 Here we go. Okay. Hello everybody and welcome to another interview with the artist. And today I am very excited to be sitting down with my guest, David Caldwell. David, how are you doing today, sir? Hey Vince, I'm doing very good. Thank you and it's a pleasure to be on the show, looking forward to it and yeah, should be good. Yeah, absolutely. And I had the first chance to meet you just recently actually. We met down at CanCon. I didn't even know you were going to be there. And I was really excited because I have been a fan of your stuff for a long time, been following along. You've done so many pieces that I thought were absolutely fantastic that I'm sure our viewers were also recognized when we go through them later in the show. So it was just great to meet you in person, man. Yeah, well thank you. Well, I'm proud to hear that actually. It's like, yeah, I'm very happy to hear that. It was, what I'll say is as we get into your pieces, I really love just in general, the way that you make pieces very striking. That is what I'll say. So much of your stuff just jumps off of the page when I'm scrolling through so many of the pieces you've done, just really like grab me. I couldn't look away. So I just really think that it's awesome work in that regard. Yeah, I guess that's a big part of what I try and do is I want to capture people's attention because I think I'm not sure whether that's like a full on deliberate thing like where I want to really go bang, pow, wow. Because that can become also a little bit tiring when an artist does that every single time. But I also do want to have some sort of aspect of grabbing attention with most of my works. And I'm still fairly new to the whole scene, I think, in terms of what I've learned. I mean, I think I'm just kind of, I'm getting past the noob stage now being in about five years. But I still also feel like, you know, I'm discovering new things all the time. And so, you know, I feel like you continually just keep going, yeah, wow, bang, bang, wow. And that's a big part of what I like about doing it. And I guess you could say that I do use a lot of bright saturated colors. Yes. So, yeah. Right on. So let's get into it. You mentioned kind of offhandedly there how long you've been doing this, but I want to get into the very beginning. As I say on every show, this is a weird hobby that we participate in, right? We decide to take little plastic and resin things. And make them be painted. Like, what a weird thing we all decided to do. And yet we all get great joy out of it every day. So- Isn't it a great modern world that we live in that we're able to do these sorts of things? It truly is, it truly is. So, what made you first decide to put paint to brush and brush to mini? Where did that begin? Okay, so I've seen a few of the other interviews. So I've thought about this a little bit. It'd be interesting to see how it comes out now that I'm talking about it. But- Sure. I first got into Warhammer when I was about 13, 14 years old. And I think that was a time where it was a Bretonian-Luzerman starter box. Sure, yes. A friend of mine, we both thought, oh yeah, why don't we give it a try? We'd probably seen it in a supermarket. Not a supermarket, a shopping center. And I thought we'd give it a shot. And so, yeah, we started. I got the Bretonian side. He got the lizard men's side. And we used to sit there and listen to music, painting together. And it was a lot of fun. I don't think I was very good. In fact, I was pretty bad at painting back then. I remember taking my Morgana Le Fay into a Warhammer store and saying, oh, I can't do the eyes. And then he said, oh, look, you've painted this so many times. There's no detail left. So it literally filled up her face so that it was just a round blob. And you had to paint some eyes on top of the round blob. And it ended up looking pretty good. I thought, wow, that was cool. And then at about 14, my friend lost interest in it. I think there may have been a part of that with the Bretonians at the time being a bit OP, especially with the Lance formation. Oh, sure. That's classic Lance formation time, too, because that's the finish. Yeah, when they were appointed ones. Yes. And so I feel like I don't think I won every game, but I won most of them. And I think when you think back to being a kid, you want to win every time, right? Of course. And so I think it wasn't as fun for him as it was for me because I was winning most of the time. And that may have driven him away from the hobby. So sorry, Joel, if you're watching this, I think I may have caused you to lose interest back then. But then we both ended up stopping and selling our stuff. And I went away from Warhammer for years and then had some things going on with my life, health issues and stuff. And I needed to find something to help with stress. Yep. And because I get migraines. And so I needed to find something I could do to help de-stress because it's stress related. Yes. And so it wasn't necessarily intentional. It was just like looking through different things, drawing and getting back into Warhammer. I didn't think about painting as a big thing. I just wanted to start collecting Bretonians again because I had some cool nostalgia thoughts about how it was back then. And so it's always rosier in our memories than it is in reality, yes. Yeah. Well, definitely the Bretonians. The new Bretonians didn't really live up to the way I imagined how they were. And my mind, I mean, they were still pretty good. And I started doing all these conversions and stuff at the start. And I was going to make this custom army where it was on the border of the empire in Bretonia and have lots of little empire parts to it. And probably ruined a lot of valuable models from the collectible standpoint by cutting up metal stuff. I've still got a lot of those hidden away in a cupboard somewhere. And then started to get into a little bit of painting. Didn't know what I was doing. I'd painted three or four or five. This was before the five years that I counted. And then I had another gap where I stopped doing anything. I kept on buying some pieces here and there, buying collectibles. And then I started painting again. And I was actually painting for the sake of trying to do good paint jobs. And I discovered that while I was collecting the army and starting to create moles, becoming more interested in trying to do a good job of the painting rather than doing the army. And so from there, it flowed into more of a painting to make the models really good. And I thought, I was still thinking I was painting armies. But I ended up not getting any armies done because I was just taking away too long per model. Well, were you still doing Bretonians? Was this still Bretonians? Yes, Bretonians and an empire conversion. So at this point, I was doing