it either I literally shoestring the whole the whole trip for maybe six or seven grand and so um I stayed in a lot of Airbnbs um a couple hostels and I actually camped a lot um which was really cool so anyway did Paris um all the museums there the Paris experience kind of thing uh it was raining the whole time they were actually like record floods that year oh wow um well that had a new fun for the bike then yeah it was it was it was really cool um it just it was interesting seeing all the locals taking pictures of the river because you know like oh this is legit like if the locals are doing it and not the tourists like um so yeah and then I cycled from Paris all the way to um kind of the one of the border areas of Spain which is in Sebastian Spain um and that that trip took me I want to say about 10 or 11 days um and it was about it was almost 700 miles um and so it wasn't it it sounds like a lot but like I was only doing it in like 40 to I think my average miles per day was like 55 which is still pretty good yeah it's still pretty good you know it it's not like I'm like going though you know like I'm just gonna go I maybe was going like you know 7, 8, 9, 10 miles an hour average and you know if you just kind of take it easy and go you can cover a lot of miles it's it's interesting because it's about the equivalent um the equivalent speed as it would be if you were riding horseback which is really the way that Europe is meant to be traveled right because that's how the society was structured for so long um and so yeah got to Spain um a little bit earlier on the bike thing I had aggravated the ankle again and so I took it easy in San Sebastian which is absolutely incredible place it's like the kind of place like if I could retire anywhere that's where right it's one of those like kind of secret places um out of the 10 alright nobody people at home yeah don't don't share yeah keep it on the down low um so out of the 10 best restaurants in the world three of them are in San Sebastian my god yeah so just the the street food was like incredible um so yeah and then from there I went to Madrid and that's really where like the next kind of big like exciting kind of stuff happened um I stayed in Madrid for about two and a half weeks um I found that Airbnb it was literally downtown Madrid which was incredible um of course did the museums there you know uh did the Prado the rena sofia which is like the modern art gallery and the historical art gallery and a couple of the smaller ones um probably one of my favorites though was the uh Joaquin Sorolla he's a structural impressionist okay uh and those those guys are the guys that really you know kind of get me going I really love those guys um but then even more exciting than that I got to spend a lot of time with you know people like Banshee uh Mark Mosclon's Volomir um you know right uh the whole crew of big child creatives at the time was Sergio and uh Ruben Martinez and there's another guy um and yeah I mean a good bit of it was hanging out with Alfonso and Volomir just kind of like not even like painting it was more of just like the you know getting to know them and their their friends and you know like Alfonso's wife and Volomir's now wife and um you know and we did I did still go to their studio spaces and we did still talk miniatures but I was very upfront about the fact that like ham traveling I'm here to get to know you um and as much as I would love to pay for one-on-ones and tutoring I can't and so I just want to let you know that I'm here to build a friendship and not necessarily not necessarily try to like steal information or you know anything does that make sense I'm trying to totally guys yeah because you you don't want to put them over a barely what you weren't trying to do is say hey look I just biked all the way from Paris how about we go paint a little I know normally people would pay a large amount of money to sit down for several days of private instruction for you but I was thinking maybe you could just do me a solid right and that isn't what you wanted to do you were actually just there to hang out to be friends to just to take the culture the art everything and just build relationships and community well in so much to that I don't think a lot of people realize is that like if you can if you can get to the background of it's kind of like what we're doing that right now right like it's kind of like a informal interview to some extent where like we're getting to know each other and that's really inspiring like learning somebody's story is incredibly inspiring and when you have that insight you kind of know why they create art and if you can kind of like learn how to teach yourself with doing studies then and you get to know the person you can kind of learn from their style without having them looking over your shoulder right right and beyond that just like seeing their creative spaces and kind of like they're excited about it too they want to talk about it with up here as well right and so um you know especially with those like you know we like is one of those things like where we worked out together we got dinner together we like stayed in a park longer than we should have and you know I got to hang out with all the families and everything so there's those kind of experiences too which are just priceless right like you can't buy that you can't you can't buy that kind of experience or friendship so that's the kind of stuff that I love I love remembering and um you know on the on the miniature side of things I did get more formally invited by big child creatives to come out and be like hey come check out what we're doing you know come and hang out and paint um you know we'll show you around and so I got to see kind of how that business was set up how it was run how what their their pipeline of things kind of looked like um I got to sit down and paint and I could go over and you know I had shaken hands and I already knew quite a few people and so I could just go hey look at this like what needs to be done and I was at the level where they could just say you need to do this this and this and I could go away after just bugging them for like a minute and work but the nice thing too about that kind of space was that like there weren't just miniature painters right there were illustrators there were sculptors there were you know people from a lot of different creative backgrounds that could go you know this shape is wrong you need to do this with the color like and they could just kind of push you in a way that a miniature artist might not have because everybody's then approaching it from a slightly different focus right it's the lens through where you see what you're looking at there's also a lot of different artistic inspiration there because all of them are going to approach their craft slightly differently think about things differently like that's just such an amazing environment to be in because you're getting so many different perspectives and you know they all might end up in somewhat different somewhat somewhat of the same place that is to say they all end up at some finished artistic project right but how they got there how they thought about it the inspiration they took and how they manifested that into reality I think is going to be often very different and that's cool it's very different because it's constant collaboration and it's very different than like what I do here in my studio which is me sitting in a room all the time working on my own and I think that's a part of the reason why the US sometimes has a hard time getting like and I think the US is actually bridging the gap from where the Europeans are to where like our level is but they're just so much closer to each other that like you know you can just say hey can I like can I show you this in person and can we hang out and get a beer and you know just interact on that level instead of you know like hey I'll see you at ReaperCon or I'll see you at Nova like then I get to show you this thing that I've been working on in my studio for three months intermittently you know by myself alone in a room yeah you know one of the things I've talked about many times is in talking to and I mean it's it's a different it's a different end product and purpose but it's at the same time kind of similar so that the way the Heavy Metal team works is basically like 10 of them are in a room together and every project they do gets passed around to every other artist in the studio to review and look at it when they plan out a piece they all talk together about what they want it to look like right it's that collaboration and I think we often lack that a lot here you know because there's a lot of people that I'm friends with and I'll share work with but it's I'm sitting here working most days and every couple weeks maybe a month or something I'll send out a picture and say what do you think right how's that going and that's just a completely different experience than literally being able to lean over your shoulder and go hey man what are you doing there how's that going or you know whatever oh yeah yeah I mean even people that are somewhat geographically close to each other like there's a few people in St. Louis for instance like Kat Martin right I think there's I'm trying to remember there's somebody else in that area and they live they still live like one one and a half two hours away from each other and so it's still not like easy to get together right that even they wait for the con that happens at in St. Louis to actually meet up and even then and they're not like meeting up like they're just there to show their work and teach and hang out and so it's it's very it's a very different experience for sure but yeah so anyway got to the whole big child creative thing for a couple days just incredible experience and then that was kind of closer to the end of my time it was like the last week or so and then I couldn't renew my Airbnb anymore so I was like okay this is time like it's time to go and I you know I didn't get the chance to hang out with Alfonso so he was like hey just crash at my place for a night come to the studio hang out and paint and you know and so I got to go to Banshee's studio hang out, paint there you know I and he kind of worked and I just kind of painted and looked at his miniatures and you know kind of kind of his books and you know all the all the stuff and very very inspiring and yeah then that night just kind of hung out and I actually helped him his wife you know playing some of their honeymoon which was really great nice or his now wife I should say sure and yeah I mean it was just a really great time then the next day he took me to the bus station with my bike and I hopped on a bus to Barcelona and yeah Madrid was Madrid was great too for me just because I have Latin heritage of course and it was it was very interesting for me because it was one of the first places that I actually was like hey I'm just one of the people here I'm just normal here like there wasn't quite the like the look of like you know yeah what's the spanish guy doing you know and to the point where like I had tourists asking me in very poor Spanish like hey how do we get here and then I'd break out in perfect English and they'd be like oh you know but yeah so so Barcelona then so then I went to Barcelona Barcelona was really great I think Barcelona would have been better if I hadn't done San Sebastian before so I was very spoiled by San Sebastian I still had a great time in Barcelona I had made friends with a Scotsman when I was in Madrid and he was going to Barcelona a few days before I was and so hey he was like hey man we'll catch up we'll hang out I'll show you around so did Barcelona got to meet up with a miniature painter there called Gérome I think is his name he's a really lovely really really kind guy he kind of showed me around some of the non-touristy areas oh that's always awesome just always great you know we got to have some of the real like local food that wasn't like you know really shit paella for the tourists and so yeah I mean it was it was that was really cool and then I originally what I was kind of looking at doing was actually going down into I think it's Morocco and then cycling kind of the northern part of Africa but Africa in the Middle East in that region was kind of a bit more sketchy than I thought it was going to be at the time and so I just hopped on a ferry and it took me from Barcelona all the way over to Rome there's a port that kind of you know that Rome uses and so kind of got into that city took a train down to Rome and I was in Rome for oh yeah like probably Ostia or something is where you went into right yeah yeah something like that it's been a while so I'm having a hard time oh you're okay it's just a little city too I mean if you even want to call it a city but so yeah I was in Rome for four-ish days I was in the house Rome is absolutely chaotic I love Rome but it's like I really need to go to New York to see how it compares which city gets the award but it's almost like lawless to some extent because like nobody follows the like the road signs nobody you know like you can get on a bus without a ticket and