Adepticon: an Honorable Result

First, I think it both customary and appropriate to offer a hearty “congratulations” to all the winners from this weekend’s Adepticon –I mean this with regard to the wide spectrum of game systems and tournaments and other competitions. It was a great weekend, and the winners should be rightly proud of their accomplishments.

Having said that, I think the real winner here must be our glorious hobby itself, in all of its robust manifestations. Although this was my first Adepticon, I always come off of these kinds of events feeling tremendously energized with all manner of ambitious hobby ideas that I’ve absorbed from so much awesomeness. I mean really, the amount of talent and genius and general skill out there is really quite staggering… and to see it all lamped together into one giant hall. That’s just wonderful. Of course, I’ll never manage half the ideas I have floating around at the moment, but that’s not the point. My little notebook is full of schemes and other delicious morsels for the future. Half will be quite enough.

But first things first. Yesterday, I mentioned my entry into the “Rogue Demon” painting competition. I’m quite proud to report that he earned an “Honorable Mention” in the competition. He is one of just a very few models that I’ve ever painted entirely for competitive purposes and, considering the talent that appeared this weekend, I’m really quite pleased with this result.

I really like this model and, although I rarely, rarely play LoTR these days, I still love the novels and really admire quite a few of the models that have been released for this range. So, I was pleased to find a proper excuse to paint him with the care and attention he deserves. Regular readers will have heard me discuss how important select and deliberate color palates are to my way of thinking, and this guy is certainly no exception to that disposition.

Obviously, he is basically two colors: Orange and Green. That’s it ...but not quite. I’m not sure how well the photos capture this, but almost all of the shading on the orange is actually green and all the shading of the green takes orange as its base. I think this is perhaps most evident in some of the brighter areas, like the skin tones and the very end of the cloth areas.

I had to replace his sword and, in the end, this may have been my greatest weakness. On reflection, there simply isn’t enough contrast in the sword to make it visually interesting, and I got a bit nervous for some reason about my original ideas about limiting the palate. As a result, the sword looks gray when it should participate more directly with the boldness of the rest of the model.

Ah well. Next time.

More on Adepticon itself tomorrow, but in the mean time, please enjoy some of my other favorite models from the competition (note: not all of these were winners, as such, but simply represent a selection of my favorites. Please check out The Painting Corps for the more official outcomes). Cheers.

p.s. and as has almost become customary at this point, I've posted this entry and then thought of one last detail that I'd like to mention. Yesterday Alexander asked about the base. I intend to make something like a tutorial on this topic in the very near future. Sorry, Alex, that this isn't really an answer to your question, but one is coming, I promise.

HAHA. I jest, of course. But seriously, check out these beauties: