Hobby Cheating 150 - How to Paint for Competition 

That's awesome, always happy to help. :)

Exactly, celebrating each other is one of the things that truly makes this hobby great. Never tear anyone down, we can always lift each other up.

That's awesome, it's good to push yourself and good luck, :)

@@VinceVenturella just to let you know my man, I finished my Haarken just hours before store opening on the day. Wasn't entirely happy with result, but I just couldn't leave it after all that time spent and support from girlfriend and kids. Took my model to the competition expecting no votes at all and last place. To my surprise, I had 100% of votes - everyone liked my Haarken. I took 1st place in Everchosen category and made it further. You have no idea how big part of my little victory you've played. If it wasn't for you, I wouldn't even think of going there. I only painted 5 models since last November and really am beginner. Once again thank you.

Couldn't agree more. 100%.

Glad despite the challenges, you had a good time and learned. It's the best thing you can do. If you are trying to take your next step, feedback is the key, there is nothing else more valuable. As to the format there, you are right, on-line and popular voting is always different, because it's driven largely by figure choice, color and the popularity of other eye catching as opposed to the quality of the technique. That being said, it seems that you are have the right attitude. You are sharing and taking the feedback and thinking about how you could work more. You are way ahead of most already and I would encourage you to share more, it gets addictive after a while. :)

Many points to cover there. Let me handle this in turn. 1) I don't buy that at all and strongly disagree with that Judge. That's a shame that judge feels that way, but if the contest doesn't prohibit it, that is nonsense. I don't like unwritten rules - rules are meant to be written or they aren't rules. I work on pieces that I mean to show for a year. Each contest has it's own rules on what I can bring (Crystal Brush for example has to be all new, can never have comepted elsewhere, NOVA on the other hand is more Euro in style and doesn't care what it's done before, Gen-Con just prohibits pieces that have placed before). Either it's a rule or its not. My feedback to that judge would be - then put that in your rules pack. As a judge, they can set whatever restrictions they want, but expecting you to know that is silly. I spend 100-150 hours per piece I do. I simply wound't have the time to do fresh pieces for every competition and it's silly to expect that of painters. 2) I kind of mentioned this above, but it will tail into this well. I have a series of competitions I go to over the year, and I bring a set of pieces for that year. The basic rule is nothing ever competes in the same competition twice (most have hard rules against this in their packs, even if they don't this one is I suppose assumed). I bring what I can, where I can and then retire everything at the end of that season and work on the new stuff. Now for me, I absolutely paint for a specific competition. I might bring the piece somewhere else, but I know each competition has it's bias and so I paint specifically for those, though I will still take it other places as well, I just have to accept it will do better at A than at B). I don't know that I would recommend that for someone new, but I would recommend painting specifically for competition. Know that is what the piece is going to be and do your absolute best. Leave nothing on the table. Work it until you have reached the absolute limit of your abilities. Then get feedback from people with a good eye and work it more. 3) I feel your pain on this one. I am very socially awkward. I know that sounds strange coming from someone speaking on teh internet, but believe me, I have spend my whole life feeling alone in crowded rooms. I am bad at conversation and I always feel like no one would really want to speak to me. You are not alone there. My best advice, people would love to chat with you (as long as you don't wear out your welcome ;) ) - I always enjoy people coming up, discussing their work with me, talking shop as it were and the vast majority of painters I have met are the same. There are limits of course, everyone has only so much time, but my best advice is to use the piece or something you are working on and just discuss. We all love to gab about the hobby, that's why we do it, and most of us are happy to help. In the long run, it's your work that will speak for you. It's a it rough, but you do keep what you kill. If you compete often, if you do great work, people will recognize it and recognize the skill. But long before that, people will be happy to speak with you and help you reach that next level.

Thanks for the reply. It's possible that I may have misinterpreted something, but I do agree that it's always best to have things like this written down. Ironically, in this case, I was initially going to enter a different model which was more recent instead of the six month old piece I did enter, but at the last minute decided to switch because the older model was on a display base and the more recent model was more of a ridiculously high tabletop standard piece on a gaming base than a display piece... but that probably wouldn't have hurt me that much anyways because it was a painting contest at a tournament. I like the idea of thinking of it as "seasons"... for me, I've been thinking the same; keep pieces around for about a year so you don't bring the same thing to the same show two years in a row, but also try not to feel bad about entering a lot of stuff (unless it's against the rules) because people go to these shows at least in part to look at other people's cool stuff. Though, I'm also not as far along on my hobby journey as you, so I sometimes want to retire things early as I feel like I've progressed beyond that point. I do paint for competition, but I tend to limit how much I paint for specific competitions to avoid stressful deadlines... eg, instead of saying "this is going to be my project for X show," I say "I'm going to paint this up real good," then when I finish I say "hey look, there's a show coming up next month; I'll bring her there." I'm trying to level up; I'm feeling like I'm in a bit of an awkward place right now in that I'm feeling pretty good at a lot of the technical skills like getting smooth blends, fine lines on freehand, etc., but it feels like I'm struggling with making mistakes on basic art school things like composition, etc. However, I did get a lot of good feedback last weekend, and after a little bit of feeling bad about all the things the judges picked apart, I'm thinking my next piece will be heavy on all the things that I didn't do so well last weekend as kind of a "challenge accepted" response. And, as a completely random aside, have you tried out those Molotow Liquid Chrome markers and refills yet? I've been playing around with them lately; they're really popular among scale modellers and gundam guys and I was thinking that especially if you take it out of the marker and onto a pallette for brush painting, it could be useful for the highest highlight on TMM?

