AdeptiCon 2015 Part II

Saturday

On Saturday, our first class was "Six Step Eyes" with Meg Maples:

Meg showing us how it's done

In the past ten years or so, I've probably taken half a dozen classes just on how to paint eyes.  It's probably the first major hurdle of taking your painting beyond "tabletop quality" for most painters.  I've tried different methods, technical pens, etc., and it's still 90% luck for me.  This class came closer than any other to giving me the ability to actually be able to paint eyes - I think with a little practice, I'll be able to replicate it consistently.  I'll even give you the six steps so you can try it yourself:

1. -Paint entire eye socket black
2. -White oval (eyeball)
3. -Black dot (outer edge of iris)
4. -Color dot (iris)
5. -Black dot (pupil)
6. -White dot (reflection)

(Optional): Gloss coat eye so it's shiny.

That's it.  And it made sense.  Here are a few of my attempts:

...so it's not great, but this is far better than I've been able to achieve in the past.  Plus, I was having a really hard time picking out the eyes on this model - Reaper claims you don't need to prime their "Bones" models, but I find it necessary just because I can't see the details on that bright white finish they come in right from the factory.

Our next class was "Painting Sheer Fabric", again with Jessica Rich.  Man, this class was hard for a guy who mostly paints power armor 90% of the time.  And, as Jessica warned us, when you paint a model using this method, it has an extremely long "this looks like crap" phase until everything starts to pull together.  Regardless, you can see a (very) little bit of the intended effect in this WIP pic of my model:

Compare that with what Jessica is able to achieve, and it's pretty sad.  Still, it was fun to try.  lars4life & I have already been talking about where we might be able to apply the technique to our own armies.

After classes, we headed out for dinner - we usually budget for one "nice" dinner per trip to AdeptiCon, and this year we went with Weber Grill Restaurant:

...which was fantastic.  We headed back to the hotel and hung out for bit before calling it a night.  The next morning we made one last lap through the dealer room (I made a few purchases that I'll be reviewing here shortly) and headed back home, another AdeptiCon in the bag!