nobody gives a shit it's very like you know it's very freewheeling to some extent there's still rules right but like a lot of the like I'm trying to think like if you compare it to like Germany for instance the rules are there for a reason you follow the rules they're not optional like in Rome a lot of the rules were optional and so it was really interesting that was kind of the first time that I had really experienced culture shock a little bit and I very quickly got over it it took like just a couple days and I was like okay this is how it goes this is how people do things okay I'm good and so yeah I just kind of did the big things you know went to some of the museums went to the Vatican you know saw all that art St. Peter's and what's the Michelangelo the big the Sistine Chapel all the you know kind of touristy stuff and saw the Coliseum I didn't feel like spending like like 50 or 60 euros to go into the Coliseum I was like I'm good I can see it from out here I would do the exact same thing I feel like nope this is good I got the idea I got to see the inside of it when I flew over it when I was coming back for a month or so it all works out so yeah but I really got to explore the city I love going kind of out of the beaten path and again I look very Latin and so when I was in Rome people just assumed that I like I might not have dressed the same way as a lot of the Romans would have but I looked tan enough and you know I have the right facial structure where people are just like wow he's just you know walking and so I never got bothered and so Rome was crazy the guy that I the guy that Airbnb that I stayed with too was like super nice and it was just like the most Italian kind of thing where he was like oh I'm so sorry I can't be there I want to you know I wish I could get to know you better and he was like but you know what I'm going to call my cousin he owns the pizzeria around the corner like just tell him I sent you and he's going to take care of you and like you know and it was a thing like I went over there and he was like you know what your son so his guests and friend and he's like you know we're just only going to charge you like half you know or something and he got me a free you know a couple glasses of wine and I thought the tab was going to be massive and they're like oh no you know it was just one of those really you know interesting experiences where it was just like you know I just you know you just don't expect it sometimes but it was great so anyway then I went to Florence Florence was amazing Florence is if you want if you need creative energy like if you're ever just like in a very low place you're like I need creative energy just go to Florence it's really good for like a week nothing too crazy happened besides visiting the museums just kind of if you just walk the city like the streets in Rome or Florence there's so much art and where'd I go from there from there I went to Venice but on the way to Venice I found out that Venice is extremely expensive surprise surprise right now are you still biking at this point or were you taking like bus or what were you doing at this point um yeah it was a mix of when I got to Italy Italy I really didn't feel like cycling Italy too much because it's sketchy they really don't have the infrastructure set up for it and so it was a lot of like I would use my bike to get around the city sometimes but I wasn't doing like distances and so until I got to Venice I had to cycle to the campground that I was staying at um so I got to Venice I kind of was walking around the city with a bike and I did not know how small the streets were like the streets are tiny like um some of them some of like the the good size street like my studio is maybe 10 feet like wall to wall the big streets are like this the small streets are maybe like 5 feet and so I was walking around Venice with my bike and so it was very very cramped and it took a while and so I was like I got to get out of here because this just is not this is not set up for me to do what I need to do it's expensive none of the museums here are too particularly interesting I need a break like I need a vacation for my vacation yeah sure and so what I ended up doing is I ended up kind of taking a ferry out to there's kind of this bay that surrounds Venice kind of in the center and I went to the kind of the northern ish one and I literally just camped there for like a week and a half just chilled and that was amazing like there was not a lot of cell phone signal or internet so I just I had a couple audio books so I listen to audio books I drew I swam in the sea and just kind of recuperated essentially and so yeah sorry I know I'm going through the whole kind of yeah yeah this is this is like a this is a singularly amazing experience so we're all going to live vicariously doing it okay so yeah from from Venice I finally sure if I told my wife I'm going to spend six months doing this I would be murdered I wouldn't make it to the plane you know that she'd be like no that's fine just don't ever come back oh man yeah yeah there's no way I could do it now either I'm glad I did it when I did it I was young I had had the money like I didn't mind eating the same kind of cheap food day in and day out sometimes and so so yeah let me see here so yeah I I went from from Venice I went up to Germany I had a friend from the US she's a high school friend she lives in Constance and where the Council of Nicaea took place for those who aren't familiar with it at one period in history there were actually three Popes and the Council of Nicaea is where they met to determine who was going to be like the Pope and so that was really cool for that part of our audience that isn't Catholic this is a good catch up yeah exactly and so that was really the second time that I experienced a little bit of culture shock and it was like we were talking about earlier because the German culture so much especially South Germany like Bavaria is so much more like rules like you know like even jaywalking oh yeah absolutely I remember I had a professor in college was telling a story about the time he had spent in Germany and he mentioned like how he had stepped off a road to jaywalk and some like the gentleman literally grabbed him by the shoulder and said to him in German we do not do that down toward the crosswalk that is a different world of rule following yeah it's very it was even more exaggerated because I was coming from Italy sure and and I've heard that same kind of story from quite a few people where they're like they'll literally they'll be confrontational about it but not like violent about it but if you continue to do it then they will call the police and so it was less that for me and more like a couple of people going like the kids like what are you doing and there was that and then of course my friend she had been living there with her boyfriend attending university for about a year and a half almost two years so she was very really fluent and it was like just follow me if you're good like just don't do something like unless I do it kind of thing and so I think I was there for maybe four ish days and so I kind of got used to the rhythm of it pretty quickly and you know just this really just beautiful little town yeah it was really nice I mean the Alps are kind of right there to the south I forgot to say too that I went through Switzerland kind of going there and had a little little misadventure in Switzerland but nothing really you know beyond just kind of walking around the river near Zurich and you know having a really crazy Chinese you know Airbnb roommate for a night and meeting the Swiss version of the most interesting man in the world so my host in Switzerland was like essentially he said like one day I just decided I was going to quit my job I'm going to fly to Argentina buy a Land Rover and I'm going to drive to Alaska and that's what he did now that's a heck of a road trip I'm impressed yeah I've driven to Alaska but I started much more northly so I guess there you go so he you know he kind of liked me because I was kind of doing this whole adventure kind of thing but anyway um so yeah I Germany and then I got in it was like three or four days with my friend and then you know I had kind of been messaging Roman the pot and he was like you need to come now if you're going to come because I have a I have a one-on-one this weekend and I can't have you here when that's going on so I was like alright I told my friend hey I gotta go and she was like okay bye I hadn't planned on being there for a super long time to begin with and so yeah took off to Augsburg um and I think I spent how long was it it wasn't very long I think it was like two two days maybe three days with Roman um I think it was two days and a night it wasn't long but he it was literally like the only time that I could have got to spend time with him essentially and it's Roman the pot right sure sure he's an amazing guy so um took off really early that day on bike cycled maybe 20 miles to a train station that could get me to Munich that could then get me to Augsburg um got there kind of like mid late morning hung out went to his studio um spent the afternoon evening in his studio he took me to a little kind of local diner not diner I should say like restaurant um they had very traditional south German food so that was really great um and yeah I mean it was it's Roman like Romans he's great because he's kind of like uh he's like an artist but he's also a bit of a philosopher to some extent like he's very like spiritual and very like um I don't know there's he you know I mean you know the guys got an energy about him and absolutely being where he lives and kind of getting to know him at that level was very very interesting because he's a small town guy like he loves where he lives he doesn't want to go anywhere else like he you know it's and so it was very interesting because our personalities in that way were very contrasted where I haven't really lived anywhere longer than three years of my entire life and so um yeah it was very interesting and it was incredible too because I got to stay at his his apartment yeah it like in his studio actually was where he had the like the pull out you know couch oh wow and so I literally got to sleep next to like a ton of his you know just incredible pieces including uh what is it the the last light yeah last literally literally the last thing I saw before I fell asleep was the last light that's amazing it was it was just one of those like you know very surreal experiences and so yeah then we uh kind of got up you know went around got some breakfast um met up with uh the guy who was going to be his student for the one-on-one that weekend who actually ended up being um Joshua lie um are you familiar with him no no so Joshua lie does he's really incredible kind of like um micro um display bases he works a lot with like the acrylic resin okay um and so that it was very interesting because it actually that was the introduction of those two guys who hadn't really met and it was something that actually ended up blossoming into a very good relationship that he actually Joshua actually became a part of the massive voodoo team oh wow that's so cool yeah I was really it was really interesting uh it was kind of cool to be there for like a little a little bit of the miniature world history in Europe so um I was going to say so yeah I went from um I was like uh you know I kind of was asking Roman like where should I go next and he was like you know Berlin Poland or the Czech Republic and he was like you need to go to you should go to one of those places and um so I actually had actually made a friend from the Czech Republic like I was saying earlier you're in England and so I was like hey man can I come hang out for like a week um and the Czech Republic is actually out of the Schengen area so or maybe it's in I can't remember um but anyway when did the Czech Republic for a week got there like late at night um probably later than was safe um it that was again like talking about culture shock that was really culture shock for me everything else was like kind of you know western culture ish sure right sure the Czech Republic is like you know of course it was in the you know eastern block Soviet Union yeah and so it was very different seeing the architecture and the way that the city was laid out and you know all of those things for me was very foreign I wasn't expecting it and so cycled up to my you know to my friends you know he was kind of late from work and so I was just like just chilling you know outside this very very Soviet looking looking apartment complex and it was just like I hope I'm in the right spot bro really don't feel I really don't feel like you know popping a tent over here and you know push my luck um and uh so he finally showed up and you know we got up and hung out and chatted and you know late into the night as those things go and um the next day I guess I had done something and I had aggravated my sciatic nerve and so I was literally laid out for like almost a week wow which was it was a bummer because I really wanted to explore the city a little bit more he was great though