 Hello everybody and welcome to another interview with the artist and today I am honored to have with to have with me one of my one of my all-time painting idols somebody who I seek to emulate in my attitude my style the way I explore the way I paint and the way I I Think about everything to do with this and that is mr. James Wappel. How you doing sir? Well, I'm doing fantastic. Thanks for having me on Sir, it's an absolute pleasure. It's been too long. I was remiss. We were remiss. I was remiss in getting this scheduled So I'm glad we were finally able to do it. We're gonna talk to James today about his painting journey What he likes to paint we're gonna look at some of his pieces all of that and And why if you're not already following this man? If you're not already part of his patreon or at the very minimum subscribe to his YouTube channel watching him watching him on Everywhere where he's streaming you should be doing that because he's painting right here as you can see this is this is all happening live and I the important part to understand here is James When did you first put paint on this thing when we were talking right before the show? I'm gonna say Six or seven minutes ago. I would say about that time. He looked sort of like that. Yeah, exactly Yep, that's about what he looked like and I wonder oh, you know, how long we've been talking and you said yeah three four minutes Then he's pretty well underway. Yeah, she did base coat right so in a matter of Yes, five six minutes He's gotten the fig to this space you see before you now and he's just gonna be painting that throughout Which I think will be fascinating just to it'll be a very nice live instruction of of just how James works so, sir, I feel like we've got to start at the beginning because You have a Mightly impressive career in miniature painting But as I say every time this is a weird hobby we engage in right we all decided that what really What we really loved in life was sitting around and putting paint on tiny plastic and metal and Resin figures so what got you into this? What made you want to pick up the brush and start painting miniatures? How'd you how'd you find this life? It was almost kind of forced on us in a very bizarre set of circumstances So in my other life that was almost 20 years ago now my goodness almost 20 years ago Kathy and I we were both 2d artists I did oils pastels watercolors and I would do different Sci-fi conventions and I would sell paintings of space scapes landscape Actually, that's all on the blog to all my 2d art stuff is there if you want to check that out But we had there were certain points in the year mostly December or January that weren't many shows And we said, you know what we were doing these this blood Bowl League and our friends are asking us to paint miniatures for them What if we maybe painted a few miniatures on the side when there weren't shows? And that's all it was ever meant to be and we knew nothing about miniatures We were using our regular acrylic paints. We didn't know what static grass was sure We didn't know you should paint the gravel like we would just find stuff that was sure we had no idea and Our biggest show of the year is Celtic was Celtic Fest and that was the week of 9-eleven And when that happened not only did they cancel Celtic Fest and 20% of our income for the year But much like now where everybody wants to cancel every event and not go anywhere Well, that's what happened in 2000 right so we lost all of our income overnight and We said well, there's this thing called eBay and there's this thing called cool mini or not and maybe we can make these work somehow because we have to and I think it was by 2002 the miniatures that overtaken any 2d art Because people don't really need a painting to sit on their wall But you can't play war cry without a Splendor Fang warband, right right we have miniatures and Companies said well, we need people to buy our miniatures and there's these folks that are used to painting In bulk and for photographing stuff and all these other things. They said what's have these guys do it and It just started to emerge from there and boy 20 years ago There's been a lot of reminiscing about what things were like back then with maybe three major miniature companies, right? Sure No 3d design stuff. No 3d printing stuff no bones no Things like zombie side games none of that kind of stuff was even wasn't even in the realm of dreams at that point And now we're practically in a golden age of miniatures I was gonna say exactly that it's it's jumping ahead in the timeline slightly And I want to make sure we go back and talk about the in-between But I really do feel that way, you know, I I've been Playing these games and painting miniatures since about 97 and I'll tell you and I want to just the Range of miniatures that's available, right? I've never felt so spoiled for choice as I do now, right almost anything that I would want to paint You've got there's so many companies doing it from from massive companies to boutique It's it's incredible What boggles the mind is and to it really has changed my painting style I'll never forget when I first started to do the the bolt-action stuff the historicals and The basing that I had done especially the flock And that's foliage that I had done for years, which to me looked just fine All of a sudden when those bolt-action figures hit it I hated it looked terrible because now you had a guy in a uniform that could be your eye Wearing those uniforms not some not something like this that's very exotic or any kind of foliage kind of is yeah fine It's foliage when you have a realistic figure and non realistic foliage terrain Whatever that was that was a real kick in the head and we had to make an immediate adjustment and ever since I've kind of reversed engineered that into the fantasy figures, right? So mud spatters on legs and I just started to use some more different types of flock With the idea that the ground cover looks more like actual ground cover instead of just painted gravel for dirt Yeah, with every this stuff is constantly evolving People will say well Jim you did this video and you know that doesn't look anything like what you do now I said look I don't paint the same way two days from now that I'm painting right now quite literally what you're seeing here is like a historical record Because by this time next week what you see here not gonna happen anymore, right, right? Yeah, that's just it. I think there's nothing wrong with that. You're always growing and changing as an artist, right? It's not like you ever come to one One final place to me. It's a question of like I wouldn't want to ever get to that place I think part of the fun is continuing to always learn and explore and and change the way you're doing things Project to project day to day year to year, right? I couldn't imagine staying keeping things exactly the same Well when we did it was the wild west exodus stuff So all of a sudden now I had to come up with sort of these Western themed bases with that's when I started to use the the tree bark. Yep That was a colossal change It was just first it was the sculpted bases, right? Because we were ashamed when we first started doing cool many or not And we thought we were a genius for putting rocks on our bases and then we saw that stuff We said well, we aren't as good as we thought And within I would say three to four months. We were known as the people that did this the sculpted bases We became known for that because it was so horrifying to see how little we knew about basing And then at reaper con years ago my carver a friend of mine. He walked up to me with this tree bark He said hey jim you want to mess around with this? And I said, okay, I have no idea what I'm going to do with it Not realizing that things like this were possible, right? And by things like this this base took Maybe 10 minutes, right? That's it 10 minutes done like we've got another yeah, we've got another little batch of owl bears here All of these things they were all done in one single video That's how simple it is to just take some sticks off the ground some bark literally off the ground. Yep talk about found materials That's what bark and branch basing is That's that's awesome I love it and it looks good too. Like it's so fascinating to use those things in different scale Uh Going to home depot and pulling out random things like that You know from the garden department or whatever is one of my most favorite things to do because it's just It's almost like just let your imagination run wild, right? There's well and then the the leaf cutter things and those texture roller things none of that stuff even existed I'll never forget taking I don't know how many hours carving a mosaic tile base I quite literally carved it tile by tile. It took me hours to do a 30 millimeter Oh my god base Yeah, now that's like you roll it out in a few seconds with a roller and and some some clay of some kind some epoxy, right? Yeah, I mean now we'll just pop him off here and boom I mean this this whole thing to make and and base and everything paint It just took a matter of a few hours It took me longer to carve a tiny little 30 millimeter base Then it did to do this whole thing right including the painting and it's just that is That is the new brave new world that we live in Thank goodness Yeah, everything like you know a lot of people talk about the the current day and lament our world I say hey from the miniature world. It's getting a lot better every day But but let me back up in time here a little bit. So You start doing the miniature painting. You start doing cool mini or not. It's taken off Uh at what point like what were you painting there at the beginning? Were you painting mainly armies? Were you painting individual stuff? You know like you were doing box art and things like that for figures. How did it all spin out? It seemed to be army painting from the get-go because well blood bowl teams and these guys didn't just have 12 players They had 24 extra things that they used in their in their stands just as re-roll markers and turn counters So we're talking each of these teams was 30 guys, right? And then I started building blood bowl stadiums And then the company said, okay, this is a person who's not going to take three months to paint one figure What we can hand him an entire unit box of five to ten figures and know that they can all be painted to the same degree That's the other thing too Having especially judged army painting things for tournaments. Yep Where people will spend 90 of their time on one figure, right? They knew that these were Figure ones through 100 we're all going to look exactly the same And that they could be done in that time frame And we still kind of do it to this day now I think I sent you some large-scale stuff and I love doing busts The largest thing I've ever done was a half-sized bust half life-sized huge massive thing Was that the uh the mechanical lady? I don't remember her name the Uh There was the that the species bust and that because that was the one I just did this year at that Gen con and then there was The other one the oh gosh, I can't ever remember what she is But she had kind of that spiked crown on her head. Yes. Yeah. Yeah The one i'm thinking of that's a really big bust is I think it was uh, you were trying out like the