those, yes. But I think I was starting to think about buying other models. Guys, well, those are two very complicated ranges. Like you can spend so long on a Bretonian night, right? Because everyone is its own little character. Yeah, exactly. And that's the sort of thing that I was doing. And even just the individual guys and men at arms, I was taking way too long on those. Even by comparison now, I think I can probably do something that I can do now in the amount of time that I was doing on them back then. And I wasn't even really doing anything very good at all. They were terrible. There was no contrast. Like maybe the blends were a tiny little bit from dark to light. And you can barely even see it when you look at it now. It just looks like a one color. And I thought I was doing a great job back then. But yeah, I hate looking back at them. Actually, I don't hate looking back at them. It's kind of good. But looking at them now, they're not very good. And then I did a class with Meg Maples and Meg Soli when she came over here, one of her first Melbourne classes. It may have been the second one. And Betcha didn't know what I think. And from that class, it really just fired off for me. It's like, wow, this is what I want to do. I love this. And after that, I basically decided that I was going to just paint them as collectibles rather than painting for tabletop use. And after that, it changed completely. I'd never really thought or considered or known that people do it just as a painting side thing and not using them for gaming or tabletop use. And then once I found out about that, it was on. And I haven't stopped since I've been going hard at it for about five years now. And I spend a lot of my free time painting pretty much all my free time painting. Right, sure. This seems very similar to me. This is familiar, absolutely. And so, yeah, now it's basically everything is just all display painting. I like to jump between games workshop and busts and different models. And I still have a big love for the games workshop. Love their models. Most of them, I want to paint them all. I don't have enough time. So I have to be very, very picky and juicy about what I'm going to do. Sure. Wish I could paint them all. All right, so it's a good transition. And I think that's a pretty well-known story. Because the reality is I think a lot of us got into it through Warhammer, right? Like through the game. It ended up being, it's this incredible gateway where at first we paint because we have to and then we discover that we love it. And whether you still play or not, the reality is the painting becomes the thing you're there for. That's the reason that you show up. Yeah, and it continues to this day to be like a huge stress relief. Like, you've got a lot of things going on in life. And as soon as it sits down and start painting, everything just drops away and the world becomes a magical little, you're just there in the painting. And that's all that exists for the time that you're painting and I love that. Yeah, I agree. You mentioned like the sort of mental health aspect of it earlier. And that's something I think I want to drill in on a little because this is a big deal to me as well. It is absolutely my stress relief, my thing that centers me. It's what keeps me sort of grounded. It's what keeps me focused and trying to improve and trying to better myself. Like it's so multifaceted, right? I think the, it's a very zen in the art of motorcycle maintenance kind of thing, right? I think that people underestimate just how much having an artistic pursuit like this. And this one's so great because it is, you can so easily be part of a large community while you're doing it. You know, the two things that I think help the most with that kind of stress is one, having an artistic creative focus where you feel like you've got an outlet and two, having people you feel like are your friends and being part of a larger community. This does both simultaneously, right? Yeah, yeah, it does. And I mean, in some ways it's not such a social hobby in terms of that you don't see people in person all the time. A lot of it's over the internet. For me as I'm a, I've become, as I get older, I'm becoming a bit of a more of an introverted person. And I like, I've always liked my alone time and I've always liked, you know, needed to be one of those people that just has to go off by myself for hours at a time. I don't get lonely. But then also, I love the community that I've become involved with now in terms of on the internet and then all the people I'm meeting through like Christoph Dragan in Cancon and having the international artists coming to Australia and meeting people at the classes. And it just seems like all the people who are into display painting are just awesome people. So I don't know what it is that drags are sent to display painting miniatures but I haven't met many people within this community that I don't, in fact, I haven't met any that I don't like, that I don't like. I pretty much like everyone. So I think that's a good sign. Totally agree. It's fascinating because I think for a lot of people the internet is just sort of this thing that's very ephemeral like the people they meet there they have very ephemeral relationships with. And there are so many people I've met through this hobby that have become realistically just my lifelong friends like people I consider better friends, closer acquaintances, whatever you want to call it then most of the people I knew in person, right? This is this incredible shared interest. Yep, definitely. And in most cases it's calm and this is from my experience I've heard other people have had different experiences but my experience is most people are pretty calm about it. I think the way that we interact and provide feedback and everyone's trying to help each other grow and it's a very early like as an art form I think it's still in its very early stages. And I think that we're all sort of growing together and pulling each other up. And as not one person tries this and another person tries that we all see those different things that they do and that pulls everyone else up and it all spreads out vicariously. It's just so awesome. Like imagine being back in the days of Leonardo da Vinci none of this interaction would be possible and you have to learn every single thing by yourself or from books or seek out artists and maybe learn one or two things. And then over a lifetime, you gather as much knowledge as we might all have now from just a few years. I find that really compelling. Like just think about how far and how much we can learn by interacting together worldwide over the course of our lives. I find that very exciting. I agree completely. I think when you look at the quality that's out there when I scroll through my