like I did my best kind of like um like I cooked a lot for him for instance and he I love cooking that's kind of like my hobby um and so I did that kind of thing for him like I buy like beers and just kind of fun stuff just to kind of try to thank him for you know taking care of me showing up and then not being able to yeah um I still painted but I literally like had to paint in like the prone position um and we would just kind of hang out and watch Star Trek and you know paint nice and um so yeah um I finally like got better and was able to explore the city and you know I really didn't go to any museums by that time like I was starting to run a little bit thin on cash um and yeah so from there from Prague I went to Berlin Berlin is amazing that was I love that city that city was really really great the um I don't I don't know like I what I try to explain to people is like it's like Chicago is really chilled out like um and then of course like I did a lot of cycling there too because the infrastructure is so well set up for it um of course I got to hang out people um got to spend a little bit of time with Massachusetts um got to spend a couple days with Ben which was really cool I actually got to go over to Ben's flat and see a studio and all that good um I actually met up with Michael from painting Buddha and I like he actually let me crash at his place for a couple nights so and I like the place where I slept was actually the painting booty Buddha studio so it's where they filmed and recorded like you know did a lot of the editing for all the painting Buddha stuff which was awesome really in the guy was like a miniature painting or a miniature collector like literally had a room full of like warhammer fantasy and 40k stuff man who would have a room full of warhammer fantasy and 40k stuff what a weirdo he said looking around behind him no I get you no no but not like like um like wall like floor to ceiling like the entire room packed my hopeful future state I'm aiming at yes I got you it was probably like a 10 foot by like 20 25 foot room just packed literally floor to ceiling almost that's amazing and so the warhammer all the warhammer stuff and then also rackum stuff I mean there was just like an incredible amount of like you know it's like candy land like you know maca chocolate factory where you know but the guy is just very very like more ideas than a lot of people but the problem for him was that he just had a hard time focusing on one idea and that was a part of kind of why painting Buddha died is that it was hard to get him to focus and he he was the one who was investing the cash into things as well so it was a whole dynamic and it was very interesting kind of talking to I should really do some kind of like article right I was like almost accidentally doing like journalism yeah it almost does investigative journalism here yeah you were on the street getting the real story exactly like I was spending time within talking with you know Michael Matt and Ben and so and then also just kind of hearing I heard another side of it because I was staying with England and so like you know I could probably do like a few thousand word article this many years later but anyway so um yeah Germany was great Berlin was amazing and then I finally went back to England I was going to I got to a point where I was like I can either cycle to the Netherlands and push my luck with how fast I can cycle to the Netherlands to get on a boat to Scotland or I can um or I can just take a train to the Netherlands, ferry over to Scotland or I can just fly back to London and so I got to the train station and I was finding out how much the ticket was and the ticket was like expensive it was much more expensive than I thought it was going to be and um so I was like you know I'm just going to hang out in Berlin for like a few more days and then I'm just going to fly back to London sure and just just kind of rest and I had already had accommodations in the London area set up um and that's what I ended up doing I ended up spending a few more days with my friends in Berlin back to London um and then spent time with a couple of a couple of people in the London area um I ended up spending about a month in almost two months with the guy that runs Mr. Lee's miniatures I don't know if you're familiar with Kyle Cruikshank really really love the guy his family really nice guy um that was a great shout out to Mr. Lee's like a lot of times I'll see people like people will see busts and they'll be like where can I get that awesome bust and the answer is always Mr. Lee's mini's like that if you're interested in that kind of thing it's where you should be going he has so much great stuff yeah and it was very interesting like he was a great guy to spend time with they were outside of London outside of London like in a city called Bezing Stoke which I lovingly nicknamed Amazing Stoke uh his he hated it it was it was so funny um and so it was really interesting talking to somebody who wasn't from England because I learned a lot about the cultural nuances of English culture um and so that was very interesting you know also kind of seeing like the business side of things with how he was getting miniatures and selling them and you know I kind of went around a few little different shows um with him that were local and then uh I'm trying to think went to Euro Militaire that was one of the bigger ones nice um and that was another one it was a little bit smaller than Montesson Savino but they also had all the vendor stuff and it was on um where is it it's kind of a it's a very famous port um like Dover is it in Dover or something it's very close let me see I'll find it here in just one second not to slow things down here you're fine it's all good Folkstone okay so Folkstone was where a lot of the the troops were ferried from England to France and World War one ah okay um and it's actually where all the people from Dunkirk got ferried over to if you know about the Dunkirk incident at all yes um and so I knew about it before that movie yeah I did yeah I still was kind of aware of the history of it a little bit um but yeah it was it was really interesting seeing like the like what used to be just massive naval infrastructure um that was grossly deteriorating of course you can still see it um and so I actually ended up camping there as well it was really cool I you know I got to camp for a couple nights on the the English coast and it was I loved it like the winds were super intense it was just kind of cold enough that you know you needed like a sweatshirt and you know your tent and you know your sleeping bag and everything so um you know I I didn't do great at that show I didn't do terribly because it's a much more strictly historical show um but still you know kind of got to meet some people and make some more relationships and you know all that good stuff um and yeah I was literally in a bazing-stoke with um Kyle until Montesson Savino went over to Montesson Savino which was just kind of like a flurry of flights trains and you know trying as hard as I could not to spend money because I needed to get home um and yeah flew into New York you know this was like mid-November um and got home like right before my brother and sister-in-law got back or came in and had Thanksgiving so it was very very good time hell of a trip my friend it was and at the end of the trip though kind of the whole time I had been deciding like do I want to do this professionally like do I really want to be a professional miniature painter because well and you had just spent so much time with so many people that are doing it professionally and in a lot of different ways in a lot of different ways and um you know it was important too because you know you're kind of determining the path that your life is going to go to which is always kind of a it's nerve wracking right because you know there's kind of the decision of like oh if I do this you know I might not make the most money but I'm going to really love what I do every day um and I talked to a lot of people and I finally talked to Alfonso Banshee and he was like dude you just got to make up your mind you need to do it or not like if like if you if you um if you can't do it like if you don't feel like doing it then don't do it because you're not going to enjoy it and like do it with the understanding that like you're not going to die a rich man but you're going to die having a very full life um and so I was you know that was kind of like a very deciding factor and like I remember where I was I was on a walk in a Basing Stoke and it's really beautiful it was like a three mile like walking you know path and I remember almost exactly where I was you know having that conversation with him and yeah I mean here I am two years later you know paying the bills so that's right it was the right choice it was the right choice yeah and so yeah when I got back from my Europe adventure that was where I was like I'm a professional miniature painter this is day one um and yeah it's just been painting and working and working and painting you know ever since then um you know going on to shows kind of getting into the the circuit of hands and teaching and um yeah I mean it's it's a I love the life I you know sometimes you know it I love the freedom that it kind of gives me but then there's also sometimes where it's like oh man I gotta this is crunch time I gotta get this commission done like you know so and of course you just meet so many amazing people um you know you build up a little bit of a fan base of you know a group of people that you know like your work and what you're doing and you know you get to do the same with other people and you know you build amazing friendships and it becomes a lot more than work just because it's so it's like it's like work it's art it's community and friendship and like it's I love it so much because to some extent like it's a family that you get to choose yep yep and I've never really had that in another job like I kind of come close to having that with other work but it's not the same because it's like you only really see each other at work right like sometimes you might have a friend outside of work but you're not like I don't know well we say it all the time we'll be like oh yeah that's one of my work friends or something like that yeah yeah all right you can hear the language exactly yeah the language and the yeah exactly so yeah um and yeah I've been very fortunate to have done well in some shows and that helps you know kind of get my name out and I've been very fortunate to be able to teach a lot of these shows you know using and kind of disseminating what I learned when I was in Europe and kind of what I've learned from the fine art side of things and just from my own experience um and then yeah I mean just the whole gamut of I feel like I've had this really fortunate trajectory that not a lot of other artists have where you know I've only been painting for like five and half six years total as in this is my like I'm coming up to the second the end of the second year as a professional full professional and like to go from broke because when I got back from Europe I was literally broke I literally had like that was yep like it was like when I was in New York I was like okay I can get a coffee in this two dollar bagel and I'll have five dollars left in my account for when I get home like that's how shoestring I like that's how close I came so to go from being like completely broke to you know married with a kid paying my bills debt free um you know has been to be fair even for me a little bit surprising um but it's like you know I've always treated it like a business and I've always worked really really hard at it um and so I think that's a big part of why it is where it is um and you know the other part of it too is just trying to put myself at the right place at the right time to meet the right people because that that's a part of it too right yep um and so yeah I mean it's just all those kind of different things like it's like that road to success looks all kind of crazy yeah it's very joining me yeah exactly what's that one dot that dot what's that that's Tuesdays in July and sometimes never oh man she is so great but yeah that's my that's my story very nice well it's a crazy one it is a crazy one I mean that has to be one of the craziest stories so far on this show and I love it so let's take a look at some of that work that came out of that let's look at some of the earlier pieces here alright okay so we're gonna bring up here I am starting with Magnus the red so the original original recipe Magnus I should say because obviously he's had a couple different versions over the years this is not the this is the 30k version or whatever out of the featured character series as opposed to the big 40k monster but yeah the one that Aaron likes a lot probably and I think I I think you submitted this at Crystal Brush I think you were in line like right in front of me this year because this is from this is from 2018 18 yeah yeah yeah pretty sure you were in line like right in front of me like I was sitting there watching you turn this in yes cool nice man but yeah this