metal smith paints or something Um And she was like mostly in metals Oh, I forget it was supposed to be a certain actress and george has told me a thousand times and of course I forget every single time because that's what I do But it really it was about the now it's interesting because Then you sort of become known for them people say, oh, well, they're just the army painters And they don't realize that we paint large critters Single figures that's that I do all that stuff too. It's just most people tend to see The armies well, I mean, here's the thing about it. I love the armies you paint because One of the things like I love I love a good competition or a good display piece It's it's fun to sit down and take one figure and push yourself and see what you can do and experiment and stuff like that But at the same time I play these games and I love these games and I love the look of an army altogether there's just something really magical about that like that's what got me into this and One of the things I love about you and your painting is that you've never lost the love of army painting You know of of painting squads of like what you're working on here. This is obviously a charity project But but you know, I see you paint your own armies. I see you paint, you know commission armies and whatnot and and they look gorgeous and you you Is it because is it because you've always still played is it because you just like the look of a Ranked-up force does look pretty sweet. Like what drives you still on the army painting? To me, there is a each time I do a project I try a new type of basing a new theme Sometimes just while I do them in oils like those like those mountains men in oils I just want to see not only can I do an army or an entire unit in oils, but can I do Sky earth non-metallic in oils, right? Because all I've ever heard is you can't do that with oils. You can't paint miniatures with oils All you can do is weather vehicles with oils And you most certainly can't do object source lighting or non-metallic metal with oils. You can't do that And I said, well, let's let's see. Let's see if we can't do this and I had Believe me I would ditch every acrylic paint if I could and just use oils from now on but that's not in the That's not a reality sadly, but I love oil paints, right? It's it's a love that I absolutely share. I try to integrate them as often as I can and certainly not just for weathering Although admittedly good for that too. Nothing wrong with that But there's so much use beyond that It is amazing. I think too. There is the well like the the basing So when I a new army means a new theme for basing, it means a new story I don't need to tell you about the tomb kings and my beloved susan is That is still to this date my favorite theme for an army And there's people that they said look would you just write the rest of the story? Because I think I had written a four page story for it and they said look we want to know what happens to them You got to finish this story here And actually I was gonna I was gonna try and add to the story by doing a Bretonian army because for those that don't know the tomb kings army was tainted by zinch because this particular tomb king wanted to be a real boy again And the zinch god said well I can do that you just got to do some things for me first And that's when instantly he and his soldiers and everything in his kingdom was corrupted by zinch With the idea that that the zinch god had That Bretonians and empire would come questing through his Tomb cities and take back all of these tainted artifacts right so my My army of Bretonians was going to have pegasus knights that looked like carrion birds that had multicolored wings Guys with three four arms Horses with multiple heads or maybe no heads. It was going to be entire zinch tainted Bretonian army Uh, I love it so much and that that tomb kings force is to this day One of the most singularly awesome examples of vision of an army brought to life if if our viewers aren't familiar Down in the description. You're gonna find links out to james Blog and to his patreon and to his youtube and you can go back there to that blog and there's still pictures of it I mean if you just if you literally just google James waple tomb kings you just prepare yourself For the awesomeness because they are I mean it was an amazing accomplishment I think that was some of the first stuff You were painting that I became aware of uh that was just unbelievably inspirational to me And that was my tournament army That was that was meant to be played with All of the lizard men all of those armies that are there those were played with Many many times the stuff that I scratch built It was it was knocked off a tournament table At this because that is my my bolt action armies I went to operations thing. I think I've done three bolt action tournaments now I've got 17 different bolt action armies underway and I'm hoping to do another maybe tournament at historic on and maybe even little wars with those I I just enjoy the researching of the story. I think the most recent Sort of terrain project I did was the montecasino board So it was an army display board That looked like montecasino But also was a playable terrain piece nice So that we could actually build a six by four or even larger board around that And actually use that as a game piece not just a display board That's awesome. And by the way, uh, I know you're not looking at at our screen right now But just so you can you know for the viewers. I do have a picture up of your I think one of your engine of the gods Uh that you had done back for your for your lizard men army Yeah, I thought I would want to put that up on the screen since obviously we are all celebrating the release of the new Seraphon book here, uh this week So it seemed apropos because you've painted such a glorious Gorgeous lizard man army again all that stuff you can go fine But this is the the the starscape in the in the engine in the constellation there that you did So I thought that was a great one to have up on screen just while we were talking So so viewers could see that and be inspired hopefully for their own lizard men that they're going to be excited to Paint here in the next couple weeks months whatever as that new army comes out It actually was the lizard man army If you're wondering was there an origin point for that that shaded base coat thing that I keep talking about it was the lizard men Because I had unit after unit of skink and crocsigores. They were my foot cavalry Well, you're talking 20 to 40 skinks in a unit, right? And each unit was a different color scheme So I had to figure okay. How am I gonna get all of these guys painted in some timely fashion And that's when I first started kind of what you see here where it's kind of worked to the middle and then Out from there you fan out from the middle Whereas most folks they kind of either start with the black primer or the white they started the extreme ends And somehow try to work towards the middle If you start in the middle and work your way out it just well It cuts down the time that you need for one thing that's for sure right right absolutely So in addition to painting all these armies Over the years and and basically all of this amazing stuff individual pieces whole armies mind blowing stuff You also did find some time For competing you're you've competed many times Uh, and I know it's not or my perception of it. I shouldn't say no because I want to ask this question My perception of it is it's not you've never felt defined by competing in these competitions and miniature painting competitions But I would say you've done quite well over the years and won several awards Uh, how do you like what brought you initially to saying hey, I want to I'll put this in for a competition And how do you think of it still? How did you think of it over time and how do you think of it now? I guess the the quick answer is I have yet to ever paint a specific piece for a competition I just have never done that. It's been something either from my armies or from Someone else's armies that they it was a commission piece and I said look can you just wait till I put it in the golden demons or crystal brush or whatever That was almost the rule The rule was that if this is not something that can be played with well, it doesn't I'm not going to put it in the contest Now if it's a bust obviously, that's a different situation Right But anything that was a miniature for all those the crystal brush the golden demons rogue demons all that kind of stuff Those were just I would literally walk up to the table there for crystal brush and the people on either side of me I said look guys pick something I need something to put in here this year just picks up my other box You can't pick that one because that was last year just pick one of these things and we'll throw them in and that's that was my and still is basically my attitude towards contest because In the end of the day, even if you win a trophy You can't move that around on a table and play a game with it. Right. Right. You just can't do that and I have all of these I still have my mimes of moria my blood bowl team That yes, they're goblins and yes, they are french street mimes I sculpted a coach to be Charles de Gaulle. I've got Poirot I've got a guy with a parasol Who is kind of a mardi gras type theme? There's cheese wheels as rewold counters and all this kind of stuff Just because I wanted to know could I do something like that? Sure Now I want clarification on the previous on the previous statement there Poirot as in the detective As in the detective. Okay now, but he has his little mustache and is sure absolutely. I'm a huge Poirot fan Now, do you feel that poirot if the character would say wait a minute. I'm not french. I'm belgium I'm belgium. He's from belgium. Do you think he would do you think he would take offense at being included with other frenchmen? Oh, that was part of the joke Well, I actually looked up the french word for goblin, which apparently I believe it is pronounced luten It's l-u-t-i-n. Okay, and they actually have signs with florida lees and another sign that says Actually a character has a sign that says jeté moi which says toss me And the two trolls are france. Wah and pierre and it both in their hand There are giant glasses of one has a red wine and the other one has kind of a chablis And they don't throw blocks. They don't hit people because that's quite uncivilized and dangerous They just drink wine. That's what they do as would as one would expect from from. Yes, absolutely Absolutely. And yes, kathy is in the chat and had said well for our Poirot is belgium. Yes Oh my goodness, I just those were the that's the other driving force is okay mine Let's say goblin teams street mimes mimes mimes of moria And then you just run with it. Sure And and these these forces you've created so so let's talk about this because so many times you From from those individual teams and stuff like that you're talking about for our viewers If you go back to this blog, you'll see over the years all these just really Impressive unique visions that you've brought to life Uh through the miniatures. So my question is and this is this is one of those ones that I don't really know that there's an answer to but What do you look to for your inspiration? Do