feed, it's just amazing, right? It's unbelievable because there is the information the knowledge is shared so freely and that's what's wonderful about the age we live in you can learn so much. And I think that's fantastic. Yeah, yeah. So how much did YouTube or other online mediums whatever it is, blogs and the various things that are out there, how much did that impact your growth? Where you learned from Meg there, you took a class which by the way, Meg was a huge inspiration for me as well. There's so many things about Meg's painting I love. Like obviously I didn't, she was half a world away but I followed her blog, I read all her articles like I loved her stuff. So she's like completely on the same page with you there. Yeah, yeah. Well, I couldn't have learned what I have without her. She put me all on the right track. So much good advice in those early stages because a lot of people who come to me now and ask about painting, I find that they're stuck in a sort of a, in the tabletop painting rut that they or at least they feel they are. And that whole idea of base coat, wash, dry brush or edge highlight, trying to get out of those bad habits getting out of those early, which I was lucky to do because I had the class with Meg, I feel like there's nothing wrong with those for tabletop painting but there's certain elements of that that can be bad habit forming when it comes to display painting I think, especially when you're trying to think about volumes and stuff. But I sort of went off on a tangent there on the wrong way. That's what we're here for. Yeah. We're here for tangents. The show should just be called interview with the artist tangent of thought. So it's all good. Yeah, so how, so you had, you had all that it was great. She broke you out of that cycle early. So then how much did you go to online sources to continue learning? A lot, I spend a lot of my time like when I wake up in the morning having coffees I have my iPad in front of me. And basically every morning for years and years and years I've just been, you know looking through the feeds of people's stuff or looking at things on YouTube, various sources. A lot of YouTube learning, trying to, like I think that counts as being self taught because even though you're learning from the internet it's not a specific class thing and you have to absorb bits and pieces that you want to know, even though you're learning from other people. So yeah, a lot of YouTube, I had some miniature mentor I bought books and a lot of like step-by-step tutorials just on Facebook and forums and just constantly searching for different bits of information and trying to understand how to achieve certain things and what to do. And yeah, it was a, it seems like it's been a long road to really understand certain things. And I still feel like I, I still feel like I'm only scratching the surface of what I want to learn and what I want to be able to learn. Right. So I still do that all the time. Constantly looking at Pinterest for inspiration. Yep. I find Pinterest is a great place to find artwork not necessarily for miniatures but just any kind of artwork is good inspiration. Pinterest is the best spam I receive. Because they email you all the time and they're like, here's some stuff you might be interested in. And most of the time I'm like, yeah I was interested in that, thanks. And all fine things I like. Yeah. And I'm like, oh man, another email from Pinterest but then you click and I'm like, oh, I like that. Yeah. I like that. Oh, get that. And oh geez, I ended up opening 10 new windows from that email. Damn it. There's another half an hour down the toilet. But not really. Right. Because it's valuable. Absolutely. It is truly like this. It's a very funny thing that it's the hap, I'm always happy when I see their spam email come in because I'm like, oh great. Okay, cool. Let's see what they think is interesting for me today. Yeah, that's it. And I think they do a pretty good job of like image searches at least. I don't know what Pinterest is supposed to be used for. It's good for finding images of artwork. I don't know what other people use it for but that works for me. I agree. I'm not sure what its actual purpose is but hey, cool enough. All right, so when did you, and this is getting interesting, you're down in Australia. And so competition I think is different for you all down there than if you're in say Europe, right? And you've got Salud or Hussar or Montes Sanzivino or something like that, or whatever. Or even Golden Demon. Or even Golden Demon, absolutely. You just, there's sort of a different density of competitions. So. They're very low intensity. Well, you got a lot of territory down there and not as many people to fill it. So. Yeah. So how do you think of competition? When did you start competing? Like what made you wanna go? How do you think of it right now? Well, it's small and there are some state-based competitions that I have missed out on. Hopefully gonna go to the Melbourne one this year but when I think about competition in Australia my mind just goes to Crystal Dragon. And I heard about that from Meg during her class. I think she may have been starting it the year that I went to the class. I can't recall. And I went, I wanted to go and see other people's cool miniatures, cool painted miniatures. I've always really enjoyed looking at other people's work in person. Really cool painted stuff in person just blows me away. Like it's all good seeing it on the internet but when you can hold it in your hand or at least see it with your own eyes it really makes a big difference. And that's why I'll continue to go every year while I can. Because it's just nothing compared. It's like, no, it's just awesome going to that Crystal Dragon. I don't really care about the competition side of it. Like I think I'd still go if it was just a get together and display your works but I think the competition needs to be a part of it because otherwise it wouldn't pull as many people because I'm not that competitive in terms of wanting to win prizes or win the competition and stuff like that. So, but I think other people are and that's an important facet of this whole thing. So, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. What amazes me, so I've obviously met you at Crystal Dragon this last year or this current year, sorry. And the level there from the artist. I mean, it's mind blowing. Like I would certainly say to anybody who's listening if you have a chance to go to Crystal Dragon at CanCon, which happens in January every year, you should absolutely do so. Just if you want to be inspired, if you want to be blown away by a group of artists just doing some amazing work, it's a great place to be. Yeah, and it's been growing each year in terms of the level. Like I think every year the level of the