one I was fortunate enough to win bronze at Crystal Brush that year so that was the first time that I had placed at Crystal Brush so it took me like three years essentially to go from like not even making the cut to placing in single figure sci-fi but I'm very like even though you know it's not a gold or it's not anything like that but it's any kind of award at Crystal Brush is like absolutely yes 100% that's not yeah there's only three and the competition is stiff to say the least yes this year whoo man we can talk about that later sure absolutely so yeah this piece was this was most of the pieces that I do are for private clients like most of the competition pieces that you see for me are commissions I almost don't get to keep any of it just because you know keeping the lights on is always the priority right so this is for a guy that's out in Australia and it was it was kind of a interesting it was an interesting process because I had I had been learning a lot of I don't want to I'm trying to think of the right way to put it it was kind of new technique but it was more more like I'm trying to think he kind of wanted a little bit of a traditional GW look to it but just in NMM and in my style and so what he kind of that was kind of the parameters that he gave me what I was learning a lot about at that time it's something that myself and a lot of other illustrators and fine artists refer to as shape language which is essentially that like specific shapes interact with light in very very specific ways and though it doesn't change like it's essentially like it's scientific to some extent right you know this can is always going to be because it's a cylinder it's going to have a highlight going down this way right essentially but then kind of thinking like in the big general shapes to the smaller specific shapes right and so this was kind of a this was kind of like the culmination of a lot of that information and even in the way that I treated the hair I never I when I painted the hair even because it's so complex I was like I'm either going to lose myself in the complexity or I can forget about the complexity entirely and I can just work this big shapes down to the teeny teeny tiny shapes and so I did that with pretty much everything really except for like the little kind of wispy white bits that are coming off of him because there's some things that you have to rule of cool right otherwise it just won't look right for a miniature but the way that I started was with air brushing just because it can kind of help you find those general shapes to some extent and then from there for the all the gold all the gold M.M. was what I worked first and it was really just a I need to it was more of a I need to bump up the value like the highlights the whites to really make it look reflective and then I need to pick out everything I need to pick out all the details and then I need to clean everything up and so it was that kind of focusing on the big shapes down to the little shapes and just all the way through the miniature and I had some really fun little happy accidents happen most of the miniature kind of turned out the way that I had it in my head with the exception of like the I'm trying to think of what they call it's like the thing that's attached to his belt is it like a tabard with the the blueish crystal actually called something else but let's call it the tabard because that's what I would call it to and somebody corrected me once on the show and said no it's actually called to this and I was like oh that's interesting and then that immediately left my head so so yeah I those blue crystals I was just like okay I'm going to do some kind of like blue reflective thing and I you know I I got done with it it was kind of like probably close to the end of the day and I took a picture of it and then I woke up the next morning and looked at the and I was like oh that looks like like a crystal or it looks like a you know it looks really shiny like not just like you know not just like because you know how sometimes with miniatures NMM doesn't look like a true metallic surface of course like that actually felt like realistic to some extent for me I don't know if that if that makes sense but it does yeah so I think one of the things I'm fascinated with this is is is you're like let's call it sort of a mauve or peach magenta infused shadows in the gold you know you use it on the torso you use it on the left arm it's some it's in some of the the giant winged belt buckle is like ages belt buckle or whatever you know and it's just a really interesting shadow color like yeah I can see it placed around in several places and it's just a fascinating addition because you could have gone for you know a more standard sort of brown infused shadow right in the gold but instead I really like it because you've actually hidden some more quote-unquote red and you're actually playing with several different red tones on Magnus the red here an interesting way like his skin is very much like in the you've got that that peachy red spectrum into his skin obviously his hair you know your purple that you've used is a very red purple in the interior of his cloak so it's just fascinating all these little color infusions I like it and to touch on like the gold armor one of my favorite favorite colors is snake bite leather from the older GW sets like the black hex pots and so I was trying to figure out how to mix it and this was years before I painted this and I figured out that you know it's what is it it's yellow like a kind of like a warmish yellow with a purple or magenta and then you have to add a little bit of red to it to shift it the right way and so what I was playing around with was like hey what happens when I add more purple or magenta to this right I really bump up the saturation almost of the purple magenta tone and that goes into the shadows and then what happens if like I put that in all of my shadows like if I have that kind of consistency in a little bit more of a subtle area does it cooperate well and so I try to use that as a little bit of a compositional tool with almost everything except for like the whites his and his hair and I didn't do with a hair of course because that's supposed to like really pull you up and of course the whites it probably would have looked good if I had glazed a little bit of it in but with this just like with a lot of things there's always time restrictions and you know there were time restrictions to get it to the competition and then there were also time restrictions in terms of how much how much I could paint this you know in terms of hours before I was starting to lose or go below what my rate would be for the client so it's always kind of a battle between all of those things but yeah I you know yeah I love I really like looking at some of these pieces I haven't seen for a little while and so like the way the cloak turned out I was really pleased with it feels just smooth enough and just like it's interacting with that harsh light enough that it's you know kind of popping without being distracting absolutely yeah it's got a nice silky feel it does yeah and yeah this guy was almost painted in like a fever dream it seemed like alright next up we have now is this a full size warlord or is this a warlord out of the adeptus titanicus that is a full size warlord okay I need to know the story behind this one because having participated in the painting of one of these things recently I decided that I never ever want to do this again because it is a freaking nightmare they are they are a work for sure you ain't kidding building a house from scratch is work yeah a lot of pieces so tell me about this guy so this was this is actually the first titan that I've painted ever painted I was like if I'm gonna do it I'm gonna do it right so I had a client who so the first mountain you ever climbed was Mount Everest got it yeah exactly pretty much yeah if nothing that I told you before this has told you anything I really I like to go for the biggest thing I can you know early on I don't know what there is about my personality that is like that but it's like you know if there's a big thing I want to climb it like you know if there's a goal or objective I'm gonna work really hard to do it kind of the same with this I was like I'm gonna do this because everything else is gonna be downhill right from painting warlord you know and I had a manifold so I was doing a warlord and then a a reaver and then a warhound and so yeah I hope you've got a big studio my friend oh man yeah it like the room was like it was funny because like from almost like a month or so I had just warlords on that table back there which was great so yeah so I had a client had done work for him and he was like hey I've got a friend he wants a quote on titans on a couple titans and I was like okay awesome and the client actually ended up being one of the lead organizers for Depticon which was really cool oh okay cool and so yeah I got it I kind of knew what to expect like my expectation was maybe like maybe fourths the size that he actually was here's your question did you get it already like pre-cleaned with the resin or did you just get like the raw pieces oh I got some boxes I got the boxes from London oh my god yeah and so it was like to be fair I really enjoyed it because it was a little bit like it was a process and not so like there's definitely the creative element to it but I had had I started working on this I think when my son was three or four months old and so my son at the time was just like maybe an inch or two taller than the warlord Titan which was really funny it was really adorable and so it was nice having something where like it wasn't so much a creative exercise as much as like a you know I don't know how to they're almost more of a traditional scale modeling type of challenge yeah exactly and I got to bring out those tools out of the toolbox which I hadn't been able to for a long time and the headspace that I was in as well was that of the manufacture of a Titan and not so much like because you know how most of the time when you get into painting something or at least for me when I do I kind of try to get into a character's headspace I kind of get into that like why do they look this way why do they have these scratches or this air you're trying to place the figure in the world understand its point of view it's life what was it doing what is it doing why is it like how it is now whereas like with this it was like more like I'm the fabricator general like you know building and you know painting a Titan so it was a really really great experience kind of getting to pull out those scale modeling techniques thankfully the cast was really good and so I didn't have to fight the cast too much to get it together that's good which was a blessing because I just built one that had much more casting issues and it wasn't too bad but it was just bad enough that I had to do like you know a few hours of sculpting work just kind of you know even some stuff out but yeah it was great too because I got to kind of build more relationships too with some people from you know the more scale modeling side of the Warhammer community which was really fun and break out all the weathering techniques and kind of getting lots of weathering right and you know it was a great opportunity for me too to kind of you know how before I was talking about that theory of shape language where like you know you have shapes they interact consistently with light and it was kind of like okay great I get to test this theory on something way bigger now right right right and it also has like some really interesting but well-defined shapes right and combinations of shapes yeah yeah and you can I mean you can really see you know you can see those shapes more clearly on anything that's like a cylinder and then like the little like crotch guard you don't know another word for it and so yeah that was it was it got tedious in some parts but then there were other parts where it was like oh my god this is so amazing like when you start to see it come together and then it's done too and you get to take a step back and be like this could be a prop in a movie it looked good like you know so it and then of course getting to do all the freehand work on the you know on like the the knees and whatever and yeah so it was a it was a very unique experience and it's one that I you know now looking back on it especially I'm very proud of and yeah it was kind of the first time too that I had gotten a job that big sure you know which was kind of almost like a test like can I actually do something of this size in time and you know yeah exactly yeah so it was you know it was it was a bunch of those kind of like it was not only like kind of a fun unique creative thing but then also kind of like a fun like work side of things because it's like oh man like this is great like I'm getting paid to do this this is like different so anyway I'm talking in circles now but no you're fine I had never worked on something that scale in the painting the reaver afterwards was like oh this is fun sure you know then I got my hands on a night and I was like oh this