you look at other stuff in the world? Do you like that's a funny that one's a funny one, right? Like there's a joke to it There's a pun in there not all of them are like that some of them are very serious stories or you know conceptual ideas Where do you draw Your inspiration from when you're looking out in the world? I guess the the best example is to go back to the tomb kings And of course, you know me. I am not going to paint anything in standard color scheme or even close to it Well, as I looked around I said, well, okay No green no blue no red no purple No gold that pretty much cuts out everything So what can I do that's different? And Kathy and I were watching secrets of the dead and they talked about the silver pharaoh His name was susanis and to show how wealthy he was His sarcophagus was made of silver Which at the time was more valuable than gold got a thousand times more hard to work than gold So I thought okay. Why would a silver tomb kings to wait a minute. That's kind of like necrons Necrons have glowing green stuff Why would these tomb kings have glowing stuff? Wait a minute zinches kind of greenish blue glowing Well, why would they be corrupted by zinch? And it just it was one of these streams of conscious You should see the notepad where there's notes just scribbled furiously on there and sketches Actually on the board I do have initial sketches of the army board Of things just I didn't want to forget this idea Right. I was in the middle of exercising or something at two o'clock in the morning And I said whoa got to write this down And from that point forward then I said, okay, I got to make this happen The the demon marble if you look at all the movement trays Which maybe we're getting movement trays back at some point They all say around that out in hieroglyphs in real hieroglyphs It says all those who enter the tomb cities of susanis. So suffer a fate worse than death Nice every single base. It says that same thing I just could I do it? Could I make that happen? Right That's okay. I need carrion birds, but according to the story. They used to be his little pet Tropical birds. So I had to sculpt multiple head The carrion birds so that could do the the nice multi-colored wings I had to sculpt those those bases that they're standing on I was all sculpted from scratch those stupid bases. Oh my gosh Well, they're gorgeous. They were worth it. But yes, I can't imagine how long they took Oh And I was just broke my hand trying to sculpt one of those things and now I just yeah Just get these resin bits from these guys and poof. You got the exact same thing only better and more rugged So, yeah, there's that technology thing again. Yep So, okay Here you you mentioned writing it down Obviously, you're not a recipe guy I don't think I'm giving the game away from for those who've been watching and have been watching you paint You know, you're not one who's this obviously this mixing you're You're finding the colors as you go You're mixing in what you want and and one of the things that fascinates me about your your style And this is something I think that that people should really really Watch and and learn from watching you paint is how you're always thinking about the light and What what strikes me is so amazing about your painting is that you don't think of light in terms of like just It's white light and then there is shadow and osl is some other weird magical thing You're just thinking about the light like here is the light. This is where it would be casting This is the tone it would be in and you're and you're just very naturally and organically work that in Right Light is just light and let's let's grab some things and do our little black and white trick here because Obviously here you've got object source lighting. You have the the reds the greens. Well, let's strip all that away Boom, we're at black and white now, but there's still we still can see a glow that emanates from here The fiery stuff is stripped away completely doesn't exist anymore But through the force of value lights and shadow because Here the lights got to be cooler. Here the lights warmer Is the ambient light not as strong as this? Well, this is the the way to do something like that It's a good way to tell What do I have here as far as my lights and darks and we can grab another one here That's entirely different that doesn't have object source lighting But when we bring him back with his color Now in the sword blade you start to see pinks and blues Here you start to see different shades of blue again in the sword here This is more of a sky blue a greenish blue sort of that grayish pink. Yep But when we make a black and white zoom, it's all gone, but it just registers as a sword blade I tell people this all the time when I take pink and greens and mix them next to each other Say look the mind just going to look at that and say it's great It's not going to look at this There's there's pinks and greens and all kind orange all in the golds as I make my air quotes here But when we strip it all away boom, it's just shading. It's all it is. It's just light and dark. Yep So I was at the like the four types of contrasts. There's there's not just light versus dark There's not just warm versus cool or even opposing colors Saturation is the thing. Yep. I mean, what a what better example to show the impact of saturation than to take it entirely away And you can do that just like we were talking about you just take your your cell phone Take a picture kill the color And now you know am I getting enough lights and darks And enough Like here. Okay. There's another thing too that I try and tell people say look if you're going to do object source lighting Don't do this thing where you paint the entire figure and then at the end Superimpose the lighting put it on there as soon as you can right because right here Okay, I could have been sitting there painting the bottom of that snake for around about a half an hour and said, oh Yeah, I didn't need to do that Right These are the stealthy ways to make your painting happen a whole lot faster Yeah It's just the integration of the light right away at the earliest possible point Right, like this is going to be a fairly strong orange light. Where does it fall? Let's start integrating it into what we're doing into our painting steps as we're going along, right I think the other thing to and I every time I do an osl tutorial, which seems to be like every other day At this point because I'm just obsessed with it I tell people as a look if you're doing a lighter cloak Like Gandalf and you're going to do his glowing Staff or whatever Yes, he has white robes But guess what white's not always white black's not always black right and for god's sake, please don't have a light source cast Basically, what would people would do is have this blue light emanating from his staff and yet on his robe There was this dark blue and I'd say what's that dark blue and they'd say well, that's the object source lighting I'd say no, that's just dark blue Right the light the light cannot be darker than the fabric around it. It kind of has to be lighter That's where you have to start off with your object source lighting is oh Well, I'm going to have to make this white much darker to be able to show the lighting And two, what if you don't like it? Right, you don't like it It's way easier to unpaint it at this stage than it is round about I don't know three hours from now Exactly. Yep 100% Uh, all right So I want to I want to keep moving forward a little bit a little bit more up to the present day Obviously, you're working on this. This is for Adeptcon charity raffle. Is that right? Uh, it's actually the the table war chair. It's for an autism raffle. I believe and there's several people Kathy and I are doing the splintered fang. I think Caleb and cat are doing another They might be doing corvus cabal. I think And I do believe there's even some 3d terrain stuff that's been done So it's it's much more elaborate than I actually knew I just okay. We're painting some splintered fang It's like no orders much more going on with this And I do believe it's uh, it's an autism chair. It's on the table wars, uh Facebook page and website. I think nice. I'll link that down below as well. I'll grab that and throw that link up So other than what you're working on here What's on your what's on your sort of personal desk? Like what are you working on for yourself where you have time in between all these other projects? Well, let's see. There's the 17 bolt action armies that I mentioned. Yeah, but there's also We're we're finishing. Well, we're trying to expand the haraad army because this was actually my latest army painting series But these guys are meant to be played with Because my buddies are sick and tired of seeing those easterlings. They said jim you're not allowed to play them anymore Because they've kicked the crap out of us. They've killed aragorn like 12 times enough already with the easterlings. No more kamul. No more amdour So i'm doing haraad. I'm doing canned I've also got what you saw the dolly. I'm roth figure. That's another army and I've got my rohan Let's say I think I've got a few. Oh, here we go. So yeah, here's some of my rohan And I paint I think it was urkin brand on a live stream. This was actually painted on one of my youtube lives Aoun on horse I've got about 20 cavalry here. I'm converting some of them to be royal guard Those are tricksy guys because their cloaks are like 20 feet long. They're like green wedding dresses Right, and I'm not sure how they're supposed to fight. Maybe they're just like angry. I don't know That's a it's a lighter material than you'd think I guess it's actually it looks like heavy wool But it's actually just a super light thread It must be and let's say I've also got some some splintered fang here There there we go. This actually all of these have been painted in live sessions as are some of the marvel crisis protocol So katina at some point are supposed to start playing this So I think I've painted five. She's painted at least three including what plaid widow. I think she that's her legendary Marvel crisis protocol figure So we I think between the rules we've already done at least eight Uh, this this is red skull here. Yeah So I have no idea who these guys are because I never read a comic book in my life. So that's amazing to me That is so shocking to me that that's that that's the case Well, this is a guy who's been conducting basically history lessons on lord of the rings who in 2001 Walked into the theater going What is jr. Tolkien and who is lord of the rings? I'd never heard of it before Wow, so that was your first exposure, huh? I had no idea what it was. Kathy said we're going to go see this move and I said, okay Yeah, I can always just sleep or whatever And then it happened. I went oh And then all of a sudden there was a miniatures game of it. Right. Oh Okay So that happened and then it turned out to be my by far My favorite of all the gw games Yeah, and you've stuck with it to this day still still getting games in still building your armies out Uh, I'm sure you were excited when they did sort of the big You know relaunch and everything here last year or whatever it was two years ago. I don't know Oh, it was amazing because actually all of the games like wild west exodus and even bolt action The