painters from around Australia that get together for it have been putting in has just been like going through the roof. Like I look at some of the my stuff that I actually got a gold. I think it might have been the second or second or third year that I was there. The first time I didn't get anything. Second time we think that may have been the third year. I can't remember exactly. But when I look back at that, that was my mountain man piece. And I look back at it now and it wouldn't even get it bronze at the current level of stuff. Gotcha. And I got a gold for that back when I entered that. It may have been three or four years ago. I can't remember exactly. I'd have to double check it. But yeah, it's talking about the quality level is just incredible. And yeah, we had some amazing stuff this year. I just loved coming out of that event and getting home and being really motivated to keep going. So yeah, it's been great. Awesome. I would love for it to continue to grow. And I'm more or less happy with being able to just go to that one event each year. So. Gotcha. Gotcha. Do you ever want to come up and go to something at Europe? Would you like to make the trip sometime? Yes, eventually I do. I don't know how soon or when that will happen or not. I'm still battling over the migraine issue and I still get them far too often. I'm getting treated for that at the moment. They're still working on a lot of things, but I still get them once every week or 10 days. Gotcha. And it causes a lot of other problems. And I don't know exactly how well I'll deal with that yet. I'm an anxious person in general. And so I don't know. I do feel myself slowly improving over time. No, I'm definitely becoming more confident getting back to the kind of person that I was when I was younger. I lost myself there for a while. And so maybe not in the next year or two, but as I continue to improve, which I can definitely tell is happening, I would like to eventually get there for sure because I can't imagine anything better than seeing the levels that's over there in Europe and being able to see all of that stuff in person. So that really is something that I want to do. Whether I can do it is another issue, but that's sort of beside the point as to whether I want to, I definitely want to. Sure. Nice, nice. Yeah, that sounds awesome. I mean, it's a personal goal for myself as well. It just seems like really more for anything just to go there, meet everybody, see everything. Yeah, that's it. And all of these people that, yeah, exactly. And all of these people that I chat to online, I'd love to be able to meet them. I think also one of the biggest things that I would try and do when I go over is get some private coaching with a lot of my favorite artists while I'm over there. I imagine that will probably end up being a very expensive trip. I'll have to start saving. But the amount that I've learned from the international artists who have come to Australia has been just astronomical. And I can't thank them enough for all of the things that they've imparted to me. It's, yeah, and, you know, any European artist watching this and wanting to come to Australia will treat you like kings while you're here. We love you guys coming. Open invitation. Open invitation, exactly. Nice. And I think you can hear from the others that have come that they really enjoyed it while they've been here. I hope to say that's true. I hope to say that you enjoyed your time here. Even though you're here not necessarily for Crystal Dragon, but for the Warhammer competitions. But even so, maybe next year you'll get more time up at Crystal Dragon. Oh, I've already planned for that, my friend. Yes, absolutely. I plan to come back next year and make sure I arrange my schedule much more intelligently. 100%, yes. Excellent. All right, so that more or less brings us up to today. So I thought we'd take a look at some of your work. Sound good? Oh, okay. All right. So we're going to, and some of these pieces I saw, I had the pleasure of seeing in person at Crystal Dragon, and I can say as good as the photos are, they are, you know, as you said, even more amazing when you see them in person, right? Yeah, I think that's usually the case. So all right, we begin here with Yoram, I think is her name, or Yorain, who knows how to pronounce it? Yep, from hair models, yep. There you go. So tell us about this piece. What were you trying to achieve? You know, what did you like about this? What grabbed you and me, said, I want to paint this. And this one is 75 millimeter, right? Yeah, yes, I think so, 75 millimeter, maybe like, yep, maybe it might be 90, but I think it's probably 75. She's big. Yeah, I've always been a fan of models that don't have their feet touching the ground because you can do really dynamic things with them. If you can think about a roundabout way to get them attached to the base. And so as soon as I saw this, I'm like, yep, that's got to have that one. I didn't like the cloak that it came with, the standard cloak. So I re-sculpted the cloak, which you can probably see in the image. That was a relatively difficult process for me because I'm not the best sculptor. And so I, there was a lot of sanding involved in that cloak. Gotcha. Sculpting it into near shape and then sanding it smooth. There's, I can't think of the book. One of the books that I have, I think it might be sculpting characters in clay. No, that's probably not it. Maybe painting and modeling in miniature. There's a cloak walk through there where they get like plasticine and you make that into the shape of the cloak and then you lay the green stuff or your middle part, putty over the top of it. And I did that for part of it. And then she's attached to the base through the cloak in the rear left corner. Right. And it was a good, it was a challenging thing to sculpt and put together. And it's always difficult when you're painting in sub-assemblies, when you don't know how it's going to look when you, until you put it together, it's kind of like, oh geez, I hope this goes well. That happens often because I've painted sub-assemblies quite a lot. And yeah. So the other idea for this one is that a lot of my works have got very bright saturated colors. I was trying to think of, sort of settling that down a little bit for this one. Right. Make it a bit more desaturated, a bit more subtle and try and let the model and the scene and the subtle colors and the light that are coming from the lava on the base, shining up onto her cloak and onto her leg and get the shadows and just challenge myself in that way rather than going really bright. And I think that that's, that went quite well on that one. She's one of my favorite pieces personally. I don't like my stuff personally very that often. I think that's kind of familiar for a lot of people. Yeah, I think I definitely empathize with that. What I always say is, at best I can be happy, but I'm never satisfied, right? Like the best is always, the best case when I like a piece is I'm happy. Most of the time it's somewhere below that. It's difficult to love our own work. I think because we get stuck into, you know, painting millimeter by millimeter and then when you try and pull back, it's hard. It's hard to be, to see it through the other eyes of someone else who's looking at it for the first time. Well, yeah, because that's impossible, exactly. I'd love to be able to see some of my works for the first time, just to raise that painting memory and just see, okay, what do I think now seeing this for the first time? Right. It'd be cool to be able to do that, but obviously we'll never be able to, but still. Now, what I like about this piece is, first of all, I love the implementation of the actual clothing of the sort of black because it seems to be wearing like basically some kind of black robe dress skirt thing. And yet you've really done a great job of capturing the light in there. There's so much other non black tones in there, very cold highlights, very warm shadows. I want to direct everybody's attention to like the very warm and the red, this like soft red shade that's kind of reflected up from below in the whole piece. It's wonderfully captured, creates the nice warm shadows on the skin. Obviously it's alighting the whole underneath of the cloak and that soft tone, but you can also see it in things like the, if you're having trouble spotting it, look like under the breast there or look on the lower part of the cloak down here. You can really see that tone captured. I just think it's a really nice placement of color that just has so much to create a great contrast, not just of sort of value, but also of hue there. Thanks. That's a pretty good, seems like you really understand what I was going for with it. I mean, there's a lot of stuff in miniature painting where we want to put a lot of colors into a lot of things and I try and not do that. I like to use less color, but also just doesn't make sense because I use a lot of color, but I like to use less variable color and try and get the color coming from environmental factors or object source lighting. I don't really think of object source lighting anymore. It's more just light. So I like to use light to be big part of telling the story. I think people say that that's probably part of my signature now as well as using different colored lights and things. And this model had some elements of that and in the past, I've always used full color light, like big red or blue or green, full color light. This time I've tried to really tone down the strength of the light to try and just have different color in the shades rather than having really vibrant color in the shadows, if that makes sense. It does. It was difficult, but her right leg is a straight leg. I think it works well there. Unfortunately there rather than under her arm. It does work under her arm, but I still feel like one of the negatives in this piece is that you get drawn to the legs because the light works particularly well around the legs. And then that's unfortunate because you're always wanting to draw the viewer's attention to the face, but that's something that we live and learn about. And sometimes you find a part on the model that seems to work really well and you have to think, oh geez, like that really works well, but that's drawing people's attention away from where I want it to. I have to tone it down or it's going to affect the composition of the piece. And so then you have to paint something back and lower the value contrast or the amount of color in an area because it's just too much for a side element, you know what I mean? So it's very difficult balance finding that right balance for the across the whole model to try and keep the viewer's attention and still allow for some interesting side elements for them to see when they start viewing around the model and looking at other parts. Well, I think it's nice. She does have the advantage of having, you know, you went for the bright red hair and red always does draw the eye. So she's got that to bring our eye back up, which I think does counterbalance it nicely. The face is still the most lit part, right? So we've got that going for us, but then in addition, I think with the red hair it does, I think it still draws toward the eye, but I actually see what you mean, like that knee reflection, right? Like it's bright. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And this is just being, you know, I like to try and be as heavily critical as I can. I mean, some people say I'm too hard on myself and I don't know whether I agree. Like I'm very hard on myself. I also think that that's part of what helps me to practice and improve and see where the faults are in each piece so that I can try and not make the same mistakes again. So I like to try and look at everything judgementally and try and see, okay, this is what I think that's wrong. And usually I think I'm pretty good at picking what's wrong. That's good. Being able to evaluate your own work is usually tough. So that's quite a, that's a good skill to have. Yeah, it doesn't always happen straight away though. Like as soon as I finish a piece, I wish I could look at it then and say, okay, this is what's wrong with it, but usually it takes a couple of weeks to sink in. Yeah, you gotta have the distance right where you're coming to it with fresh eyes, yeah. Yeah, and yeah, obviously the hair choice, the color of the hair choice there being red was purposefully chosen for the purpose of trying to bring me viewers attention up to the head. I got some feedback from Trent Denison, the crystal dragon that my hair is probably one of my elements that I need to try and improve upon. I don't do enough value contrast in the hair. Probably needs it. Especially on this piece, when you're looking down on it from above, the angle of the head is just like a big red blob. Right. And you're not supposed to really view it from that angle, but when you're standing above a piece on the table, that's unavoidable. Yep. And I will say to the audience, because there's some questions about, you know, will we be able, can we see, where can we find other angles? All of David's socials will be and links to all his stuff will be down in the description. So you can certainly go there and he has tons of fantastic pictures on his Instagram, on his Facebook. So please go there. Check that stuff out. Yeah, thanks. All right. So next up, we have, this is a really fun thing you did over sort of the period of last year. So this is all your marines tiled out that you did. This is many different space marines. Yes. So walk us through kind of what this is and what this was an experiment of and why you went through this process. Okay. So I'm gonna be mentioning Trent again because we, him and I, we talk a lot and share a lot of feedback with each other. And he's always very honest and I like getting feedback from him because he's always so honest about stuff. So that's really good. And he hates space marines and I love space marines. And this is something that we completely disagree upon and he's wrong. It is like the most classic form, you know, that's why you see a million space marines around. It's such a wonderful form to explore with painting. Like the volumes are so elegant on it, right? Yeah. Well, and I mean, like we, it's, it's, I know that they're all the same and that they, you know, they all have the same shapes and it's like painting the same model over and over again. But I find that to be the point. When you're painting, when you finish painting a model, say for example, we get to the end and you think, oh geez, everything I learned over the course of that, if I could paint it again now, I could do a better job. Right. And that's what I find so appealing about painting space marines is that, you know, as I paint them over and over and over again, I get used to the shapes that, and knowing where the highlights are going to look best and how to best accentuate the model to give it weight and movement and use the colors the way I want to. And just use it as an opportunity to just practice different colors and different ideas and just to solidify things that I've done on previous models before that or for upcoming projects, practice something that's coming up on that. So for example, like the iron warrior, I needed a good opportunity to practice steel non-metallic metals because I feel like I've gotten decent at gold non-metallic metals as still areas for improvement there, but my steel non-metallic metals is probably lacking still. And so that was a model to take the opportunity to try and practice that on. And so all of them, you know, you've got space marines from all the different chapters. They come in all the different colors and it's just a good opportunity to try to use all the different colors and know what you're going to expect when you come into it. You know, the shapes, you don't need to worry too much about how that's going to look because you know how it's going to look because you've painted so many of them before. And as you learn by doing that repetitively, it's a good way to, you know, get used to the things that you don't get used to when you're not painting the same sort of thing multiple times. Absolutely. It makes sense 100%. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It becomes, there's a, when you can move out of the unfamiliar, so you're not discovering the basics and the forms and the volumes every time, you have a lot more area where you, your brain starts working in a different mode, right? Because it doesn't have to be turning and burning cycles on those elements. It can start thinking over here about other creative aspects. Exactly. And like when the Primaris marines first came out, I fell in love with the look of them. I've always, well, I didn't always love space marines. This is going on another bit of a tangent here. I, when I was a Bretonian and empire fan, I didn't really find 1 Hammer 40K that interesting at all. Sure. People are probably going to dislike what I'm going to say here, but I always thought that the story, you know, the emperor sits on his golden throne and commands his vast armies. I always thought that the emperor was just some regular dude just sitting on a throne and it was just, you know, a big corrupt empire or in the stars, crim dark, more hammer style. I had no idea. And then someone one day gave me this advice to read the Horace Heresy books. And so, well, because I've been reading a lot of Warhammer fiction and I'd gotten through, I don't know how many, there's just a few of the Warhammer fantasy ones. Sure. Like go track and P, like stuff, things like that. I'm actually reading got your secrets. Got your secrets. Now I hadn't gotten into that at the time, but it was more like the Bretonian books, the empire books. Gotcha. Gatrick and Felix is good. I'm enjoying that at the moment, it's really good. I wish they'd put them in the audio book form. Anyway, I was looking for more good fiction and someone suggested to go to the Horace Heresy and man, I absolutely loved it. And I've had a big obsession with space marines ever since I, since, because I listened to audio books while I'm painting and since the Horace Heresy has come onto Audible, it's like the best thing because I've listened to the whole series multiple times now, it's fantastic. And yeah, that is where my love of the space marines were born. And then, you know, I love the trade allegiance and the story behind them. And so the Primaris marines came around and there wasn't really any room to put the trade allegiance into Primaris because, you know, it just doesn't fit the traders. And so I decided to paint the trade allegiance as loyalists. The, basically the story behind it is, you know, how Bellisarius call had that. I don't know, this might be a spoiler for people who haven't read the book yet. Oh, I'm sure we're okay at this point. We're far enough out from it. Gillerman was talking to Bellisarius call and Bellisarius call wanted to make the Primaris marine legions in the Emperor's vision, you know, all of the legions. And Gillerman said, no, the trade allegiance will not be made into Primaris to Geneseed, can't be trusted or something like that. So my idea is that these are Primaris marines that Bellisarius call created behind Gillerman's back anyway because he thought that was a good idea. I mean, he's never been one for following the rules. Sure. And so, yeah, they're loyalist space marines from the trade allegiance in Primaris. And I mean, it's out of canon. I get a lot of comments saying, oh, that's heredical. You can't do that. But I wanted to try and paint some space marines in those colors. So, yeah, that was basically the impetus and my justification for it. Nice. Now you have some process walkthroughs where you go through this stuff that you've shared online. And I find them really fascinating because you use a lot of, like people should, I hope the folks taking note of this, notice that you're a master of texture, that you really capture a lot of texture when you look at something like the cloaks and things like that, you really do a great job of it. And, you know, your technique here for especially the getting the color on the armor, I would describe as abnormal. Well, fascinating because it feels, and I don't mean this in a negative way, it feels slapdash at the beginning, right? It is slapdash. Yeah, so it's