The Next Level

This month is going to severely drop off in painting time. My niece is coming to visit for a week which will (justifiably) take up most of my time. This is probably a good thing since I'm riding a ragged edge of burnout in both painting and work, so a week of shopping and playing Mario Kart with my niece is probably just what the doctor ordered. In the mean time, along with cleaning and organizing my painting desk and doing some initial model assembly, here's an interesting update from the Bay Area:

Jeremie Bonamant recently visited the area for a 3 day teaching session at Endgame in Oakland. I was unfortunately unable to attend, but the local group that helped organize the event posted their notes about the event which I got to read through. It was fascinating. After reading through it, here's the quick summary of things I've decided I need to work on:

• Zenithal highlighting - The idea here is to highlight the surface facing upwards according to the angle of incidence of the light source. Not ever edge needs a highlight.
  
• Metalics - When doing true metalics (not NMM) it's important to make the shading very very dramatic. The more the better, and with smooth blending.
  
• Highlighting - Highlights should be brought higher, with the highest highlights on the parts of the mini that I want the eyes drawn to.
  
• Highlighting black - Black should be highlighted with light shades of colors being used elsewhere on the mini.
  
• General color theory - I need to read a book for sure. Maybe take a night class.
  

One last side note: In my quest to experiment with other paint/ink lines, I've been trying out a couple of the Vallejo Game Ink line and I am quickly falling in love with it. It has great flow, great coverage, and doesn't seem to break down as much when thinned. I'm going to pick up the entire line very soon I suspect.