reason why I gravitated towards those is that the mechanics or at least the feel of the game was like lord of the rings Because lord of the rings is as much a a mind game a poker match is anything else because Can I get you to use those finite resources of might fate and will and stuff that really doesn't matter right? Can I trick you into using that when you really shouldn't be using that? That even the last game there were things that I was able to do. It's just well, okay I'm really glad you did that because now this is going to happen That's how aragorn died But you can't do those with a lot of other games that are really either like shoot the heck out of people Or just march across the board and whack them. Sure So here's my question you mentioned earlier that you you know, you generally buck against the trends of say standard uh painting certain Pre-fabricated paint schemes. Let's call it. Okay, which is I imagine We don't see a lot of space marines from you the most popular thing to paint on the internet a space marine leg Obviously as I've said before Because they all have these you know very dictated schemes How did you find painting the the marvel folks where it's you know, there's a certain costume and stuff like that Did you find that to be a good change of pace? Was it more of a challenge because they are You know captain america looks kind of like captain america that is to say like he's got a certain costume, right? Believe it or not over the course of my 20 years of painting at least 95 of the figures have had to be painted in a priest priest prescribed color scheme It's only my own now. You know why my own armies are so way out there Because everything else I have to paint is either match this concept art match that concept art Match these historical pictures in the case of bolt action. I mean, yeah, you know how you know how the grog nerds are with that Sure. Yes, you can't you cannot get they uh when you're dealing with historical It's not just like that. They've got to be green It's that they've got to be a particular exact shade of olive That was available for the coats the winter coats in the 1942 winter campaign. Yes, exactly I have an actual paint ship from a panzer 38 t and I said, well, that's fantastic Unless you were there with your color digital camera taking pictures along the way The three months that this thing was on the in france around the russian front Sorry, your paint ship ain't gonna do any good because our kia soul that's sitting out in the front yard or front street Has been weathered just by the streets of chicago. Right, right Uh, well, especially the streets of chicago chicago is going to weather your car more than many other cities, but yes Absolutely So i'm actually believe it or not that these when I get to do my own That's why my my own armies are just the color schemes are the most outlandish things I can think of Because otherwise it is okay. We have to do this that the hellboy figures it was another thing where they had to look exactly like Whatever the the references were. Yep That's even the was that the song of ice and fire stuff was even more complicated because again Game of thrones. What is that? Is that like another version of settlers at katana? What is that? I don't know And so so when did you like I know you've painted quite a lot of uh song of ice and fire And we're gonna we're gonna see some of those figs here in just a minute But when did you did you jump on the show? Did you come about aware of it with the miniatures game? Like at what point did you do you get on to game of thrones? That's a rather humorous reaper con story when mr. Ludwig of dark sword miniatures fame And by the way, that's one of the names on those song of ice and fire boxes He walks up to me. I'm doing the fort waple thing. He says hey, jim. What do you what do you think a song of ice and fire? I said song of what? I never I had no idea what he was talking about. I never that was the first time I had heard the name Because I had sort of heard game of thrones once or twice. That's it And he says he's like then he's like, yeah, right, you know, you know what? As I don't want you talking about he says, yep game of thrones I said still don't know what you're talking about. He says the Kickstarter I said now I really don't know what you're talking about So he he says a few of those colorful non youtube friendly metaphors Storms away comes back a few minutes later with that big honkin box. Yes starter box slams it down on the table Utters a few more very descriptive Metaphors of me and says look at that and you blankety blank And I look and I said what's this and I just I didn't even know that it was You know his name on the box too. I just said so who made these He's now he's getting really mad. It was the it was the Kickstarter from last summer So I didn't know And then I started to look at the miniatures realizing not only were they all one piece and sort of unbreakable But the weapons he said Jim look at those weapons because he knows one of my bugaboos Is having to basically be my own blacksmith and reforge every sword every year I hate that And he says Jim, I know you hate doing that check those out and I said wait a minute These are kind of all perfect right out of the box and he says Hit that sword and see if it's flexible and it wasn't That the halberds on those I think I sent you the pictures of the halberds He says look at those halberds right there try and bend those And I couldn't now wait a minute. What sorcery is this? And he's I think it was maybe a few weeks later He sent me a starter box and some of the kind of subsequent boxes and that was already doing the dark sword Figure tutorials for the patreon page. He said look, I know you need army painting stuff Well, you got armies here because this is just a start And there's units you you're always talking about wanting to do the like was that kings of war Kind of the almost a diorama of a unit right where you just kind of stick them on but these are removable So you get the both best of both worlds of basing And diorama building they're like mobile dioramas that you can play with And then I started to watch battle reports of the game and I went Okay, this this I think I can get into this And and sure enough I was able to really it's another one of those games where The game is secondary what you're playing is the person standing across from you right Because you can really mess with their heads up fears I mean you can just They could actually win the game and you could make them feel so exhausted. They'll feel like they just lost Even though they won because you can especially if you're playing lannisters It's the army of nuke that that's what I love about that And it was really fun to be able to come up with those basing themes and it was perfect those texture rollers Yes, it was like someone said what's jim gonna need for that time when he he starts painting figures for the show He's never heard of for the books. He's never read Let's just make these because at one point jim's gonna just need these sure It's it's kind of like that just even today with all of this gondor themed terrain that's it's coming my way It's well jim needs to get these battle reports done. Yes. He's gonna make his own rohan board But boy would be nice if someone just magically said look here's everything you need to make an arnor table Aminus turret table, but don't amroth table and osculia table. It's just right here All you got to do is paint it and weather it And then they just set it down in front of me I would really love if one year Maybe some year in the future Reaper con and nova will be on separate weekends instead of the same weekend Because I would love to get you over to nova sometime for the big lord of the rings games They have there and and all the the tables that they built because they they really are great I think you'd enjoy them We've heard that it is probably the biggest lord of the rings event. There's about 20 and by 20 tables It's like one is osculius. Yes one is mordor. Yep. They have they have a hobbiton table That's just amazing if you can like bag end is there and everything else. It's it's wonderful It's uh, because we've seen the pictures of it The only lord of the rings tournament I ever got to do it was Oh, it's called Bilbo's bash actually is the same guys that put on that bolt action tournament What was wonderful is that you everybody had to have one evil army and one good army And you played three games with each so there was no blue on blue. Nice There was always good versus evil And that was really that was really amazing and and they they They did really nice awards. They really tried to make nice terrain, especially lord of the rings themed terrain, but I think Now have you seen the now is it zorpa zorpa? Locky out there in Australia. He's been going berserk with all of his tournaments out there. Okay Arta unleashed and that sort of thing. Well, I didn't even know what Arta was until Maybe about a month ago when I started to watch these Basically, they're like historical lord of the rings videos. Yes. Yes That they tell you about the creation of the world and all this other stuff It's been really helpful as far as the painting goes and now That I want to start setting up these terrain boards to know that the history of us gilius that the kin stripe More than just what I learned from the lord of the rings game or even just the movies So so when you say the lord of the rings game, I've got to dig in on this. This is fascinating to me. So, uh You the tabletop game. Have you ever played any other like video game versions of any of the lord of the rings incarnations? No, I didn't even know they existed until I started looking for references Gotcha like like dull amroth rest. I like what are all these amazing pin there all 3d renders? I thought they were maybe for miniatures companies and then I found out no That's for those war of the ring. Yeah on those those games. Are those how are those? Uh, I enjoy all of them. I think I've played most of the lord of the rings video games at this point I I have I have wasted away a huge number of hours of my life and like lord of the rings online for example Just because it was great to inhabit that world And it's just so much fun and writing across the plains of rohan and coming up to to helms deep or something is truly like An amazing moment in in life. So but at any rate, uh, I'm sure we could do a whole other show Just talking about lord of the rings and and and loving it. But let's let's get into your stuff So as I see because you're you're you're black rimming the base here, uh, and Uh, I assume part of your reason for that is you're trying to see if your color contrast on your fire looks correct This is something I talked about all the time Every time I do one of these object source lighting videos I say look You may think that that's as light as it should be or as dark as you want it to be Get that straight next to it and that'll tell you how much darker you can go It also lets me know that this is also not as dark as I thought it was which is good because I was worried It was a little bit too dark So it means now I can go in here take some of that same stuff and even start to spread that around in here I don't know if the figure is blocking this or not Yeah, we can see