The noble art of Blanchitsu... and the new black...

If anyone has picked up the latest White Dwarf they may just find a little article called Blanchitsu where Mr John Blanche of art fame introduces some of my work along with that of Julian Bayliss. Well, in a sort of reverse I shall now talk a little about one of John's own pieces...



As you may already have read I plan to talk a lot about the new, or perhaps resurgence of, dirty painting techniques and my own probable struggle in achieving this. John's work is perhaps the perfect place to start as the modern miniature painting hobby pretty much started with him. I don't want to delve into that too much as I touched on it in my last post and want to make this one about one of John's recent figures.

John was kind enough to send me a number of notes on the figure. The base figure for this conversion and paintjob is one of the new plastic single figures that GW have released. In this case it is Brian Nelson's Wraith; a beautiful figure in it's own right. John was attracted to it's sense of movement and the large plain surfaces that create a blank canvas for the painter, a quality that I love in figures. He admits that there is not a huge potential for conversion without compromising the inherent simplicity of the sculpt but I think he's managed it anyway, certainly when you take a conversion as the idea of changing a figure's concept over simply physical alteration.



Rather interestingly, John is not making a hard statement on what the figure actually is. Possibly a psyker, either loyalist or renegade as part of a warband. An interesting point that unties him from worrying exactly how the figure should look and leaving room for expression. It also exemplifies the blurred line of good and evil in 40K. Personally it immediately makes me think of all the mad stuff that you get in the backgrounds of 40K art that is often hard to pin down on exactly what it is and what purpose it serves. Newcomers to the hobby may take the idea of servo skulls for granted but John was drawing them in the backgrounds of pics for years before they were nailed down to a specific thing. The question 'what are all those flying skulls about?' was a common question for GW creatives for many years.



John describes his technique as fast and dirty, trying to avoid over shading or artificially smoothing things out, going for what he calls a dark, earthy and entropic realism. It's a very painterly approach and often cites Rembrant as an inspiration. Of course a quick and dirty style doesn't literally mean quick. John does take his time using washes over a neat basecoat and then adding white for highlights. He remarks about the deliberately anarchic stitching on the back of the robe where he picked away with a scalpel in the glue seam before the glue completely set as if it was coming loose. A small detail that adds to the texture of the piece both physically and also in it's concept.



It's worth taking a close look at the pics, at all the little details and the texture of the piece. It's not at all easy to take a canvas this smooth and infuse it with such a raw and earthy look. I find this kind of work endlessly fascinating due to my rather more scientific approach to painting. I know from experience that just 'painting rough' does not get the results. Painting messy is easy, painting dirty but good is a whole different ball game in a different park, played by aliens...

Just in case you are wondering...

Brian Nelson Wraith
Cables from Cadian Command
Cut down Marine Bolter with nozzle from Cadian Lasgun
Head from Corpse Cart corpse
Plus bits from Grey Knight Sprue

There is, John says, amongst newcomers to the hobby to assume there is a magic solution to painting or some answer that can be told and suddenly you can paint. Alas, and I can confirm, it doesn't really work like that. It takes practice and experience. Hand eye brain learning as he puts it. Your hands and instincts might get there before your brain gets it. That's not to say that advice is useless, just that it takes more than an instruction guide to paint minis, especially if you want to forge your own path. And forging your own path is the new black!

A new power is rising...

Saruman had it right. We can always trust Saruman...

Today I'm going to be retreading some ground but it feels appropriate as this post is somewhat the start of a new direction for this blog. Well... at least for the time being.

I've talked a little in the past about the mini painting hobby still being rather young. The modern hobby that we enjoy pretty much had it's infancy in the seventies as pioneers started to think about 25mm figures as worth modelling and painting to more than a utilitarian standard, then onwards to a childhood in the 80s and 90s where the industry and it's hobbyists became very excitable and madness ensued (Chaos Toilets anyone?) but as that went on this child began to grow and figured out what worked. There came solid techniques, tried and tested and product formats that endured. This was where the modern painting hobby became what it is today. Then came the teenage years. The 2000s and pretty much up until now...

The teenage minis industry, rather like a person went a bit stroppy in it's way, metaphorically shouting 'you don't understand me' and desperately trying to rebel against what had come before. This was both good and bad. In it's rebellion the industry pushed the boundaries to work out what was possible and figure out what was 'cool'. There were a lot of boutique companies (and larger companies that acted similarly such as Rackham). There now existed a new cutting edge for minis. They were flamboyant and hyper detailed and there existed a new way of painting them that you were pretty much expected to aspire to. Perfect blends, subtle colouring, NMM (and it's flashy cousin SENMM). And often hundreds of hours on single figures brought forth from a new breed of 'painting celebrities'. And beautiful minis were created. However, there's a problem...

Like many of the 'rebellious teens' out there, in their rebellion they often don't realise how much they are actually conforming to something. Kind of like an emo or goth who thinks they're being really different... just like all the other millions of teenagers doing the same. Nothing especially wrong with it but there's a sense of 'you have to be different, just like me and everyone else or you're not doing it right' and the minis industry ended up in the same place. The minis became hyper detailed and the techniques incredibly intense processes. And I didn't see a lot of people talking about how much fun the ensuing figures were to achieve. I'm sure some people loved doing it but I saw a lot of people basically torturing themselves and burning out trying to do 'what they were supposed to do'.

