Tuesday, May 8, 2012

I built stuff

Yes, I built stuff.  And I painted stuff last weekend too.

I have a gothic arena that I started back in 2009, I think.  It may have been 2010.  Whatever.  It was a while ago and it has been sitting, rather forlorn, in a box.  I needed to feel productive so I pulled it out to paint.  I also have some additional pieces for my modular dungeon that I built almost a year ago and never painted.

While I was painting I found some of the arena pieces weren't as well constructed as I would have liked and some had been damaged in the moves.  Tonight I dug out the bins of appropriate bricks and built not only the replacements but a couple of new ones.  I'm mixing the basic and advanced arenas so eventually I need to figure out what's left to build.  I think I have all the basic pieces.

Here's proof I built.



It takes a heck of a lot more glue than you would think to build this stuff.  I probably should have thrown that out before taking the picture.

I do a lot of building on my homemade magnet board.  That's a steel baking pan sitting on a piece of countertop.  (I used to be able to buy the sink cutouts - fantastic for solid surfaces).  The pieces of wood have magnets glued into holes - you can see one of them upside down in the upper right.  I can't remember where I found the instructions to do that.  I do remember the time it took to align the radial arm saw to as close to a perfect 90 degree cut as possible.  That took a while but it's worth it.

I also build using my Lego as braces and alignment blocks.  To be honest mine are Brix Blocks, the Sears equivalent to Lego.  I've had them since I was a kid and I'm still playing with them.

I'll let these dry for a few days and then probably put paint on them this weekend when I do the touchups on the pieces I already base coated.  And the touchups on the pieces I touched up when I painted last weekend.  At some point I do move beyond the base coat.  Really.

Saturday, May 5, 2012

The other side of the rant on competition painting

I ranted previously about painters who wimp out when it comes to honest critique and competition.  To be fair now I shall rant about the other side of that coin.

Judging is by its very nature subjective.  Even with that "Open Judging" system it's still a judge's opinion.  Blatant things like inadequate prep, messy paint and other very basic problems are easy enough to ding.  It's the judging after that I'm going to rant about.

Everyone has a different style of painting.  This is a good thing.  Where it becomes a less good thing is when Judge A prefers Painting Style 1.  That judge has a bias against every other style of painting whether they admit it or not.  Therefore they will give higher scores to minis that conform to Painting Style 1.  Typically it's the preferred painting style of that judge too.

This has actually been discussed by painters.  The artistic aspect of the mini tends to get lost in the "we need to judge against a technical standard" in open judging.  It's all well and good that someone knows how to prep a mini and stay within the lines.  It's much more difficult to say "I like this" without any reason other than it appeals to you.  That isn't what open judging is about.

Trophy competition is just that - competition.  There's 11 minis and the best 3 are given trophies.  Does that discourage the painters who didn't win?  Possibly.  Giving out handfuls of medals also isn't encouraging since you see all the other painters being given the same thing as you without any real reason why unless you can corner a judge and ask.