is cute yeah yeah um so yeah that was a good time so somebody in the chat asked what did you use for your rust on your Titan here what did I use for my rust I use the AK interactive rust set most of the rust on this guy is the light rust enamel okay um and what's great about um working at this scale and kind of using those uh those scale modeling processes is that they're very dependent on like you do a big kind of segment of it and then you varnish it right and then you do another segment of it and then you varnish it and so what it does is it's almost like building and locking layers in Photoshop where like build something you set it you build something you set it and then you do extra work over that right in order to do like I did the rust I did I did the the kind of grimeyness like the darker almost like black brownish stuff all around the inside of the armor plates and that was I can't remember exactly it was it was an interactive enamel um I just can't remember the name of it it was a bunch of things mixed up because I was running out of things so I was like yeah I poured into a thing okay that looks dark and brown um right and then of course all the rust and you know almost to the point of obsession where like you know if if it was a bolt you know if it like it all got you know I it almost turned in it almost started turning into a little bit of a camp spending too much time on this kind of thing but I still you get into the rhythm right with like yeah bolt attack the bolt attack the bolt attack the bolt it becomes this very Zen process on these big machines yeah it does yeah and I mean especially because like it was my like it was my time away from you know the house and in my own space and so I kind of like it's almost like what the dolphins do and they swim where like you're half sleeping right right because of course like Theo my son's name is Theo he was like you know three or four months old so it was very sleep deprived time but yeah great time nice alright next up we have uh uh what's his name alfarious is that it the our alpha legion guy is that who he is yeah it is yeah I know I know 40k stuff there we go I got it yeah everybody's alfarious I guess I am alfarious yeah so yeah this guy this was this was the same client that I did Magnus and Russ for and so he was very very fun this was kind of a this was kind of like um I'm trying to think of a good way to put it it was almost like a monochromatic kind of thing that I was going for not so much monochromatic but like harmonic yeah where I wanted all of the colors to be in one area yeah like an analogous color scheme where you're just you're you're literally hugging a very close side of the of the sort of traditional color wheel right yeah and so there were a bunch of other tech technical things that I had wanted to play around with as well um this was kind of coming off of the coming off of the steps of reading a book called um I'm trying to remember the full title of this like glazing like traditional techniques or something like that and really it's a book that really gets into the way that the old masters would paint um and the way that the old masters would paint is of course by using glazes of oil paint of like very very intense transparent colors in order to get very very permanent very vibrant colors right right like 500 years later they still look super intense right and so a lot of it kind of to get into some more of the intricacies of the technique comes into um how how your underpainting is done which of course has a little bit of gray scale underneath that I worked on like almost a sketch but just very lightly because I did a lot of the heavy lifting with the airbrush um and then what I did was essentially glaze from like the upper kind of yellow green colors into the turquoises and then into the blues which were phthalo blues but the other thing that I did there was I made my highlights more opaque and more um more eggshellish, flatish kind of texture whereas the shadows were very glossy and what that does is it not only gives the illusion of depth even more depth than is actually there but it also just like really less the colors kind of do different things like phthalo blue red shade if enough of it is accumulated and you turn it into light it actually starts to give off reds um and ultramarine does similar things where if enough of it is stacked on top of itself it will start to give off purples um and so you can do some really interesting nuance work with those kind of techniques um and then the other thing too that I had completely accidentally done when I started painting this guy or you know it wasn't when I started painting I was like midway through what I was doing with the armor and I was like what do I need to do this is just missing something and I accidentally watched Aquaman and was like well this was this was a good thing because all of those guys have almost this exact kind of like scale armor so I was like oh I can just you know I and so I pulled a little bit of reference and kind of you know I probably I think I watched the movie a couple times and you know I kind of figured out like okay what I need to do is I literally need to go through all the scales and make sure that all of them have their own little shadow and all of them have their own little pinprick of highlights right because in you know there there's a part of me that was like is this gonna work I did it in the little test area I think it was like the arm like the bracer on his arm and I was like okay it looks kind of cool right here is gonna work with everything and so I did I think I did like the shoulder pad or the rest of the arm and I was like okay I think this is gonna work and I did it I you know it took like probably a day a day and a half to go through just all the armor little you know all on the scales and all the little dots because each each of the scales has a little thought of white and that was also kind of an experiment too because it was like okay is the underlying value gonna influence these dots of white and it did right it ended up looking great so yeah it was it was a really interesting experience or experiment the majority of the like I think almost the entire miniature is painted with I want to say like six or seven colors total very limited palette very limited palette and it's kind of great too because it has that diorama feel I was trying to do the white scar in a color that was like relative to the scene so he still feels somewhat white or ivory or almost like he's in a cast light kind of environment with all the greens and everything some people liked it some people didn't it was kind of a one of those things that was like I don't know about this but well if there's ever anything that's gonna make people go well I don't know about this it's gonna be painting a space marine even slightly a different color than what everybody thinks it's supposed to be exactly yeah it's it's so funny to me sometimes how and I mean I love 40k I love 40k to death but it's almost started to turn into what the historical community does a little bit right where you have people that will go like all the skull on that space marine's head it needs to be silver not gold right exactly oh you know well the French soldiers in the winter period of that engagement actually had gotten new gear in and so they were actually in this shade of blue and they had a different actually had a different rope around their left shoulder and it's like oh Jesus Pete yeah and so you know some kind of yeah I always do my best just to be like oh thank you you know and right you know that I'll be like okay like all right your rules lawyer like just enjoy it like you know yeah believe me I understand I put a lot of time into like an imperial fist captain and I he had a couple elements I was like oh you know it'd be fun if I added a little green to this that'll be a nice little contrasting color just on some on some and he's a captain he can customize his armor he's easy in charge you know right and now people did not that was not that was not a popular choice so that's okay that's all right all right so then we've got this fantastic barbarian and I love this guy just because this is such a wonderful example of I think my favorite thing to paint and think to be expressive which with which is is skin tones and you've captured so many wonderful tones in this like this guy has such a wonderful muscularity to him thank you and you've really captured it well and like the yellow the red the blue it's all working so well here in that he just he feels like he's out on a bright sunny day like it's great thank you man yeah and this was this was one of those I actually this was the last piece that I painted when I was in England before what a sense of you know and so a lot of this is like when I see it now I'm like oh yeah I was painting the you know the English I was painting the path that I walked almost every day for almost two months nice and so I you know now looking back on it I can very clearly see and kind of capturing the the that sunlight that warm sunlight that would come through when you know the clouds are clear and everything and also just kind of try this is kind of like the culmination of almost that entire year of you know this whole not only the adventure in England but also kind of like the the adventure that led up to it and everything so trying a lot of different things trying to incorporate you know on the bear all the markings on the bear and everything is all in oils and in pastel try to kind of add something almost sculpturally through the paint onto the model and then yeah just just really you know going at it with the skin tone just really trying to replicate a lot of what I had seen without you know copying directly right and yeah I mean it even for me was one of those things where I would kind of work on it like element by element and by the time that I got to the end of it you know end of painting the model I was like it does this gonna work and then I built the base and I kind of you know was when I was building the base was kind of where the storytelling started to kind of like creep into my mind of like why like you know going back to the the whole character thing character building is like why is this guy so angry yeah like you know like there's not a lot of reason for somebody just to be this angry for no reason right and so I kind of finally came to the point where I was like um it turned into a little vignette of grief like if you rotate it around you can actually see there's like two candles and two different skulls and one of the skulls is a little bit smaller than bigger one so you can kind of understand for that implication that like it's probably his wife and a child to some extent like and then from there you know if you're looking for it and you're trying to figure out the story you can kind of figure out like hey maybe this guy has some of these magical elements from things that he killed and he's back where the story began you know having gone through this and he's like maybe you know it's like that story of like does vengeance like it doesn't fix things like it kind of does but it doesn't like you can't replace things that you've lost necessarily so it was kind of an interesting it was one of the first times for me personally that I had actually put that level of thought into it and whether or not somebody else understood that was irrelevant to me at that point it was my story that I was telling and so and then also just trying a ton of techniques that I had kind of been itching to try itching to experiment with and he ended up doing he ended up earning me a what was it it was a silver and you know sci-fi fantasy standard nice so I was one of I think six or seven that year in standard category that placed in that level so you know it was yeah I there's so much that goes into it like there's so much trial and error on the skin tone and I think that's sometimes what like you almost have to do and what makes it work and something that I figured out now you know just by doing more study and more research is that like if you add on just tons and tons and tons and tons of um transparent layers eventually what happens is you start to get this almost like luminous kind of thing going on with your skin tones where it's actually starting to behave the way that skin actually behaves because of the way that light's interacting with the surface and I think a lot of people some people experience that like the way that I did where they just work so hard at something that they just like beat it to death in that like I painted the way that the character looks like it was barbaric to some extent like it was refined but barbaric in the sense that like I just hit it enough times until it behaved sure so yeah and then then all the other things you know the the NMM and all of that it was just this was kind of almost catching on to the idea of shape language I had kind of figured out that like my highlights need to all orient a certain way right I had to really learn from the big child guys like how to stack my highlights and shadows in a way that compositionally looks very appealing um like the best