what you're doing And yeah, exactly this is I just I really wanted to call it out because it's such a good Such a good lesson such a good moment because to everyone's eye. I'm guessing the top of that base looked quite Black looked quite dark, right? And then you put the black rim around the base and suddenly Just like the color perception changes instantly, right? So, yeah, absolutely. I just I wanted to make sure we we caught that because I'm about to cover you up with Images of your miniature so people won't be able to see what you're doing for a few minutes While we're looking at your stuff So I just I wanted to make sure we called it out Oh, that's no problem All right, so Let's take a look here So now they can't see you painting, but they can see what you've painted previously So what we're starting out with here first is uh your cypher lords and I love these guys So much the cypher lords. This is that's my favorite Warband of these new ones they introduced the cypher lords. So I was excited to see you paint these As usual, I love your take on the colors of these guys. They are very zinchi. So I'm sure you were attracted to them But I love the eyes obviously that you've you've brought out here But as well, I love the way you executed on the on the non-metallic gold and I think that a lot of people get in their head that non-metallic gold has to be some certain particular set or recipe of colors And one of the things I love about the way you work with non-metallic gold not just here But in so many of your figures is catching reflected colors reflected light the environment Around it influences the color of these surfaces And you've really done a great job of bringing all this different color and light into them here So tell us about the cypher lords here and I'll just be scrolling back and forth through some of the various pictures while you're talking But one of the reasons I did the cypher lords obviously, you know Kathy is nergal Jim is zinch. That's just how it is in this house That's how this house operates. That's that's the political camps that we are divided into gotcha Uh as you could probably tell by the whole thing Well, I wanted to go back to the old days before texture rollers because as much as I love those things There's a part of me that missed just taking flat sculpey Roll it out stick it on some cork and just paint basically little tiny murals On was that eight figures? I think it is so eight different bases paint little tiny murals on there And figure out how to make those murals somehow Just match the miniatures in some way shape or form and then Somehow on a few of those, you know, how that the character type figures Some others a way to take freehand from those bases and get it on their robes Or some part of them And that of course with the zinch you're always seeking the eye And to obviously most of the zinchi stuff I've done Is more geared towards the blue and I said no, let's let's do something. I've never done before I'll do this green. Let's see if we can make this work It was kind of like the minds of moria. Can I make this thing work? And to up the pressure it was also an army painting series for the patreon page So it was all being watched every last second of it And it was now on a time frame Right because there's only see can't have 20 hours of videos It has to be somewhere in the neighborhood of 12 to 15 hours long for all five episodes combined So because as I do these things I start saying look this base To make it spend this much time To paint this freehand took this much time Now we're gonna multiply it by eight That tells you how long that's gonna do you have are you willing to spend that much time just on your bases? If not, maybe just do it on the character ones or something special Now let's say it's gonna be a larger sigmar army. Now. It's gonna be 25 30 Right. Is this something you are willing to do 25 or 30 times until you die? Is this right? Right? Are you willing to spend that much effort on this part of it? So it was it was also it was for me to entertain myself and just kind of treat myself But it was also to Show people well, okay, if you're gonna do this stuff Here's what you're in for because there's a lot of extra work here And if you've got it's easy with the guys that are up on one foot But you can see some of those guys have cloaks or maybe two feet on the ground You would not believe how many times the the most ingenious wonderful part of your freehand pattern that you've painted on your base Is now getting stepped on right? I mean literally somebody's stupid foot is standing right on top of an eye Or something dramatic. So I wanted to show them How do you avoid this particular tragedy? Because I've had it happen to me all too many times Or I I do this thing. I go. Oh, there's times I've had to redo a base Because I said no, I just can't have that get covered up right Then there was the gold and I wanted to see could I Make gold zinchi And by zinchi that means crazy color, right? Yes greens all the things that are never supposed to be in gold And it was it's one of those things. I'll never forget the first time I started to see those Sets of non-metallic paints Right and as this set is fantastic If all of your guys are standing in this environment that they're not wearing red shirts That they don't have blue cloaks that they're not standing next to green grass Then that is a perfect non-metallic metal set. Otherwise not so much And that was the entire time I was doing that. I said look Non-metallic metals the thought process can be pretty simple When you let the miniature tell you like okay all that green marble Well that right away starts telling me Your metallic or your non-metallic must be this color Because if there's anything metal next to the that green marble, well, guess what your metallic becomes green, right? It's going to naturally pick up all that light pollution from the environment that's going to be tinted that color Yeah, it's like an instruction manual And as soon as people start to realize that they say because that that's that they won't try it Because they say well, I can't figure out where the colors go. I said you don't have to you think I'm doing that I'm not smart enough to figure that out. I just let the miniature tell me Yeah, just find the way right exactly and I think hopefully from folks as they were watching you paint They should see that you're you're finding your way through the miniature as you're painting it, right? You're you're looking at the volumes as you're painting it. You're seeing where is appointed Where would the light be hitting it? Where would this reflection be happening? Right the miniature itself is telling you Because on those I had to also make a lot of mid-course corrections because That the flesh Jones I had to alter those I had to alter the shades of the green from Oh, maybe something that was going to be a bit of a brighter more intense green To something that actually turned out to be almost gray and green mixed together, right? And it started out one way and it evolved because I'd never actually really tried that coerce game before So it's it's and it was something that again, I get to do zinchi stuff I started to realize that song of ice and fire stuff is darn near just historical miniatures I mean, are they really just like a empire for For him, but they're pretty much just you know And batonians are kind of just French, right Pegasus nights aside. They are just men and they're just guys Yep, and the cypher lords that was the first true fantasy thing I'd done in a while And it was weird. It was what I always try and put myself I guess in the situation of people that are Haven't tried these things before because it's hard to get that mentality When you've done something a thousand times You just gotta look at people go. Why don't you get it? This is easy. Well, yeah, it's easy for you. You've done it at thousand times, right? So this was me also making myself a little bit uncomfortable By going back to a genre that I hadn't touched in a long time Long time How much do you think your time as a 2d artist informs your your use of freehand? Because you use these kind, you know, you use some pretty beautiful freehand elements In many of your in many of your works armies pieces and so on and so forth singular pieces or larger stuff How much do you feel like that's informed your your using of that kind of technique? It's to the degree where I've almost replicated Paintings on miniatures like those those lizard man engines of the gods I've painted those those are space scapes that I painted in 2d I just repainted them again small on a miniature Some of the not work that I did on my Celtic network or my Celtic mythology pictures I'd do an awful lot of Celtic not work on things That those Rohan shields that I showed earlier Well, that's nothing but some Celtic not work, which I did many times in 2d art Because that's what Kathy and I would do is we would go to Celtic Fest downtown Nordic Fest We were selling Celtic themed. I would do paint bull runs. I was painting on drums Gotcha, which is a wild surface to paint on And I was some of the designs that I did on those big old drums Well, now I'm doing on miniatures or on bases even So it really it affects all the time And that idea of the larger brushes And and blocking in the colors first Don't start with an eyeball or like you say the space marine foot. Yay. We're seeing yet another right foot. Yep No, you want to start painting a little more than that Yes, I've often said the most common thing shared on Instagram in miniature painting has to be space marine feet and legs Like that's it the number if you if you just if you bulk categorized everything That's what that would be by far in a way the number one thing space marine legs And I've painted a lot of space marines. I painted five different grey knight armies for either myself or his commissions And we're talking apocalypse sized An entire Mechanicus army including gigantic like that the big titan thing that's about a foot and a half tall That the one with the giant ray gun that's actually two vehicles in in one Oh, yeah, I had to do that one too Sadly this whole army was before I started painting with oils And oh if I was painting with oils that whole project would have taken a third at the time Yeah, that would have been certainly a different different experience there for sure Uh, all right So now let's take a look. Uh, so let's leave our beautiful cypher lords behind here And let's take a look at drako. So, uh, tell us about this guy Now that's the the the sorcerer there That i'm not sure no minute or is that the uh, the dark sword figure. This is the dark sword figure. Yeah There are little our little dragon Humanoid dragon fellow like a dragonborn is what he reminds me of with an axe in his shield on our foresty base So he was really fun with each dark sword miniature that I do I think I've done 35 dark sword tutorials now I try to do something different with either the basing the material or that the subject matter And that was the first non-human Dark sword figure that I had done And you know me with lizard men. I mean, I just said well lizard man He's like, oh, could I maybe paint one of these? And it was also the the big challenge there was the base Because that guy You know, but well reaper maybe