In running Spyglass Miniatures I remember trying to do something different. My figures were simple and I always tried to have the idea that the figures didn't lend themselves to a particular colour scheme so people could quickly have fun painting them. Maybe I played the detail down to far sometimes but one thing I noticed over all the years I did this was that it was very difficult to sell them in the face of a screaming teenage industry going on about how such a thing wasn't 'right'. The other end of things, however, was that when people did buy them, I noticed that they often actually got painted and then I'd see the commentary on the paintjob saying how much fun it was to paint. Even if I was broke, it made me smile. I once sculpted a caricature zombie, 40mm tall, called Zzzz. One of my worst sellers. I think about 30 exist in the world. I think I've seen about twenty different painted ones. That's an incredible percentage to actually be painted. When people took a risk and tried something a little simpler they blatantly enjoyed it.

So, the industry as something of a stroppy teenager with an attitude of 'my way or the highway' and not overly concerned with people having fun as much as pushing the boundaries of what is possible... so what next. Well, one day, not so long ago, something happened that I've been expecting for a long while. It wasn't a single event as the hobby is too large for such things but somewhere along the line I think the hobby just said to itself...

MAN, REMEMBER WHEN I WAS A KID AND I JUST HAD FUN!

And in that statement I think the industry began to grow up and I feel we are taking the first steps into adulthood.

There's a new wave out there just at the moment. Painters who are embracing different ways to do things. This always happened of course but the difference is that people are starting to sit up and take notice of this stuff. There are a bunch of blogs out there which are suddenly getting a large readership and are about messages of finding what type of painting and modelling make you happy and going with it. I hope you'll consider this blog one of them. But then there's the Spiky Rat Pack and the Legion of Plastic. Both of these places are exploring their painting and modelling in new directions. Both places are very much inspired by the works of industry legend John Blanche who has always taken an approach to his minis that didn't try to conform to what anyone expected. I think these bloggers are tapping into that sense of fun and experimentation that existed in the infancy of the hobby where John was so instrumental. Then taking these ideas and flying with them using modern techniques and tools (and a lot of plastic toy soldiers that make mad conversions a lot easier than they were back then).

I also saw a very graphic style that differed greatly from Eavy Metal and the boutique styles in Tears of Envy's blog and also via Martin Whitmore. Again, people who were having fun with something totally different and people start to react to it.

I think people are just a little fed up with a hobby that has become so much hard work and now they want to chill a bit. It doesn't mean that the boutique styles are in any way wrong, simply that we are embracing a diversity in how we approach our individual hobbies and this can only be a good thing. I know I'm playing with all kinds of new ways to do things as I've had my fill of trying to paint perfect. My challenge is to get a bit of dirty into my work.

So, I'm planning to play with more dirty painting around here and hope to show off the odd mini from John Blanche who seems to be having all kinds of fun with his figures just at the moment. In a few days I'll be back on here with a load of pics of one of his recent paintjobs and a little insight into his thought process behind such a piece. It's fascinating stuff.

I'll leave you now with links to the blogs and sites I mentioned...

Spiky Rat Pack

Legion of Plastic

Tears of Envy

Martin Whitmore

Hope this will be food for thought and I'll be back with less rambling posts in the near future. And hopefully pics of toys...

Getting the wrong thing wrong...

Been thinking a little about one of the curious sculpting phenomena that I live with as part of my process and thought I'd share. We're into sculpting theory territory here...

Okay, we've all been there. We've sculpted a part of a figure that's wrong and we can't seem to get it right no matter what. Drives you up the wall because you're sure that head is right and yet it looks wrong. Well, sometimes it's actually right and what we haven't noticed is the something else we got wrong that is making the part we thought wrong, but is actually right... err... look wrong (hey, I never said I'd make sense).

One little problem I've had in the past is that a head has seemed too big on one of those ladies in dresses that I've sculpted a million times and I've finally worked out that it's not the head at all. I'd measured it twenty times and it was right. No, the problem turned out to be the collar bone that was too high and jutting too far forward. I fixed that and the head becomes right.

So, when you're sure you've got something wrong and can't quite figure out why be sure to check the rest of your figure to see if the actual problem is elsewhere. You maybe surprised how often this is the case...

150 members... plus a 'check this out'...

Hello from 'extremely busy and somewhat knackered' world.

In the process of figuring (pun) out what to write about in the near future but have a couple of little things to say today.

Firstly Spyglass Asylum now has 150 followers. Woohoo! Must find things to talk to you all about.

But, there's something more interesting to say tonight. I just discovered that mini painting legend Jakob Rune Nielsen (JRN) has setup his own blog and it's certainly worth reading and following. There's an awesome floating fat Nurgle dude there already so pop on over and peruse...

miniatextures

Now, I need to sleep. Tomorrow I've got to sculpt [deleted by Inquisition]. I'm sure it'll all turn out great!