example that I have of it is if you look at like the shoulder like his um on my side it's the shoulder it's the hand with the axe if you look at the top of it it falls from like the highlight to a really dark shadow and then immediately it picks up really really bright from there and so that's just one of those things where like if you have an overlapping kind of shape and rhythm like that it's in your best interest to go bright to dark and then bright to dark and what I hadn't really figured out at that point was how to connect all of it and you know that's something that comes with more research and experience I've figured out at this point but it's you know this was like at the time this was my masterwork this was the best that I could have done right like so it's yeah I have a lot of this is one that I have a lot of like emotional connection to just because it was for that and it was it was interesting to because like I literally traveled around with this thing in a shoebox for months for months and people were people were like people were almost angry sure like Elisabeth Elisabeth Beckley's reaction was like why are you doing this why are you putting this in a shoebox yeah and so it was great though because I you know I showed up you know with a couple days close and my miniatures that I was taking to the show right and so I pulled out the shoebox right and I started packing it and you know there's a few of the kind of people that are there and I got there pretty early so I could get it all out and you know all that good stuff and Ben was there and there are a couple of you know I think Matt Sushooks was there and you know there are a couple of other people and I start taking this thing out and I take out my shoebox and then I you know I start unwrapping all of the the paper towel and then the shrink wrap and people are like oh he's taking out his entries Ben thought it was hilarious because he was like I would not expect anything less from you and so you know I got everything out and you know it survived it survived all the way from England to Rome to Montesense of you know back again and then to New York and then I'm trying to think I think by the time I got back to the U.S. and by the time I took it to Adepticon I had actually built myself a wooden box and so it wasn't quite as terrible. I said like I took it to I can't remember where but I took it somewhere and I took it out and I had had it packed the same way and there are just a bunch of people that were like you're why are you traveling with it that way and I was like it works it works it doesn't it doesn't break it doesn't chip you know as long as it's in there securely but still has like room to move a little bit yeah well I mean that's one of the things that's magical is like if you want to keep your miniature safe when you ship them wrap them in like wrap them three four five times with some shrink wrap you're good I always use like shrink wrap and then bubble wrap and then I'll put like a little newspaper around the outside just for the cushion around the outside oh yeah but yeah this guy was this was like my little treaties on everything I knew at that time it was like looking back on it it's almost a little bit busy but like I just wanted to use I wanted to use everything I had learned from sort of from the trip and from your experiences yeah from like a depticon to that point right a depticon that years were really where it began because I did a depticon went home for a week packed moved out went to a master class from Kiril Kanaev and then literally two or three days after that master class flew to England there you go and of course the whole adventure so yeah this was a yeah I mean do you have any other questions about it too man no it's great it's fantastic I here's my only light here's the last question I'll leave on did you intentionally make the environmental setting the summer to fall transition as a mirror to the emotional state no it does that so well done is like that's what I think it lines up there you know what I mean with that story when you when you said that story and then I it made me it suddenly recontextualized the environment for me yeah and it you know I can even see that now even more so like I intentionally did the spiral because I wanted people to follow the spiral right um but yeah the way that I work there's some of its intentional usually I start working and I let the I let the work speak to me usually it's like midway to like two thirds of the way through a project and then even then I usually I'm just like you know this piece has a lot of emotion in it from the get go but I don't get to do that as much now because of the way that I work um and but yeah this guy definitely had that and I can see it now as well like I just don't think of all those things I really let my subconscious kind of do a lot of work for me is if I tried too hard at it it just I just wouldn't work well you can end up overthinking it as well yeah yeah you have to like and this is why you know I was talking earlier about structural impressionism and why I like it so much is that like the were the guys and just as like a point of reference um for everybody watching structural impressionists are like uh money and uh Joaquin Sorolla and John Singer Sargent are all really famous structural impressionists because they still used the draftsmanship of like how to paint or how to draw and create structure underlying structure with anatomy and gesture and all the all those fundamentals for fine art and then they would do the impressionism in the work with the light on top of that right and so that's kind of like that's what I try to do with my work I like to know all the structure and a lot of the science and theory behind what I'm doing but when I work I don't try to actively think about that when I work then I'm going into what I feel or what you know what I want my person who's looking at it to experience maybe a little bit yeah right yeah because the structure is going to be there I'm going to use the structure no matter what because I've I've thought about it consciously and meditated on it so much and observed it so much that it's going to come out right so anyway nice alright so then next up we've got uh the bust so this is uh this is I don't remember his name but he's the guy from from p3 or from Privateer Press I should say yeah everybody always jokes around that he looks like uh what's that he's an actor um frac what is it he was like a really famous actor from like the mid 80s but anyway um yeah this guy was like the let's have let's have fun with NMM like let's see how far we can like push texture with NMM and yeah the gold the gold armor was really where I started and it took like three different iterations for it to get to this point um this was very early on yeah magnipii yeah that nice oh he does look like Tom Stelik okay yeah there we there it is yeah that mustache yes the box art two um looks like an actor as well Sam the the older version Sam Elliott yeah yeah there you go yes so yeah the gold armor went through like three different iterations um trying to figure out exactly how to work it right and that was really where I started um and then I started it then I started working on kind of the steel MN you know looking back on it now some of it works really well some of it doesn't but I was really trying to play with the idea of bounce light to some extent or like light yeah and then I even tried to play around a little bit with that on the gold kind of by introducing those green notes you know to make it integrate with the blue a little bit better um and that was really the focus of it like the blue armor itself like in some ways looks really good but um this was very kind of sketchy as well I'm trying to I think I painted this guy over the course of like three days or something sure um I didn't have any commissions at the time so I was like okay I'm just gonna there's this competition for this miniature I'm just gonna kind of sit down and I was probably waiting on something in the mail and so I was like I'm just gonna play with this and paint it and he ended up turning out fairly well I'm not super happy with the like the white highlights on the blue armor but like the backside the whole generator the power generator back there um I feel like turned out really well I did something with a like a disc the way that it reflected yeah yeah yeah but there were there were a few technical errors this is one of those ones that just felt very like um it felt like an illustration almost more than a yeah 100% 100% like if when you when you look at a lot of illustrations for games and art and stuff making like all they they have access often to like computer software and even then they're not ultra smooth blending it right they are being like more impressionistic in things casting some hard light having some hard lines because it's actually visually interesting those hard lines add a lot of visual confusion on the 2d page right right yeah the the add a lot of distinction and then yeah you're right the way that a lot of the illustrators render materials is not super super smooth and this is kind of like where I'm at to you where like you know I know that gold armor even beaten gold armor wouldn't look like that but I know that if I paint it in this way with this style it'll look really satisfying right and I think that's kind of where I landed on with this one um was just like okay let's just play around with a bunch of different materials let's play around with a bunch of different materials I'm still trying to make the character the focus um but yeah let's just let's just try out a bunch of ideas and see how they work together and let's try to force them to work or make them work or as many of these new ideas as I can you know of like you know that the bounce light and the you know just the different color interactions and you know some of it succeeded and some of it failed I think this is a good example for me too of like you know this is like almost a 50-50 for me and failure right also that like because I failed so much in some areas with this it it put me in conversations with people where I learned how to fix them and I learned how to understand more about why they weren't correct necessarily and I think that's an important thing like it's like you know how sometimes you know the have you ever heard that saying we're like the best way to get the best way to the right information on the internet is to post the wrong thing oh yeah yeah sure everybody is going to tell you why that's fascinating yeah absolutely yep and so this was a little bit of that not intentionally necessarily but it was more of like a I feel like this isn't right and I don't know why and so I'm just going to kind of get it to a point of you know finish maybe like 80 90% and then be done yeah because like if I spend more time past that I'm not going to be learning anything new and so why should I spend more time past that right and so then when I took it to a couple of competitions you know I started getting like oh you know if you did this with your OSL you know you should you need to research additive light you know you need to you know maybe take a look at the way that you know these things actually reflect light you know all these all these incredible bits of feedback that like really helped push me to that next train of thought that I might not have had naturally or I might have had to fight more for you know without having done this piece so it's awesome all right and then the next piece is the I don't remember this guy's name it's the big orc rager dude yeah with the two weapons and what's fascinating about this is you sent some of the whip shots as well along so if you want to talk about this or like whatever I'm going to circle cycle through the whip I put them in what I think is the proper order so like we start with the sort of base some very you know base coloration and then he gets the yellow added as well as you know you're setting some of the other values of just you know kind of colors in for what you think other things are going to be and then we can see the back and then you know adding a lot of the white for like the highlights and stuff like that so yeah yeah I'm sorry I'm trying to get all the because all the images are kind of out of order here on my side yeah I tried my best to guess what I thought the order was no no no you're fine man um let me see here let me go back to so yeah this was um like remember how I was talking about the barbarian yeah the skin tone develop this is actually kind of very similar this is an evolved version of that to some extent because um this is like the barbarian skin with an additional almost two years of knowledge on top of it right so the way that I started it was um of course zenithal priming and then I what I did is I kind of washed or glazed um a red oxide and so with this guy I set the goal I'm only going to use pure pigments I'm only going to use you know pure pigments out of the bottle I'm going to mix everything myself um and what I found out is that I actually don't have to mix a ton I just let transparency do a lot of the heavy lifting for sure