fascinating. Like it seems like you're just stippling color on and then you eventually just bring it together. So kind of walk us through there what I, for those who haven't seen it. Yeah, so it's interesting how that came about will probably remind me to go into how I figured this out. It's essentially I paint the base coat layer down, full color, try and be quite dark at this point because this is gonna be, end up being a shadow because I always paint from dark to light. Sure. So for example, with the Emperor's Children, you would have went with a very dark purple, all kind of all. Yeah. Yep. And then straight on top of that dark purple I paint almost a pure white color. I use Vallejo model color pale sand. Yep. All favorite of mine as well. Ice yellow, not pale sand. Also a good one. I'm an ice yellow, glacier blue, pale sand man. I like them all. Yeah. And paint that straight on top of the base that they undercoat underneath. Just go bang, just straight from dark to light. Really just, and I use stippling for everything. And I use quite a large brush that's been splayed out quite a bit and just go bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. Very quickly, literally like that. And then it's just, because you're starting to create the texture. You don't wanna get full coverage. And then once you paint the shaping of your highlight, then you come back over and then paint in a middle color between the shadow and the highlight they end up wanting to go for, which would probably, in the case of Emperor's Children, again, it's like a middle purple. Right. I think maybe just even Vallejo model color purple may have been the one that I went with there. And so you paint that over the yellow and you go out of the lines a little bit so that you're going fully over the ice yellow area and then also out of the lines into the dark purple bit. And then you can go onto a brighter, like a magenta, like the Vallejo model color magenta and you paint that again over the top of where the yellow areas were. You don't wanna get full coverage. You're just basically stippling again and as you continue along that process, you can just paint dots in a random pattern and eventually it ends up looking like a smooth blend but it's actually not. It's like completely faked. And if you get the dots and learn to put the dots and lines in the right position, it'll take a little while. It's tricky when you first try it but it becomes a very quick way of creating cool looking texture and blends without actually having to go crazy about getting it really smooth. But it looks smooth and that's what I like about it. Yeah. No, it's a fascinating. I would highly recommend anybody who's interested in a really, really cool way to get their space marines painted. Either even if for the table, I think it's, you know, even if you're a tabletop painter, I think it's completely adaptable at all levels. What's funny is it's just in the refinement, right? Because it's such a good way to establish value. Yeah, you don't have to spend too much time refining it. You can spend as much or as little time smoothing it out as you want. And, you know, if you want to make the armor really tattered and worn looking, you just have to spend less time refining the blend and making it look smooth. So it can be as much or as little as you want to be. And I mean, I can't take credit for creating that style of painting. It's pointillism. I think there is a lot of, you know, tutorials and books on that on the internet. I didn't know about that when I started painting this way. I didn't know about stippling, but I didn't know about pointillism. And this sketching the light in, I think the first time I saw that was when I watched the Banshee Miniature Mentor beat. Oh, sure. Yeah, yeah. He does some stuff like that in there. And I didn't really click with me at the time, but I think that's the first time I saw it. And yeah, the way that got me painting this way was actually trying to paint the rusty texture on Death Guard shoulder pads, just being rough and tumble and trying to create the texture for them using this method and eventually evolve from Death Guard shoulder pads to this. Nice. Nice. That's awesome. All right. Okay. So next up, we have Nalani. And I think this is one of the first busts I saw from you that just blew me out of the water. Like this one just knocked me out of my seat, man. Such a wonderful exploration of like really, really strong environmental lighting. I mean, and it's so wonderful. When you think of like what color do things become? This is when they're exposed to certain strong environmental lights. This is such a great exploration of that with a strong bright blue and the pale magenta. Obviously I love everything synthwave and this feels very synthwave. You're right in a color spectrum here that I'm deeply in love with. But there's so many little details on here. Like the way you've still subtly captured the textures in the blue reflections. So I would direct people's attention to things like the way the skin is highlighted there. So it looks like you can see the sheen of the skin texture, especially on her right shoulder. I had to turn myself around. Yeah. The cloth texture on her like half cape there that's trailing away and drawing a lot of that blue to the left side of the miniature. Just so many little elements of this that I find to be absolutely fantastic. The reflection of the glasses and the way you've captured the color and passed it back and forth there. But then finally the way you've captured the sort of environmental light in the eyes. I think I like quite a bit where they still have a color, right? Yeah. It's distinct from everything but they feel highly influenced by the environment. Well, I mean, the eyes especially, I was trying to think the idea behind that was that she had sort of like bionic eyes that had like a green glow in there. That's why they're a little bit green but I tried to have the reflections of the colors in the light there as well. So it was tricky. And honestly, on this model, I got very lucky. Sometimes things just come together well and I feel like this at the time when I painted this I was still sort of not so confident with painting. I was still not super confident where I can go in and say, okay, I'm gonna paint this, it's gonna turn out this way. Sometimes I think there's a lot of ups and downs for me. I'm not a very consistent painter from my perspective. Not everything I do works but this one really did work. I'm still quite happy with this to this day. I like it. There's elements that don't necessarily work. Not all angles look great and that is something that I'm still trying to figure out with miniature painting. Like is it possible to make all angles look great while we're painting in such a stylistic way? I don't