Last month's news was headlined by, yet again, a lot of announcements of new miniature lines, and some important competitions, like Crystal Brush.

Painted Miniatures

Varathar by Ithandir
Space Wolf vs Horror by dims
Crystal Brush winners
Timewitch by Dakan
CoolminiOrNot Owl by James Wappel

New Releases

Paolo Parente's Anastyr
Origen Arts
Infamy Miniatures
Servo Skull Collector by JRN

Other

Interview with Crystal Brush winner Jose Palomares

Last weekend (21 & 22 April) the Belgian club Conect'r held its annual Warhammer tournament, called Conflict. The organizers have the ambition to let this event grow into more than a tournament, so this year for the first time there was some room for painting. I was contacted by club member Stijn Aerts, a very motivated fellow, to get involved into setting up a painting competition. We worked things out through e-mail, and I paid the event a visit on Sunday to give a painting demo and help with the judging of the painting competition.

Here you can see the small hall, with a trader, a modeling club (red table cloth), and my painting table (right to the modeler's). This was also the place where the tournament players could have a snack and a drink between battles.

The painting competition. The guy with the red shirt is Stijn.

In total there were 100 entries, which was a lot more than we expected. The only downside, from my (a painter's) point of view, was that only a few entries were painted especially for the competition. Most entries were by tournament players which entered some well painted miniatures of their other armies. Nothing wrong with that of course! I was really amazed with the quality level of some "tabletop quality" figures.

Check them out:

Best of show winner:

The main hall. Sunday was the day the 40k tournament was held.

The friendly guys from Modelbouwclub Leuven:

This is Gijs Hagelsteens, a very talented figure painter. Too bad he only does historical large scale models :)

And finally this is me :)

My display:

I painted the following figure at the event. I think I spent 2 hours in total. I gave it to Stijn as a present ;)

It was a fun day, I met a lot of nice people and we already discussed how we could make the event better next year. The club's ambition is to raise more interest in painting in Flanders (Dutch speaking part of Belgium) again so I should really support this. As far as I know it's currently the only painting competition of it's kind in this part of our country.

If you're from Flanders and you're interested in competition level painting of sf & fantasy miniatures, please do not hesitate to get in touch with me: gerrie.schenck@gmail.com.

Not much painting going on lately... I think I only spent a couple of hours at the painting table last month. But before we take a look on what I'm working an announcement:

Next weekend I will be painting at the Conflict 2012 event in Gelrode, Belgium. I will also be judging the painting competition there. If you are at the event, be sure to say hi :) More information can be found here: http://conectr-team.weebly.com/11th-conflict-2012.html

Over to the desk. The Drune project is still status quo:

Spent some time preparing a batch of Titan Wargames Chaods Dwarves. Expect a review soon.

Going for an alternative color scheme:

And then there's this little side project. It's a cut-up Tau Air Caste by Forgeworld:

Happy painting!

When I look at the list below I think the best news of March 2012 was the information about two very interesting projects which are currently under development: Confrontation: Phoenix Edition, which will mark the return of an active ruleset and (hopefully) affordable re-releases of their miniatures. The other interesting news is a new game called "Wrath of Kings", which is developed under the wings of CoolMiniOrNot. Very interesting times ahead indeed!

Painted Figures

Primus Death by Iguazzu
Slaneesh Demon Prince by In The Middle
Primus Death by Fantasygames.com.pl

New Releases

Confrontation, the return?
Wrath of Kings preview
Lich by Otherworld Miniatures
Forgeworld Limited Edition figure
BaneBeasts Krull

Other

Original Rackham artwork
James Wappel's blog
Andrea 54mm review by Marta
Tan-Kaïr Tutorial
Amazing Iron Painter 8 entry

A while ago I decided to go back to my old habit of working on one project at a time. When a project is in the basing/assembly phase there can be two projects on my desk at once, but I will try to do that only now and then.

Too many projects have ended up in my "work in progress" drawer because I got sidetracked by something else. Having the discipline to work on only one project gives me a lot more focus, and this will benefit the quality a lot.

The Drune unit project has been on my desk since January. After assembly and preparing the display base I have put this project aside for a while. But I realized that I had to pick it up soon because otherwise I will loose interest completely. So yesterday the painting finally started :)

"Toxic Spring"
Painting Crusade IX exclusive figure (only available to participants of the painting contest).

Vote on CMON.

Apart from the Crisis event in Antwerp, this is probably the event which is closest to my home, about 15 minute drive by car. But for several reasons I never visited it before. The main reason is probably that it is a very historical-oriented event. AMSS is the club which organizes IPC every year and it's one of those historical modelling clubs: lots of scale modelling, tanks, busts and historical large scale models. Because of that it's only a year ago that I heard about the fact that this event might even be worth a visit: the level of the painting competition is very high and there are even some fantasy categories. Initially I wasn't planning to go after all, but I had to be in the neighborhood just after noon and didn't have anything to do the hours after that. The event was held on Sunday last weekend: 4 March 2012.

It turned out that this event has a very friendly atmosphere to it. What immediately struck me was the average age of the visitors. Lots of men with bald heads, white mustaches and beards, if you know what I mean :) Completely different from the average scifi and fantasy event (like for example Painting Crusade) where most people are around my age.

This is an overview of the main hall, where the traders and other clubs have their tables, there's a small bar as well and in the middle right you can see a small podium where the trophies are displayed.

Apparently historical modelers "consume" a lot of display plinths because almost every trader was selling these. Apart from that, some specialized stuff like name plates, reference books, etc. Not that much sf and fantasy going on in fact, and even then mainly large scale models and busts.

The only good fantasy models on display could be found on the demo table of the Belgian club "Les Fêlés Du Modelisme", these are the people in red in the picture below:

Historical usually means painting with oil paints. It's interesting to see this much more realistic style of painting applied to fantasy models. Following models are from the display cabinet of Les Félés Du Modelisme:

On to the painting competition. The overall level was very high, with a lot of entries in the masters categories. The presentation was top-notch, lots of light, big tables:

I could get real close to the models, carefully resting my arms on the table while handling the camera. I took some pretty decent pictures, which is always a challenge at events like this :)

Let's start out with the highlights of the fantasy categories:

Historical stuff:

Although the main focus was on historical, I enjoyed this event. Historical figure don't interest me enough to start painting my own, but I can enjoy watching them. In fact I think there's a lot we can learn from them!

If I can paint enough miniatures to build a nice display next year I will surely participate in their competition.