Painting While Traveling

Traveling: it's exciting, empowering, and exhausting all at the same time. When I travel, I routinely work extra-long days and I have a hard time sleeping without my cleansing "down time" which involves painting or some form of visual creativity and/or geekery. While painting on-the-go presents several challenges (especially if you're super-attached to your workspace), I find that proper planning can help balance the inconsistencies. I used to provide myself with excuses for why I couldn't paint while traveling:

Excuse #1: The hotel desk is too high/too low. 

  • Use the buffet of pillows provided at hotels to boost your height/back if the chair is too low and isn't adjustable. If the desk is too low, use a foam square (that comes in many miniature packages), another pillow, or towel for your arm rest. Just be sure to take breaks if you find you're hunching over too much.

Excuse #2: I can't bring my favorite tools.

  • You need less than you think! Armed with my beloved wireless lamp, a small bag of paints, my favorite brushes, and a ceramic travel palette I purchased on Etsy, I can paint anywhere. The only difficulty is transporting everything safely-- take the time to carefully pack & you won't be disappointed with cracked paint palettes or chipped minis. 

Excuse #3: I don't have the time.

  • Find a polite escape. While traveling, I have the opportunity to socialize with co-workers when they want to go out in the evenings. Just like family, I generally enjoy being around them. However, I can only take constant socializing in appropriate doses until my mood starts to rapidly decline. I need "down time" where I can recharge in order to be effective the next day. It's nothing personal, it's just me-- and there's nothing worse than a sleep-deprived me without my black coffee. Trust me. 

Even if I'm only able to fit 30 minutes of painting time in every day, at least I'm setting the groundwork for my on-the-road-routine. During my most recent trip, I still sat down to paint at midnight after a 12+ hour workday. I painted for 45 minutes and made some great progress! Despite an early morning the next day, I had my best night's rest of the entire trip. Here was my setup:

It's not easy. I won't lie. But good habits are often hard to build. I'm personally inspired by someone I saw at a convention, Lyn Stahl, an accomplished miniature painter and owner of Metalhead Minis, transporting her miniatures in a Table War case. She walked by during my one-on-one session with a guest sculptor/painter & I had to ask about her travel case. Inside the glass-front case were her display miniatures held tightly in place by magnets. Like many professional painters, Lyn works from hotels as she travels to and from conventions and paints wherever the opportunity presents itself:

As always, preparation is key and safely transporting miniatures is a must! If I paint consistently while traveling, I'd also like to purchase one of those transport cases in the near future. In the meantime, I'm determined to develop good habits, learn from the successes of painters like Lyn, and find the best ways to stay painting while traveling!

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.

Speed Paint Challenge

Lately, I've been contemplating on how speed painting might help me develop into a stronger miniature painter. When I attended ReaperCon, I had the privilege of picking the brain of Derek Schubert, miniature painter, sculptor, and speed painter extraordinaire. Sometime soon I need to write a blog post about the totally awkward (on my part) yet inspiring experience. I've wanted to write about it since early May. Stay tuned for that!

Since then, I've realized that there is no magical element or secret to speed painting. In fact, I firmly believe that it's all in the approach. The more preparation there is, the less likely you'll need to repaint sections of the miniature due to impulsive and/or poor decisions (mostly regarding color). In my opinion, speed painting is most successful after thoughtful and clever planning. It doesn't take much, and the initial thought that you put in will definitely show. I truly believe that Derek Schubert can analyze a miniature and "see" the final application of colors coming together on a finished miniature before he even picks up his paint brush. The man just doesn't make mistakes. Again, I digress!

My first speed painting endeavor was a failed attempt because I just didn't plan well. I picked colors I liked, and since I had a hard time narrowing them down, I attempted to use them all. I started slapping paint on the miniature, focusing only on the speed in which I applied paint. I didn't want to take time to layer colors for smooth blending, so I didn't thin down my paint. Once I realized my mistakes, it was too late. My alternatives were either repainting sections while building unwanted chunky textures or rethinking the entire color scheme. It was frustrating. In the end, I named him Skittletor after the candy with the slogan "Taste the Rainbow". Skittletor looked like he lost a fight with an angry color wheel. Red, brown, orange, red, teal, navy blue-- he had it all. While I don't consider him a painting success, I learned some valuable lessons in the process.

I found I prefer very tight color schemes. In the past, I tried to use more colors in the hopes that it would result in a more dynamic miniature. Instead, I like using one or two bright colors and a few neutrals. It keeps the focus in places I want to highlight, and having only one or two main colors keeps other parts of the mini from competing for attention. In addition, I'll use different shades of the same color in several places on the miniature to create an overall visual unity.

I also fully admit: I struggle with metals. Despite looking up real metal image references, I find it difficult to find where the light reflections are supposed to fall when considering the light source. I think using metallic paints are an easy way around this, however, I find the final effect highly distracting when compared to the matte paint finish on the rest of the mini. Any highlights I paint on matte surfaces are often upstaged by natural light reflections in the metallic paint that are beyond my control. Because of that, I try to avoid painting metal when speed painting-- at least for now. My speed painting will involve honing skills and finding ways to apply them more efficiently, not attempting to solve my most difficult painting barriers... which brings me to the Speed Paint Challenge!

Recently a Twitter friend & fellow miniature painter took my Genasi Warden speed paint exercise and turned it into a personal challenge. He used the same Reaper Bones miniature with similar paint colors-- he did a great job given only 2.5 hours! I decided to continue the fun and invited him to join me in a #speedpaintchallenge with a new Reaper Bones miniature and we agreed to these guidelines:

Speed Paint Challenge Rules

  • Colors: 6 earth tones, 2 neutrals [+ 1 metallic if needed]
  • Time Limit: 4 hours or less
  • Miniature: Elquin, High Adventurer · Reaper Bones #77092 ($2.49)
  • Deadline: next Miniature Monday : September 1st, 2014

Here's my chosen color scheme:

Reaper paints shown [L to R]: Linen White, Pale Green, Viper Green, Pine Green, Muddy Brown, Golden Shadow, Golden Highlight, Brown Liner

We'll both feature our results via Twitter and I'll include my process in next Monday's blog post. Let the speed painting begin!