not so much now, but a lot of the dark sword figures have what we call the broccoli base Yes, yeah, absolutely. Yep So he was part of actually an overall exercise on how do you manage those things? How do you make that broccoli base literally disappear? But yet still be there because there was no way to chop them off of there Right because my typical thing is take the razor saw it chop them off Well, that was never going to happen on him because he's too integrated with the broccoli base So the whole challenge there was to show people how to I think there's a sword, right and after there's a chew on the base That was just it was a reaper sword was it their little extras, right? They just kind of sell in packs. I just threw that on there along with some tree branches some other foliage rocks oxide paste To essentially completely bury That that huge broccoli base because he's standing on a gigantic broccoli base. That's actually sculpted I mean, it's not just that that crazy little texture. It was actually sculpted as rocks So I basically took the the tree branches and the bark and tried to match That texture that was already sculpted on that broccoli base And completely hide it Nice and most people they have no idea that that's the base he actually comes on Until they go look in the dark sword store and they say wait a minute. Jim. Did you chop him off of that base? And I said no watch that basing tutorial I'll show you I'll show you exactly what happened to him So that was the big challenge for him And then I tried to do I think I was also working for the first time with just the Proacral transparent Yeah, the other exercise I like to do especially with dark sword figures is paint Let's say I'll paint the the first effort will be I'm using contrast paints and regular paints combined Then I'll take the same figure and the same color scheme and paint it with oil paints And show people that there is no difference between the two right So he is I have another one of him and I will eventually be painting him again in oils So that people can see is it easier? Is it more difficult? Is it worth it painting him in oils because you never know till you try So that was that was the big challenge on him was especially the base and Well, you know me that I was once told in a in a gw store That jim we know you but you are not allowed to play 40k with only your bases You have got to have miniatures on those things because my my gray knight base Well, it was a demon hunter army and every base was actually coated Because I had the inquisitor retinues So each base when you looked at it, it would say servitor mage mystic sage You could there was be no arguments about what was what because it said so on the base A justice cars base was taller than somebody who wasn't there was Different freehand on different bases. So anything that was an inquisitor retinue had the inquisitor logo on it And anything that was a gray knight had a chalice on it So they said jim you can't just play with those you got to have miniatures got to have actual minis. Yeah You must have miniatures on your bases. So that's again, that's another I don't know Just maybe that's my warped mine or maybe it goes back to that early days of the horror of realizing that our basing was terrible And and now I would you say basing is now something that you've really come to enjoy In in setting the miniature in a world in a universe and making it feel like it's part of something beyond itself Even when I'm going to make an entire army to me Each miniature is its own miniature vignette diorama whatever and I preach that all the time Because people that they hate basing and that's almost like kind of saying well, I hate pizza and ice cream and chocolate It makes me sad when I hear people say that because Kathy and I we would have painting not just painting days We would have painting weeks or basing weeks where we would just base miniatures and mass for days at a time Now it made a one heck of a mess. I'll tell you that. Oh, yes But that's part of the fun. It's it's gonna get your desk messy, but come on now It's it's fun what comes out of the other side. Absolutely. You just got to have the shop vac ready Well, especially when she's just getting out of bed and she's finding bits of paper clips On you That's her fed just ask her that's her favorite thing ever I'm sure actually. Yeah, you think crackers in the better bad. Yeah, wait till you get paperclip pieces These are even better because they have those burrs on them because you've chopped them with the Clippers. Yep. So now they are like little barbed fish hooks Yeah, that's uh, she loves that so much Which is why we have those basing days or weeks instead of basing all the time because they would just be pieces Of pins everywhere Nice and that would be bad for me No, I agree for me It's just basing and and thinking of a basing scheme in the universe that your army or your team or your whatever you have Any building at that moment is going to live in To me is just one of the most fun elements of beginning to think about any project Because you're getting to create a world beyond just what that miniature is Right and you're going to do that somewhat through the paint scheme, of course And you're going to make decisions there, but as well this makes him feel like to me it makes the miniature just feel like Oh, this thing actually exists somewhere Right when you were doing your the your sigmar your your dwarf project there the Things that were flying. It wasn't just a the plastic flying stand. You actually there's there it's incorporated with the base Right It's it's the base is actually helping it fly rather than the base is just somewhere to stick that little plastic rod Right, right exactly exactly All right, so next up Uh, so now here we go. We're into the uh song of ice and fire the mountains men Uh, and and these the guys I think you referenced earlier that the the challenge you set out for yourself was can I do this all in oils? Can I do it in oils can can I do the The the whole non-metallic that the sky or stuff because I really hadn't tried up to that point I had not tried except for maybe one figure or on a maybe a larger scale figure to do armor like that in oils I said well, we're gonna find out live on camera if jim can do this It could be a horrible disaster instead. It was the easiest non-metallic metal I ever painted right Oh my god, it was like it was just it was like somebody else was painting and I was just watching them Because it was that easy because I could just mix And I'm working on all 12 at the same time and there's none of that rushing around of right But I really like to wet blend here and if I do that I've got three seconds to make it happen Yep It's so I I just I cannot encourage people enough to Go watch your videos where if you've got fear Overusing some oils go watch james videos where he's using oils You know, I I think that constantly constantly constantly One of the big challenges, especially for newer painters and for people even even quite a ways in is how do I get good blending? right and Part of that is obviously just well Because you're using acrylic paint. It's got different drying times. It's meant to be tough to dry fast and stuff like that And if you're not using it in a particular way Using more paint than you're generally taught to you know and stuff like that using thicker paint than you're generally taught to Or whatever the couple different ways to you can go about it, of course But then yeah, it's going to dry and you're not going to be able to blend it smoothly But when you paint with oils my god, it's just it's such a different experience. It's like, oh, I'll just keep working You don't you've never worried about blending when you're using oil paints. That's not a thing Right. It's just it just happens The other fun thing is especially with the the approach that I use Now remember we were talking about that how the miniature tells you what color your metals are supposed to be Try doing that with oil paint Now you don't even have a choice the oil paint just says look We will actually paint your metals for you and decide for you what colors are going to go there Because you are just naturally Blending say the yellow that's in their robes or in the right armor or their their shirts It's going to just naturally blend into the oils by itself. You just leave it there You say, oh, yeah, I'll just leave that right there. Good. Not done. Thank you very much I don't have to do that myself And then you just you kind of add some of that blue or sky color on top of it I was shocked. I know at reaper con. I was doing some of the the king's guard The the guys that why I was calling the walking toilet bowls that the guys they're all just All white. Well, that's where oils also shine quite literally and pun intended the Because you're you've got not just for historicals where everybody's wearing some shade of green Right. Well, these guys were wearing some shade of white Well to get some turquoise in there or purple or something that was more interesting than just oh look He has shaded it with a very dead gray. Yes In genius You can look at those and you can see turquoise and pink just like with the mountains men When you look at those in person actually even the pictures You will see pink right next to turquoise Done in oils. I think that was the other thing too is Could I paint bright colors in oils right just Okay, look at look at all these earth tones. Yay that the oil oils are great for that But can oils also be very bright sort of high chroma high saturation And and they can Yeah, one of the things I want to really draw attention for our viewers to it because you mentioned the whole like Reflective colors just happening really easy I want to draw everybody's attention to our bannerman here in the front of the mountain men unit and here to his inner leg And under the curve of his breastplate here Notice how these yellows viewers are just here. Here's the yellow Tabard or whatever we would call this the the piece between his legs And then see how that's become the reflected light over here just naturally on the side Over here in you know Away the the shadowed side where you want to catch some kind of reflected light instead of just being generic reflected light Instead it's reflected this natural light that's coming right off of the the tabard right onto the The highly reflective metal surface and it just looks so natural Right. It just feels like oh, yeah, of course. That's where that fits in. Yes, because of course that would be reflecting that boom I just to me once it wasn't until maybe about three four five months ago That I realized I think I would look at instagram Post done by actual armor costume guys who are standing in in a forest, right? They it wasn't just armor suits of armor nailed to a wall With that same sort of yellow light pointed down at it or fluorescent lights And I looked at these and I said, okay, I can see not just the trees But I can see the person standing next to them I can see their arm reflected on their armor and then I realized my god for years. I've been doing this wrong I just have to look at the figure and say he's wearing a blue shirt while their darn well better be blue reflected all over his armor Especially if his arm is like if he's holding his arm out