Color Inspiration

This week I'm traveling again. When I travel, I like to pull inspiration from what I see. Light & dark contrast, color proportions, texture, and my favorite-- the challenge of mixing paint to match colors I capture in the pictures. It may just look like a bunch of pictures of junk, but here are the creative challenges I see lying within each image:

I walked outside after a long day, looked up, and stopped short when I saw this sunset after a stormy summer's day. I need to recreate this color scheme and with the challenge of creating a soft, warm lighted contrast that seems to glow in comparison to the rest of the miniature.

I've started traveling with a small collection of mobile paint supplies. One thing I miss, my paint water cup I use each time I paint. Sometimes it shows me a nice pattern for a future freehand motif. Surprise!

1. Clouds: I love the rich blue transition paired with the soft texture of the clouds. Maybe inspiration for a fur-lined cloak!

2 & 3. Drinks: Studies of glass jars with liquid in them. One day I want to be paint the way different light shows through glass jars.

4. Coffee: I love the rich browns in my delicious, half-full Cappuccino. I mix brown colors so often for leathers, it gets monotonous so this would be a fun color-matching challenge. 

5. Apples: A challenge to blend equally vibrant red, yellow, and green transitions between themselves.

6. Twitter Image: An inspiration for an overall color proportion scheme for a mini someday. I was surfing Twitter while waiting for my flight to arrive and I just love that bright blue-- reminds me of Reaper's "Surf Aqua" paint color I used on the Maralise mini. 

7. Magnolia Tree: I love the waxy leaves and about-to-bloom flower bud. I like the white contrast and bits of brown yellow from the older leaves. A great challenge in color proportion and choosing where to include a pop of clean, stark white somewhere on a mini to create visual interest.

8. School Building: I love this older Catholic girls' school building. Despite the sea foam green and aqua, its overall look is quite haunting. It would be a great challenge for painting faded, textured surfaces weathered by years of rain and hot Louisiana summers.

Contest Entry

I did it! I finally entered my very first online contest. Long story short, I became involved in the Reaper Miniatures forum after I attended their convention. I check back often to keep up with the community. A month or two ago, I saw a post about one of the forum members holding a casual, space-themed miniature painting contest. I decided to enter so I dug around in my miniature hoard and found this:

I instantly knew she'd be a great experiment for non-human skin tones. Since she has a lot of exposed skin (I mean a LOT), I wanted to practice painting the female figure. At first, I had a few initial painting challenges with her, but after I achieved the right mix of paints, I enjoyed the seemingly-endless task of layering, blending, and then blending some more. 

However, once I finally finished painting her, I didn't immediately enter her in the contest. I had some doubts:

  1. What if my miniature isn't good enough?
  2. What if her base is too boring? Should I have tried to do more with it?
  3. What if her... lack of pants is seen as offensive?
  4. I don't have nice camera and it's hard to take decent pictures.

I had to get over my self-defeating questions. Of course it could be better. But I don't have until eternity to paint this mini or come up with an epic base I sculpt from scratch. In fact, I'm sure I could paint this same miniature better only after a few months-- and that's a good thing! Otherwise, I'm not learning or growing as a painter. This miniature is a nice snapshot of where I am now in terms of painting skill & execution. I accept that about myself and will use this small contest as a learning experience. 

Whatever the outcome, I'm better for entering the contest. It will build my confidence as a painter and help keep me involved in a helpful and talented community! I took new pictures of the mini after I cleaned up the base and painted over a few chips. Whether I'm recognized in the contest or not, it doesn't matter-- I still had a lot of fun painting this miniature and it's great to be inspired by the other entries! 

Dragon Age II

I haven't painted since Monday. I feel guilty. What have I been doing you may ask? Watching Twitch. As much as I was opposed to Twitch in the beginning, I'm now kind of obsessed. I watch it while I paint and I've really enjoyed Azure's channel. It's a good-sized following so the chat isn't out of control and the broadcaster is really involved with his viewers. Recently, he started streaming Mass Effect 3, a Bioware RPG series which has been extremely popular over the past few years. I personally love Bioware games. I played Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic so many years ago that got me hooked on the BioWare franchise. Watching Azure play ME3 made me want to go back and replay one of my favorite game series-- Dragon Age. Since there's been so much buzz about the upcoming Dragon Age: Inquisition game release, I decided I'd pop the Dragon Age II disc into the XBOX 360. 

While I usually play a mage or ranged-weapon characters, I decided to try something I've never done and play a rogue character. As far as personality, I'm usually a straight-and-true, goody-goody Paragon in BioWare games. I always do the right thing throughout the quests & stories. I always just felt too guilty when I role-played a jerk character and hurt other people's feelings. Yes, it's true, I feel bad even when I hurt fake people's feelings with my fake character's responses. In my first play-thorugh of Dragon Age 2, I was a goody-two-shoes Mage. However, I've decided to finally try something new. I'll play my newly-created character as an impatient, practical, sarcastic woman. (I'm also going to crush Anders the second he starts to flirt. Seriously, I have no sympathy for that guy). My character will also have a somewhat-unhealthy obsession with moody Fenris. I'm liking this plan already. 

For those of you who are less familiar with BioWare RPGs, the games give you dialogue response options throughout the storyline. The available responses usually fall into 3 categories: Nice, Sarcastic, or Rude. The player's choices will affect the course of the story and  certain responses with different characters will open and/or close doors throughout the game. That concept alone makes these games attractive because of the high replay ability. I remember the "Choose Your Own Adventure" books that were so popular in the early 90s-- it's basically like that but better! 

One of my favorite parts of BioWare games is the character creation aspect. As with tradition, I attempt to design a female player character that looks like me. It's not everyone's preference, and I like to indulge in a bit of narcissism in this regard. Dragon Age II face options are varied, though I find it's hard to find an exact match for my own big, oval head. The character inevitably turns out cuter. Oh well. Without further ado, meet "Mocha Hawke":

Mid-character creation

Yep, I'm pretty happy with how she turned out!

Last night I drank wine and played this until 3:30am. Needless to say, today's been a bit rough...