Wednesday, June 8, 2011

Kublacon painting competition wrap up

Last year, kublacon switched to an open judging format, which lets models get ranked based on their own merits instead of the relative merit the work has compared to other enteries. It really helped motivate me to put more time into my pieces this year.

Models can be entered into the regular category or the masters category. This year I went with the regular category since I still feel the master work is scary good compared to my stuff. The masters category is also looking for qualities I don't usually apply to a model since ultimately, I want to push it around the board and roll dice.

I ended up with three painting competition enteries, and all three were deemed somewhat worthy! Magma mulg ranked a silver, my circle wold guardian ranked a bronze, and an ancestral guardian/5 man immortal squad ranked silver.


I talked to the painting competition organizer, and while he wasn't one of the judges, the areas that he felt needed more work pretty much lined up with areas I had become frustrated with and given up on.

The cloth area was very straightforward. Given that both the upper rock cone and the base would be emitting light, I didn't do much with it. It needed a few more layers of shading.

I needed to add some subtle highlights to the club metal and the darker rocks. It was left pretty much flat.

The face could have been more defined. I totally agree in terms of a competition piece, but when I set out to do this I wanted it to look less like a creature and more like a mountain.


The club/left forearm ended up being my favorite piece of the model. I went for a petrified look on the club, and it uses deneb stone as a base with other rock colors built on top of it. I hit it with a few washes of ogrun flesh to try and make it feel slightly organic.

The left forearm/hand was done very late in the process, and I was more used to getting the magma look I wanted out of the red, orange and yellow ink.

Overall I dig the open judging format. I've been entering for the last 4 or 5 years, but mostly with the expectation of "having something cool in the case" for the duration of the convention. I'm already starting to plot out what sorts of models I should have a go at for next year.

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