in front of his breastplate, right Did is there like some magic shield that keeps his arm from reflecting on the armor? The lights very weak in that in that universe. Yeah, exactly And I said my goodness. How did I not just know this just how did I not consciously think of this years ago? Why did it take me looking at instagram photos of guys wearing armor and who the heck sent me You know, how did I see these pictures anyway? Thank you instagram But seeing those it transformed the way I did metals and I've been doing non-metallic metal And painting 2d painting for 20 years And then tack on almost 20 years of miniature painting non-metallic metals And that that instantly transformed how I thought of them right there after She's 40 years of painting non-metallics basically Well, you know, you started when you were three years old. So that that explains that absolutely. Yeah, no problem easily fit that in there It's it's no issue I remember uh when I was I don't know as I can kindergarten or something and I was trying to draw stairs in perspective Like the way they are I want to draw stairs the way I saw them Not the way you're taught like the little you know the little ladder like yes And of course most five-year-olds don't know what perspective is. So I always get real frustrated Nice right away already trying to to break the boundaries right there Uh, even at five years old And there were no such thing as google or things like brilliant or anything like that to show you how to do perspective online Right, right, absolutely Okay, so let's flip uh onward here And uh, we'll leave the mountain men behind beautiful as they are which these are it's just so gorgeous Uh, let's talk about Rohan. Let's get back into that lord of the rings. So let's talk about the Rohan force. We've got here Well that as kind of tags on to the haraad where it says all right jim when's the last time You played a good force that wasn't your galadrum elves Because they were sick and tired of the storm color knocking them down like a bowling ball And then go out here the eagle jumps on their face And pecks out their eyeballs. They're like, okay, you can't do that either If we're going to start playing lord of the rings again So I thought well, you know I started to see of course locky the zorp-a-zorp. He's obsessed with Rohan So I said, oh, you know, maybe I should rethink this because I don't know anything about them I I always loved the Rohan imagery. I loved edras. I was going to sculpt Medjacell just to have just for funsies because that's what you do I will say the second movie is definitely my favorite all the time we spend in Rohan like just the Everything about Rohan grabs my attention. It's so the iconography The culture everything about it's just amazing Uh, oh actually a side note here on amazon They are selling beautiful three by five Rohan flags for around about 12 13 dollars. Oh nice because I got to me one So that's that was uh, again, it was originated from people begging me to play something else besides galadrum elves And then I thought it's a challenge because you see them mostly just painted green and brown, right very Very dead not not a lot of well no freehand Except for that little bit that's sort of Semi sculpted into the miniatures, right? And I thought and this is even before I came on to the Orkan brand theme I thought you know what? I'm gonna take those shields and I'm gonna throw a little bit of extra freehand on those I'm gonna supplement what's there and enhance that And people actually noticed on the lord of the rings facebook groups They'd say did you like scratch gulp those shields? Why do they have that where's that extra freehand coming from and guess what it was it was Celtic not work That's awesome Because well, I just I love that the music behind them that does not work themes Well, one of the 2d paintings that I did and you can find this on the blog. It was called epona the horse goddess And it quite literally and it's in greens and browns. It's literally Rohan in a painting Years before I ever even heard of lord of the rings Because epona obviously that that's an actual goddess Celtic goddess Right and all these years later now I get to actually do that in 3d form As a playable army. I mean just the fun just never ends Yeah, and you know one of the things I love about these guys is that They feel obviously Rohan you've got a force that's Not as perfected as something like gondor right these are much more earthy folk And I love how you've brought that out even in their Like they're heavy coats. They're sort of armored coats You can see I want to direct everybody's attention to like One too far there we go Uh into the weathering and stuff you've done around the bottom right working in that texture And things like that into them to make them like all parts of them feel like yeah These are you know, these are people who live who work and who are closer to the earth and that kind of thing They're not gleaming suits of perfect, you know golden armor or something Remember that reverse engineering of the the bolt action bases. Yes, you're looking at it right there There you go all of that that spatter that is a direct their entire treatment of their bases is a direct result of me painting My early war french and going why do all of my Grass tuffs look like they've been irradiated. This is wrong And that's when I started and there was no mud spatter on them I said, why does this jeez when I'm walking to the store and it's been raining Can't they said what did you do? Did you get like run over by a dump truck? Why are you just covered in mud? And it's because in just that block and a half to the store and back I'm just the whole back of my leg is spattered with mud and I'm walking on a sidewalk right right So what's going to happen to these guys? Yes walking their way on just on what has to be all these muddy fields. Yeah, absolutely And as you you know, and you're also now following up the horses Yes, so what other kind of mud are you also? We'll assume it's all just mud right that's what you tell yourself. It's all just mud Well, as someone as a boy scout used to go to white pines ranch and we played in something called the manure bowl We're familiar with stepping in it All right So these rohan guys are great, but I want to jump to then our next project So we've mentioned we haven't seen many single figures yet, but here's the nocturna sorcerer A beautiful example of our sort of the the two Source lighting that's you know, this is very very in vogue I love it a lot of people love it because obviously as movie posters discovered about 10 years ago Orange and and cyan look pretty awesome together, right? So here we've got him and over, you know, this hot Coal or this hot ground with some floating rocks and his bright blue magic wand. So tell us about this guy That was partially a treat for me because I almost never get to paint 72 and above millimeter figures because obviously it's That's kind of the side thing of army painting. Is it everybody's going to be 28 millimeter? Or round about that much This was for me to be able to paint something bigger. I actually have a special pledge level on the patreon page It's called painting nocturna. However, it's now painting anything that's 72 mil because nocturna doesn't have enough sculpts So it's also painting big child It's also painting Chimera, it's anybody that does a 72 mil and now I'm even doing 3d printed stuff So anything that 72 mil is going to show up in there pretty much over the course of time So that was just alone a treat for me Being able to use those large surfaces and say, okay Now I get to really use my my big old brushes like the ones you saw me using in the first part of the video here Yep Now I can really go nuts with those It's almost like I am doing a 2d painting And I said, well He has multiple light sources. Let's do multiple light sources. I hadn't really done Many multiple light sources just tutorials anyway. So that was another fun exercise And then all of those those crazy folds. I actually had to paint his entire cloak as a separate piece Oh this back part because it was just so so big and so Sort of obtrusive on the rest of the thing That was the other challenges. Oh, okay. Can jim somehow manage two light sources plus the ambient light and the color of the thing But still when he's when he glues it on not go. Oh, well, I just completely reverse these It's completely wrong. So that was the other challenge was could I actually make this happen? You see there's a seam there. Yeah, it's it's and it's such a good point You know, I I do want to really pull people's attention to this because I had mentioned sort of the two strong OSL sources, but there's this is really a three light piece, right? We have the ambient yellow light coming in here from above just assumingly the generic atmosphere and environment He's in we have the bright blue being generated by the wand over here in a high intensity But shorter area and then we have the generic low light the ambient glow the glow from hell As it were of the orange light and it's just wonderful how all these have merged together And and is just even his face. I mean, of course I don't know how many references were made to let my people go. Yes, uh, kathy already mentioned moses in the uh In the chat right away. Absolutely There was a whole bunch of fun to be had with that But just that that craggy face Because I've seen Basically, I saw so many people having fun with those. I said, man I want to have me some fun with that too because that would just be So much fun to be able to put that much detail into the face I have to try this. So that's why I just kind of generated that pledge level so that I could try it for me too right And it's like the eyes now I guess maybe try and some of the busts also kind of put that bug in my ear Because I got to paint eyes that weren't just Desperately trying to stick the tip of your brush in there just to get some white and then some sort of pupil. Right. Right This could be more than that It's it's so liberating. I think at this scale 75 To me and maybe this feels this way for you too It's it's almost like a Freeing scale where you just feel so liberated when you're painting it because you have so much more room To just explore to mix in colors to do different things It was almost like Usually painting on a russian black lacquer box and now I'm painting the sistine chapel. Right It was that level of size difference and now that I've got so many more of those compiled And a lot of the big child creative stuff. Well, I'm gonna certainly use oils on those I only did that black sun. That's uh, the most recent large scale thing I did And I painted that with the the oil brushes. Oh, was that fun? Oh my goodness A large large scale figure like that that big old dragon head that she's stepping on so because obviously the same scale is that that wizard figure there and They came I was debating on doing that one in oils, but I wanted to show the fluorescent paint Right and at least until now I've been told it's possible to actually make fluorescent oil paint But nobody's quite willing to take that chance that nobody will buy it because well everybody's scared of new things. Of course It's why would you want that that's new that's dangerous I haven't seen that before what could