Thursday, April 28, 2011

Goat and Bee



Goat and Bee has been reactivated.
Do you need a woodland crown for Renaissance Festival, or another summer event? Stop by and take a look.

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Miniatures

I have wanted to try my hand at painting miniatures for quiet sometime. Recently I had the chance to paint a few for our Pathfinder game.
We have a Necromancer, Boom Mage and Druid.

Miniatures were purchased from Reaper Miniatures, I used MSP Core and HD series paints form Reaper along with Liquatex acrylics that I have laying around.

I attempted to layer thin coats, shade, highlight etc. some things worked better than others. I found that while the MSP paint applied beautifully, when i went to layer on the washes I was often pulling up the colors I had previously put down. It seems that these paints are designed to re liquefy to some degree once they have dried. Something acrylics will never do.

Here's how they turned out:

DruidThough I tried to work on all three at once, I ended up concentrating on the Mage first and Druid last. My thinking was that I could figure it out as I went and be able to put the most detail into the Druid. But after my problems with the paint- having to walk away from the project to let things completely dry, I found that by the time of got to the Druid I was tired of this project and thus, didn't spend as much time on her as I intended.
Why is her hair turquoise? Because in game I am playing a gnome druid and yes this min is actually Seoni, but its make believe, so we're makebelievin' she's a gnome druid. Under that assumption, her skin was supposed to be more pinkish too, but I did the skin first, and then had to touch things up several times and didn't want to keep trying to match the pinkish skin tones.
I might go back and add some detail. But I'm not sure I have small enough brush or steady enough hand to achieve the kind of detail shown here:In fact it took me about 20 tries to give her 2 eyes.

Necromancer

officially listed as Bledsoe, Evil Cleric, I tried really hard not to paint everything black. His pants are actually green and hist shirt a bluish gray. I forgot to paint his ring.
Here is a version someone else did. someone who, once again has smaller brushes than I do.
He was really quiet fun to paint, I spent a long time on the cape.

Boom Mage


Reaper lists this dude as "Halmer, young wizard"
He was actually harder to paint than the other two. The cast surface seamed to be less smooth, I had particular problems with his face. The facial features were not as crisp as they looked in the photo on Reaper and seemed to look blobby when painted, though I used the same paint and did it at the same time as the other two. After 6 attempts I am still not terribly happy with his face.
Looking at other people's miniatures always make me want to go back and adjust my own. I admit, I had no idea what to do with the items on his belt. In real life they are so small they are just slightly different shaped blobs.


I now know why everyone is so obsessed with matte paint. When photographing, the satin topcoat I used looks far more glossy than it actually appears.

As always, click on any of the photos for a larger view.

Thursday, April 07, 2011

Alexa Meade, may she inspire you.


I was posting so much for a while there...

Today's awesomeness: truth + fairy tales has a blog post on 24 year old artist ALEXA MEADE.
A few images below, check out the original blog post, and Alexa's web site, portfolio, flicker page and online interview with Juxtapoz magazine.

I feel like I have seen this concept before, but where, I don't know. Alexa's work is beautiful. I cant wait to see where her career goes.

Artist Statement:

Growing up in Washington, D.C., I had the opportunity to work as a press intern on Capitol Hill throughout high school and college. Later, I worked as a press staffer on the Obama Campaign. Spending my formative years immersed in the world of politicians and PR led to a fascination with the possibilities of repackaging source texts and adding superficial modifications that would profoundly alter perception. What the audience ultimately unpackaged was a personal interpretation of an already mediated re-presentation.

In my current work, I construct and then photograph ephemeral installation sets that feature an assemblage of found objects and live models, which I have covered in layers of acrylic paint. I paint the surfaces of the human subjects, the material objects, and the architecture of the installations so as to collapse the subject, foreground, and background into one continuous plane. I present my ephemeral portrait/performances as both live, interactive installations as well as permanent photographic indices of these experiences.

By using paint as a mask that mimics the surface attributes of my source materials, I repurpose the common codes of painting and create a reciprocal self-referentiality in which the reference envelops its referent. The time-based portrait/performance installation is mediated through still photography, providing a record of the performative act in which the codes for representation/painting and indexicality/photography converge.



All images are copyright Alexa Meade.