we using like traditional HBAs artist acrylics chimera what were you using yeah I was using uh chimera and golden acrylics golden fluid acrylics one of my main and then shrink a titanium white those were the colors um and so yeah I of course did a couple of washes glazes with the red oxide and then from there I just started to kind of sketch up my highlights and everything using um essentially just using a combination of different things I didn't really know where I was going I had a reference I had some reference from that I pulled from uh you know Blizzard uh World Warcraft all that good stuff and I really just tried to use that as a point of reference and kind of try to find my way to a point of like transparency in you know underpainting to where it felt right the other thing too though that I had really strongly developed at this point which is a little bit more of an advanced concept to some extent um is having like different zones of um highlighting in shading maybe I can I don't know if I can send you a picture really quick of it because it it would help make sense and I'll kind of keep talking about it as I go um the idea though is that you have like let's say have like a highlight zone right like uh my forehead um within this zone of highlights there's gonna be there's gonna be a highlight a mid-tone and a shadow just for the highlight zone right right for the mid-tone zone there's also going to be a highlight a mid-tone and a shadow but my highlight for my mid-tone might only be like a mid-tone or even a shadow for the highlight right right and so actually like quantifying that thinking and actually saying okay this this actually functions well I'm gonna focus big shapes down to medium shapes and I'm going to kind of do that process of like I'm gonna work out my highlights I'm gonna glaze over it which is kind of where it goes to you know back to the orange the really orange tone that you're seeing and I had to play around with that a couple of times to get the the hue correct um and then from there what I started to do is really implement all of the um here the here it is um that's where I really started to implement those those value zones kind of kind of thinking so here let me send you this image okay sure put it up if you care to sure that should be it yeah that's it you can kind of see it a little bit more more closely there and I have it all written out and all kind of and this is the way that I also that I do master studies um you know not necessarily by you know you can see what this is for a student I was really outlining the shapes just to get the student to think about like each of the shapes uh give me just a moment I'll bring it up here on screen while you're talking about it just one second no problem and I'm kind of because it's a good no it's a good reference all right should be here in just you know a momento um so yeah I was really utilizing that and then um I also you know I've got that image up now okay awesome so yeah I mean you can really you can really see the way that I outlined all the shapes really basic shapes even though they have a lot of complexity um sorry folks that my face is kind of covering that a little but most of it's still visible sorry about that and so yeah it really is too because the human anatomy looks very very complex but if you can simplify it it helps so much because and this is something that miniature painters do a lot in my opinion is they go like oh details details details details details um and the problem is is that they're so focused on the details that they lose sight of the big picture right so that's something that I'm a very big proponent of is like ignore all the details and focus on the big structural things first and of course teaching what those big structural things are and then from there then we go into the medium size things right and then only at the very end are you allowed to focus on the details yeah I think of it a lot like I try to explain is like an inverted pyramid right I'm starting no matter what it is I'm starting with just the biggest shapes volumes at the largest scale right and then I just slowly bring it to the point that you pick your section exactly and yeah I mean you can kind of see over there on the top left side of it like um the the the mid tone for the highlights on the highlight area you can see it you know kind of placed into the mid tone section it looks like a highlight right and then the same you know with like a mid tone shadow in the mids is a highlight in the shadows right um and so there's just all these kind of that was what I was thinking of and then the other thing that I was thinking of to make this even more complex I hope this is all interesting very interesting for you guys is I really wanted to play around with the idea of ambient ambient occlusion and ambient light right and the the thinking behind that is like you have a big light source like the sun right and that cast light but and you guys can kind of see it in space right like when the sun cast light and there's no atmosphere you have black shadows because there's no light there's no light um but what happens when the sunlight hits the atmosphere is the atmosphere diffuses it and so if there's a cast shadow the light that's coming in that's been diffused what shifts into a blue or hue comes into the shadows and so what I did though is I took the saturation slider and I ramped it up a little bit yeah so let's go back to the photo and there we can see so if we look at the final product we can see how much you've pushed sort of the the almost the blue shadows which is also works great and is super fun against the the orange skin right we've got a natural sort of uh complimentary color scheme there where it's it's really making the orange seem more intense by upping the saturation on the blue right yeah and you know one of the things that I did here I actually have the picture kind of as we're talking I worked as a customer like service agent at T-Mobile for a long time and so I can like talk and do things on the computer for a lot of one thing that I did as well is I actually learned how to use a new tool which is Blender it's a 3d programming or a 3d animation tool and actually can simulate light environments very very well and so I actually did a light simulation to be like hey is this something that I can do that's going to look well is somewhat realistic that maybe I can artistically push the limits of a little bit and I did the the you know the simulation and found out that like hey this actually kind of functions well and so I decided to push it on the model itself before before any who actually touched the model um it was really just you know that analogous harmonic kind of yellows through oranges and reds reddish browns kind of things before the blue started to get mixed in and added and then intensified even and so this was a this is a black I love this this is one of my favorite pieces that I've ever done um this was another one too where you know the client you know hired me to paint it at a very high level in the amount of time gave me the opportunity to kind of tell that story and I mean if you guys are familiar with War the Warcraft at all you know that one of the big things with an orc is the fact that they've been enslaved and so it's kind of like why is this orc angry he's fighting for his freedom it's not it doesn't become that barbaric aggressive orc anymore it humanizes it it makes it relatable and you know it turns it into like a symbol of something and not just of anger and fear right right yeah so and besides all the things that are going on in China right now I know it's kind of weird to talk about that with you know all of that going on but um but yeah I mean on top of that too you can kind of see going from the barbarian to this orc and kind of talking about how to connect all of the tissue you know you can those lessons have been learned um kind of the the ability to kind of differentiate those zones of highlights and shadows and the different zones of highlighting shadow um gave me the opportunity to really perfect like the muscle like the sinew in the transparency of the muscle on the chest and you know all kind like I really advanced you know this was kind of the most advanced non-metallic metal that I had painted um at the time because I had really refined ideas about what light does when it interacts with different like levels of chromatic metal um so there are a bunch of a bunch of new theories that had gone into this um and this for me and I think you can probably relate to this you know talking professionally is that sometimes when you work professionally it doesn't feel like you're growing sure um and for me like the first like year and a half or so I was like am I growing I'm just grinding out except peace and so I did this piece and was like oh yeah I'm getting better still okay this is okay right yeah it can be one of those concerns I'm gonna flip back to you here put your back up on the screen uh yeah I absolutely agree it can be one of those things where you're like you can kind of get into a rhythm and wonder if you're still actually pushing yourself because you don't have the time you know what it is it's because you don't have the time necessarily to fail right right you don't have the time to fail you don't really have the time to like look at what you're doing like in retrospect yeah necessarily like it almost has to be something like this where it's been three months to a year or something like that and you're having a conversation with somebody and seeing your own work again with fresh eyes right right yep so all right so uh so let's let's start coming toward the end here we'll do some questions people in the audience watching if you have some questions for Anthony go ahead and drop them in the chat but I'm gonna start with my questions so here we go are you ready for the lighting round questions oh yeah all right question the first and you have to answer you have to you have to give an answer of just one you ready only one who is your favorite miniature painter past or present oh man yeah it's a hard question because you just named like 50 amazing people on your trip you met you know we all have like so many idols are so many amazing people but if you had to pick just one who would it be um I'm I'm gonna say Curel um I think Curel you just want to warn right you know what's that you kind of cut out there sorry did I lose you hold on okay there you are now you're back okay so yeah I said I said Curel gotcha yep very very excellent choice no no complaints there whatsoever uh and a popular selection amongst a very popular selection and answer that question yeah he's just the like the master I think in the absolutely all right do you have a do you have a favorite color a favorite color of paint you had to go to a single color hmm I don't I don't you know I I like warms all right there you go that's a good answer so the war the warm part of the spectrum is interesting to you do you find yourself turning cold colors into their warm version sometimes just have fun like using warmer greens or pushing warmer blues using warmer purples um it's more the yin yang of it I don't know if that's that's a good way to put it like the interaction between because they're always energy yeah yeah absolutely all right uh do you uh do you look your brush do you eat paint yeah what paint tastes the best or alternatively you can say what paint tastes the worst that's usually the easier one to answer yeah the one that I'm trying to think the one that tastes the worst I tasted some of the contrast paints recently and they are dretch it they are terrible yes they are it's that like whatever is in it it's got to be like that flow additive it oh god it's horrible by the way here's my official disclaimer don't eat paint kids this is just being joking okay we're not recommending you to eat paint don't eat paint everybody knows that there you go okay continue I did the math on it though so in order to go into acute toxic shock I'm right from consuming from consuming um even like very harmless um you know non-toxic acrylics we tend to have non-toxic acrylics you would have to consume something like I think it was like 20,000 pounds or 20,000 gallons of it within a couple of hours okay so like really really the only ones that you need to be really careful of are the ones that have like more lead yeah sure sure like the heavy metal things like that or stuff like that that's in there yeah yep all right uh my last question then we'll go to an audience question uh which is what is your favorite type of miniatures to paint and by the way type here means whatever you want it to mean okay I really love 75 millimeter um 75 millimeter it's just that you can be creative it's not so small that it's limiting in terms of because like when you get down to like 28 true you have to be extremely technically accurate in order to paint it well right and so it limits your creativity it becomes an exercise and technique and not so much in art and I feel like the bus gives the best arena to like tell stories be extremely creative kind of start to bend or you know push the boundaries of