Thank you, happy to help as always. :)

Pro tip: you can watch movies at flixzone. Me and my gf have been using it for watching all kinds of movies during the lockdown.

@Pedro Leonard yea, have been watching on Flixzone} for years myself :D

Always happy to help. :) - That would be simpler, though i am not sure people would take it well. :)

Hahaha I dunno, sometimes it's fun to be dramatic and throw a hissy fit XD

I find it's useful as a challenge just to paint once in a while as though it were for competition, even if not going. Just a good way to motivate yourself to really push on a project or two once in a while. Glad it was helpful. :)

Awesome, happy to help as always.

I thought like you but was encouraged to enter anyway. In roughly a year I painted 10 Samurai; the first 6 look toyish though with very clean lines but the last 4 looked increasingly better especially the last 2. It was an open competition and they gave me a Silver for "Whole Collection." Now I'm trying to learn to paint 5 shades of highlights and shades which is a work in progress...

I go to painting competitions to try to find out what orthogonal means :)

aaaah Micky Troll strikes again. I mean different from

Totally agreed and wonderfully said sir.

Always happy to help. If you are ever at any of the big conventions, you;ll see me. :)

I understand, I just can't bring myself to sell competition pieces, too much emotional investment.

Awesome, do it, Gen-con is a great contest to enter as it is run by wonderful people and you get back score sheets with direct feedback. The judges also make themselves very available.

I'll see what I can do. :)

On a serius note: do you have an Instagram? I've tried looking for you but couldn't find anything!

Vince Venturella Love Your Channel!!

Bloodfest Crimson, Purple Ink, Harvester Flesh, Pink Glaze (Warcolours), and Orcish Dermis as well as a little mohave white.

I mean, you're not wrong. :) - In this case, it was because NOVA is next week and so competition was on my mind. I saw Miniac also put up a video after I had scheduled mine and I found it ironic. :)

The 'fourth place' comment kinda makes me laugh. At my first Rogue Demon--the pre-Crystal Brush competition at Adepticon--I entered five or six pieces (I think I had something in every category) and won nothing. I was chatting with Jen Haley later and she told me that I had the honor of winning the most fourth place awards at the show. I took it as a compliment. I still point to the empty spot on my shelf where my non-existent award sits!

In general, not really. Most judges would frown on it. Generally anything in your composition should be painted. I have heard judges directly say as much at a few contests.

Thanks Vince.

Awesome, glad you enjoyed. :)

@@VinceVenturella happy new year :)

So you will want to look at the official rules on Golden Demon dot com. That being said, generally no, the units are not required to be a "game legal unit" - but there are minimums on number of figures and maximum on size. I believe they probably like it if it makes sense as a unit in some way, as it's also a marketing exercise, but that doesn't exclude you. (this is where we get into that bias thing to some degree, but it's hard to read).

There is a big list in Europe, Monte San Savino, Hussar, Salute and of course Golden Demon all come to mind, but there are many more.

I don't find either better than the the other. Additives I like are a good flo-aid (I like Liquitex and Warcolours), a good retardent (same thing again on brands) and basically Vallejo mediums. The difference is glaze medium isn't just medium, it's also got additives in it. So your normal matte, satin and gloss medium are basically just medium (or at least mostly so), glaze varnish seems to have a little flow improver in it and is thinner (but they don't release the exact formula, so that is supposition).

thanks a lot, due to my style of painting, i tend to go for a lot of thin layers, so i think i will just use the glaze medium as a 2-in-1 (im on a bit of a budget) and i will use vallejo and liquitex

Completely agree, great advice. :)

Well, I'll tell myself that, but I appreciate it. :)

It sometimes can be.

Yeah, you two speed demons really need to slow down. You're out of control. ;)

I thought you said I speed paint XD