that possibly be Well, it's actually an energy drink. No, it could be dangerous If the the bright side is in the in the current world we live in I am confident to say it's probably only a matter of time, right That is the there's always more paints more toys more things more tools Then I feel like we can never keep up with now. So uh, no matter what or how you like to paint I will say this is uh, we've come a long way from Uh, you know eight pots of enamel based or you know paints Back in the day. So that's for sure It really is it's it's just amazing Well, even these these figures here because I've got some that the black sun figures they're sculpted I don't think they're sculpted digitally the nocturnal ones are so even there you get a little difference in the personality Of the way the figures are and how they're sculpted. So that's pretty fun too And you see it even more obviously with say reaper figures you see a big difference in how From sculptor to sculptor but this is even more prominent because the thing is just so much bigger, right Absolutely All right. So one last thing we're going to look at here And uh, this is a fun one Uh, let's take a look at some terrain because that's right the terrain workshop Episode one Uh, so tell us about this man. This is exciting So I wanted to let's see when I did the original painting pyramid Kickstarter back in what 2013 Of the 53 videos five of them were terrain If it was up to me half of them would have been terrain and the other half would have been basing That's just my mentality because I love terrain because well, you need terrain to play the games Right again a guy who has made five blood bowl stadiums just Just saying Well, I I saw on I don't even know how I actually just ran across these things, but I saw these amazing Terrain pieces and I said that that's gone door And the more I looked at these terrain pieces The more I said wow that that could be arnor that could be meanest Tier that could be mean that could be meanest morgle. There's all this amazing ruined terrain Scatter pieces fountains statues This this whole this thing could be brie this entire village So I said instead of me taking several months To be able to start doing my battle reports on my terrain boards that already exist They just need non world war two era buildings, right This all I did was I took that terrain piece I did my quick little airbrushing of primer and paint on it And then I used some new weathering and and kind of turf products that I got Tried them on there and I said, oh my gosh. That's all it took To make this and now I can have an entire six by four board Actually almost two of them covered entirely in this terrain in no time at all With that painted backdrop that you see in the picture that was just piece. That's just cardboard That's literally just cardboard Kind of made to stand up on its own and I just sort of airbrushed a landscape on it. Nice And I'll be doing tutorials on those trees because I've got step-by-step blog posts on those Trees and forest pieces, but I'll start doing those in videos too But oh my gosh, I've got some terrain pieces that are almost two feet tall And it quite literally looks like those gondor towers with the kind of domed roofs. Yeah, some are intact. Some are ruined I just oh, I just can't get enough of it Actually, I've got even for for bolt action. I've got a I think it's a 3d printed. It's the fountain from Stalingrad. Okay with the kids and the frogs And I want to do some tutorials on that showing how to do maybe some frozen water in it Yes, okay. I have a bit of a war zone look to it. Yeah, but now with again with that terrain When I saw the pictures of that It was like when I first saw the tomb king's army on my army board It was the kind of music played a light shone There was a choir there were angels Lots of dead gondor knights. I mean, oh wait, wait, sorry. Did I just say that? I Can't help but root for the bad guys. I get it. I get it Oh, they're just they're just different. That's all that's that's right. Yes. Not bad. That's don't don't judge them That's right. Don't put them in a box like that. Yeah, they're just different. Let's see. Don't Amroth is fine I got no problem with them All right, well, this is awesome. Don't forget folks down below You can find james patreon. So if you're interested in this and this is This kind of stuff is awesome Everything we've talked about all these projects that we've seen so many of these are just done as he said on camera So at minimum, please go down there find his youtube page subscribe But you will not regret it But you should also look at his patreon There is few places in the world of patreon that you're going to find as much content with as in-depth instructions From such a talented painter as what you can find there. So do go check that out All right, so let's bring you back on camera here And this is great because suddenly everybody's gonna be like, whoa, oh, that's right We were paying this guy and suddenly he's back on screen and he's just looking amazing amazing Uh All right, so now we come to the rapid fire question section of the of the interview. Are you ready, sir? I am ready. All right Uh, obviously a lot of times when you're painting you're streaming But when you're not streaming, what do you listen to do you have anything on in the background? All the time It used to be if I want to learn a game system I'll just have endless battle reports playing in the backdrop And I always know I've learned the game system when I go they didn't do that, right? When you when you start correcting the battle report, that's how you know you've hit All right. I'm ready to go. I'm good Well, I actually my first bolt action tournament I actually did manage to win the tournament having never played a person before except for me In a battle report video. They said, well, where'd you learn the game? I said I watched battle reports Nice, that's how I relearned lord of the ranks was watching. That's how I learned song of ice and fire That's just strictly by watching battle reports and the next thing you know I'm people are playing and you're like, wait a minute, but you've never played this game before Why did I just lose 10 to nothing? All right, now here's here's here's a different we're gonna we're gonna chain a rapid fire question off that Do you and kathy share the same studio? Our entire house is the studio so technically yes. Oh wait, the bathroom doesn't have miniatures in I was just wondering if there's ever a fight over what's gonna be on in the background if you're both paying at the same time Um, there's a reason why I don't get to stream live during the day because that's kathy's time Kathy owns the day I own the night. There you go. All right fair enough fair enough That's that's very similar to my household. You mentioned the the zinch nergal I think in my house, I'm slanesh and my my wife who's also a kathy by the way is corn So there we have a it's a similar it's a similar dynamic Uh, so there you go. All right, uh Now for the next question you can only pick one answer You know, I pick one even though we could go on forever with many many different options. So here's the question Who is your favorite miniature painter past or present alive or dead? let me I'm trying to think of one of the early early ones from the I'm trying to think of an early one And their names is escaping me because the early days of cool mini. Well, actually probably Oh, it's her name. Alexa z. I think that was her name on cool mini. Okay, because that was the first person We were literally told paint like her Ah, okay. That was actually an instruction. We were said look we wanted to look like her stuff So in many ways all these years later, it's because of All right make it look like that. I had to study her stuff. So I suppose maybe that is a good answer No, absolutely. That sounds influential to me. Absolutely. I like it Okay, if you had to pick a singular color What is your favorite color? to utilize in your in your paint schemes and by the way, I don't mean like brand name or you know Blah blah blah blue or like something like that. I just mean like of the generic color wheel. What's your favorite hue? It's always a blue sort of like a cobalt blue because that's I'm known as blue and gold and Kathy's always green in earth tones Gotcha. Okay. Nice Uh, and then finally and maybe we've probably answered this already, but we'll put a pin on it You can construe the word type however you like here. Okay So that is to say it can mean anything. It can mean scale. It can mean literal type male female barbarians future sci-fi pass whatever Anything what is your favorite type of miniatures to paint? I would say historical Okay because of the research Gotcha. So do putting in the time and finding actually The the differences in the colors the environments that they were in the ways that they dressed and and battlefields they fought on and how that would you know, this is the this kind of thing that that's uh That fun of that adds more interest than when it comes time to put paint to to uh, to brush to many Well, think of it song of ice and fire even lord of the rings What am I doing? I'm researching what these guys are supposed to look like It's just they didn't actually exist on like the bolt action stuff, but I'm treating them like historicals Right. So when you think even my fantasy stuff, I treat like a historical No, that's awesome. That's a good answer All right. Well, there we go. That's everything I had for you. James. This has been absolutely fantastic sir hanging out absolute pleasure I just want to say thank you again so much for hanging out with me here and doing this Well, thanks for having me on allowing me to corrupt even more people now I hope so James. I hope so if I've in any way Had made any contribution to helping you corrupt the painters of the world over to your style and your thoughts and your Techniques, then I consider this show an absolute success Uh, I assume you're going to be at adept con here in a few weeks Oh, yeah, we'll be doing obviously the four waffles thing and I've got I've got my Four classes that I've got to teach but when I'm not doing that, especially in the late night hours That's usually after midnight I'll be guarding Fort Whopple and we actually had a nice little group there Actually, we sculpting an epoxy sculpt in the middle of the night people sculpting an epoxy. It was great So hopefully we'll get to do that again this year too. Nice. Nice. Yes If you're going to be at adept con They're right sort of in that main door under the stairs is is this great painting area that that James and Kathy Lead and You can you can sit anywhere and paint except their spaces. You have to get sit there Beautiful table great lights fun environment It's such a great place to just hang out to share to paint to have fun and and to get your hobby on so Like I said, check out all of James links. They're down below in the description. Sir. Thank you one more time I really appreciate it Well, thanks again, and everybody just enjoy your painting. Just do stuff. That's fun. Don't don't sweat it Make sure you enjoy it. That's right. I can think of no better advice to end on All right for all of you out there watching. Thank you so much for it Certainly appreciate it and as always we'll see you next time