what you can do right and also learning because like when you're learning big it's easier to take what you learn big and transfer it small yeah agreed yeah 75 is for people who've never painted like 75 mil or bus I stuff I couldn't recommend it enough it is it is such a more I I don't want to say like non stressful or I don't know like it does feel like a more freeing experience is the best way I can say it's just it's strange it's a different it's a it has a completely different almost what I would say is tone to the experience that's literally the best way I could say it you know the whole experience feels different yeah yeah like like oh man I still have a lot of canvas that I need to fill like in terms of like color nuance and shadows and you know light and all this kind of stuff and I was like okay this is this is going to be fun this is more than I was expecting but it was also like what you were saying like a change in pace and tone so yep alright couple quick questions from the audience Ben Cantor our buddy Ben what's up Ben he says a big question for a rod any big golden demon plans and are you gunning for that sword um no really big no really big golden demon plans yet um I'm not one of those people that can really focus on projects months and months and months out like I really give myself like two or three months before okay and this you know this golden demon is going to be so intense and aggressive insane insane is the word you're looking for it is going to be a mad house I need to go into it with expectations of placing even are just you know I'm going to enter stuff and be like I entered right and that's where the expectations stop yes exactly my yeah the bar for success is did I hand my things over that yeah I mean you know not only that but there's going to be a lot of the European guys coming over and that raises the bar even more um and so it's just going to be so high and I know there's going to be other companies doing um competitions I in we can talk about the whole crystal brush games you know games day scenario to here in a minute if you I think it's a very interesting thing to talk but yeah I'm not gonna for that sword there's yeah yeah there's just I would if I started now I think I could make a run at it but I gotta keep the lights on there you go there you go alright uh Dave's question if you were doing uh that mid tone low tone painting technique on large areas of a tiny GW ultramarine uh which like what kind of paints would you use for all the different tones of blue so I want to amend Dave's question just a little bit rather than trying to get a paint names let's start with this would you try to break down on say like a standard you know heroic scale space marine that same stretch and would you go to different paints or would you go to more of like an artist palette where you're just mixing it you know you're starting from a sort of central blue or something and you're just kind of mixing out from there by adding in you know red tones or purples or something like that for your shadows and you know mixing in maybe some yellows lightly or maybe even a little white for your for your high tones so this is somewhere for me that I think is I wouldn't try to get that specific into the zones because there's not as much space intricate work intricate things going on like muscle demands like it just doesn't really function the same way especially because the objects are much more um they're much simpler right and so what I would do though is I would have a very simple palette like and I can give actual colors I would literally probably just use white phthalo blue green shade phthalo blue red shade phthalo blue green shade is relatively warm and phthalo blue red shade is relatively cool in terms of blue it sounds very axiomoronic they're all they're both cool colors in terms of their position on the color wheel one is closer to yellow and so it's warm and one takes longer to get around the color wheel and so it's cool you know and so you can really use that in terms of like you have your highlights and then you go into your warms because the warms are going to be on the upper part and then you shift in cool blue the bottom like the lower mid tones in the bottom parts right and you end up you end up with a really really beautiful space marine um I'm actually trying to find a picture because I actually painted a space marine this way not too long ago and I can send it to you nice uh while we're uh while you're doing that all since you since you can uh re-rolling one's jack's question is how much of your painting skill do you think is natural talent and how much of it is learned um that's a really great question it's a it's a challenging one too I think that I have um in terms of natural talent I do think that that natural talent talent is a thing um I think that I have natural talent in terms of an eye for light um how I see and understand light um but beyond that I would say I would say it's like five maybe ten percent talent ninety percent work um an artist should always be an artisan first right if it's because if it's not a craft if it's not like um if it's not a discipline before then you're going to be waiting around for the motivation in the the muse in the the creativity to flow and if you're doing that then you're never going to produce work and you have to produce and produce and produce like it's like what I told you like the first you know three and a half four years was really just me grinding out like the first two years was like oh man this is a fun hobby like I really enjoy doing this I'm going to spend a few hours doing this every day right and turn into I want to get good at this then I started grinding out four five ten you know eight ten sometimes ten hour days of study you know and when I would go to these museums I had a sketchbook and I had I was taking notes I was doing sketches you know I was doing studies when I was in Europe at these museums and so it was it's a all of that work is what facilitated my ability to be able to produce the level of work that I can produce and that's the most like I think that that needs to be told and emphasized so much more because it's not this like ephemeral thing like I just woke up one day and was like I'm good at this and I love too that I have the opportunity to teach because I've taught a few classes now on that concept of ambient light and usually at the end of the class I take my students outside so they can actually start to observe it outside of a controlled environment and it's like it's like looking at a great old one like it's almost too much sensory information because it all seems apparent and then you bring it to the conscious mind and then you're like oh wow there's this whole thing I didn't think about ever before right because your brain just knows it all out one of the examples that I give is that like I teach shape language right and I say okay cylinders like here's a cylinder the highlight matches the shape here's a sphere the highlight matches the shape here's a plane planes interact this way with light and I go okay does that make sense and everybody always goes oh yeah I have some people go oh yeah of course then I say how many times have you ever thought about light in this way before you heard me give you this information and that's when they all go oh never sure sure sure so there's so much of it that's learned that then has to be implemented and if you don't have that and then also seeing that and letting them take it from the perfect platonic forms of those shapes into how they're existing on our miniatures right where you'll often have an interesting combination where part of this shape is going to be like a cone or a cylinder but then there's also this other part over here that's a plane right where it transitioned and then there's a sphere on the side where it and so on and so forth right and all these things sort of get shoved together to make yep people or armor or whatever exactly and and like you have like and that's what I found and that's what I really try to emphasize with my my instruction is that I didn't have a lot of that when I started and I wish that I did I had to learn most of it by going to something else outside of miniature painting and you know I had to work really really hard to get to that point and so I try to ease that level of work for you know my students and you know the people that I talked to about miniature painting and art and but then you have to do the work to get good at it that's the no matter what it's like it's like he had just construction and you know contracting he couldn't build a house from the ground up if he hadn't worked really really hard over five years to learn how to do that he didn't wake up one morning and know how to frame a house it wasn't an instinctual thing but nobody ever asked the carpenter like oh you have such a talent or tells the carpenter it's just it's implied that there's work and so I think art there needs to start to be the same kind of like train of thought or understanding so I agree I'm sorry I went really really far I'm glad you did because it's a huge thing I don't know a single artist where at least 80, 85, 90% of their talent didn't of their, sorry of their capability there you go that's what I want to say didn't come from work and not just from you know people can often have it and I agree with you it's either light or maybe composition or color like some people are just really good at kind of having an innate sense of like how color works together well and stuff like that I've noticed that a lot where just you know you know my wife for example tends to have a good eye for color she doesn't have any formal training that's the thing but like the road from translating that to the capability of doing high quality work Michael Jordan had an immense amount of natural talent that then got him failed off of his college basketball team because he never worked hard to actually learn it and then he had to go and actually put in the hours and put in the practice and he had this huge resource of natural talent but only through hours and hours and hours of work the Beatles were amazing musicians no doubt but they also spent 60 hours a week for almost five years playing in you know German dive bars basically playing together putting in those hours to get skilled you know to really magnify what was undoubtedly a wealth of natural talent into being great right and that's and I think the thing is though is that once people get to that point like once people get to that point of um of success or like being recognized for their ability like a lot of times that's a person's initial introduction to that person right and because it's that person's initial introduction they assume that that person has always inherently had that right because it's their first taste of it I don't know totally makes sense and then the only thing they see of them is the finished work that is super high quality right yeah initial confirmation bias I don't know another way to put it and so um yeah it's I think that especially with art like especially with visual art it's something that I think that lately has started to be demystified a little bit more but it's still you know tricky yeah agreed all right well Anthony I think we've uh we've come to the end here sir this has been great yeah fantastic yeah it definitely has I it's it's a pleasure getting to chat with you more I'm looking forward to seeing you at the cons more now hey I'm absolutely man we're going to be hanging out with you I'm going to see you at adept con oh yeah one of these years Nova and Reaper con are going to happen on a separate date I'm sure of it and I'll see you at both of them definitely yeah and congratulations again on you know the best in show and all the success at gen con thank you it was a it was a pleasure you know in an honor being able to judge your work so yeah and let me tell you what let me just to return the favor and say this if you're looking if you know depending on whatever you do whatever you do for golden demon but also I'm judging for resin beast next year so you know maybe get yourself a creature caster thing I'd love to see a monster in that case from you that would be an honor to judge that's all I'll say yeah I would love to you I would really love to hopefully hopefully I can convince one of my clients to be like hey you should do a creature caster there you go all right somebody somebody watching this hit up Anthony creature caster commission let's make it happen all right we can get it out there somebody wants an awesome demon or monster and there is no better man you could select to do it remember look down in the description find Anthony socials his patreon obviously I think if you've seen the amazing work you've heard the amazing journey obviously this is a great guy to learn from go check him out so do please please please go follow him on everything participate in that patreon if you're interested but Anthony it's been an absolute pleasure buddy thank you so much for having me absolutely to you out there watching thank you very much everyone as always it is deeply appreciated and we'll see you next time