think it's possible but then some artists do amazing job and amazing job of that sort of thing. So yeah, it's like that when you look at her from the side of the magenta light, the way that it looks from that direction, I don't really like it that much but from the blue side it looks pretty good. So I'm still pretty happy with it. Yeah, it was a challenge but it also went quite well. So let's talk about your process of how you went through this, okay? You started with, when you're starting with the raw bust, you have the concept, you wanna do this sort of contrasting environmental light, right? Did you put her under some colored light of that type and kind of get an idea of where things fall? Did you work digital? Okay, great, so walk us through that. I don't do that anymore because I've discovered that there's a lot of drawbacks in doing it that way after doing a few models like this but initially at the time I did do that and I would suggest that anyone who wants to try and do a two color piece like this that it is worth setting up your model with the lights coming from either direction or to see how the shadows and lights interact. It's a very complicated thing to get used to. What I used to do is use a computer screen with a full color image on it and my iPad with another color on it and put the model in between and take a photo. Oh, that's a really good idea. Yeah, that's a nice simple idea, absolutely. And yeah, take some photos from different angles and then you can try and see how the light interacts and then that evolved to actually moving the model and the lights around the model and taking photos from different directions with the lights in slightly different positions to try and give each of the elements of each of the angles of the model the best put forward because if you get stuck into painting OSL like this from two directions and you just don't allow for some movement of the light, you can get some really yuck looking areas that just don't seem to work. So you have to break the law of nature a little bit when you're painting a miniature that a person can move around, especially on something that's quite a static lighting situation like this. By no means is my way right or the only way to do it or anything. And I don't even know if I'm doing it right yet. That's my experience that you need to allow for some room to maneuver and give each element the best shape for the best angles. Yeah, absolutely. I hope that makes sense. It totally does, yeah, 100%. So if you're not working with the real light anymore and you want to attack a piece like this, how do you do it now? Do you go digitally and take a like a, maybe do mock it up digitally or something or do you do a sketch? Like what's your general strategy now? Do you just get into it and see where it falls? Yes, it's more of a getting into it, see where it falls. Because I've done so many pieces like this, I'm starting to understand how the lights will interact. Sure. And so if you look at the model from the direction of the light that you want it to come, you can see what you can see. Right. And then if you look at the light from the direction from the other light, you can also see what you can see on the model. And so those areas that you see with your eyes where the light is going to fall on the model from one direction and the other. Now, any elements that you can see from both angles, does that make sense? Any elements that you can see from both angles, that's where the lights will mix so that you'll do a blend between, say it's blue and pink like this, you'll have like a purple area in between the two where the two colors are hitting the model in that area. But when you can see some areas that you can't see from both sides, that's where there'll be shadows. Right. And the light, the colors won't mix there so you're going to the darks. And sometimes you can see areas from one side that you can't see from the other side that you know will be in shadows. So the shadows on that area should only be within the color of that side, if that makes sense. It does. And as you start to understand more of the way the lights will interact as you look at it from those different angles, it will start to make more sense as to how to make it look good and get the contrast in, because I think part of what makes this model work so well is that contrast lying down her face and down her right forearm. And then as it moves away along her torso, the contrast there is it sort of bends around the middle. That's really nice and I think that's part of what makes this model so striking. Yeah. And I had some great advice at the time when I was painting this from my friend Maca Chung who's not painting minis anymore. It's a great big shame that he's not in it anymore, but he gave me advice to actually increase the saturation of the magenta light up closer to her face, even though that's unnatural. If you put the saturation of the light more up on her face on the shadow side, which is the magenta side, it will help the viewer to, you know... Direct their eyes around the piece. Drawn up to that area. So you can always think about things like that. Saturation is a very underused tool in miniature painting, I think, and it's starting to get really more used now. And even though I'm only just starting to really understand or comprehend how to use it, but yeah. Nice. All right. So next up we have Queen Geisha. This is a piece I saw in person this year and this was my pick for my favorite of the whole competition. And one of my absolute favorites you've ever done. What I love about this is how much exploration and color you bring to this. Like how much life is in this in such a monochromatic way. And I mean that in like, it's an incredible exploration of an incredibly limited palette. It's so striking for because of that. See, the first thing that comes to my mind about this is, is this another piece that I got quite lucky with how it turned out? You know, when you go into something with an idea, you don't know if it's going to turn out well or not. And I mean, I think this one turned out pretty well. There's certain things that I find a little bit weird about it. I don't know what it is. It's... I wish I could... This is one of those ones that I wish I could see, you know, for the first time without having painted it. Because I think it probably does work quite well. And everything that I intended to do seemed to come out really quite nicely. The face is definitely the focal point. Got all the different textures and the different surfaces in there. It was one of those ideas. Like I didn't know what I was going to paint on that day. And then I hadn't had an idea for this model. I didn't know what I was going to do. And I picked it up and this idea just went into my head. And it came together in just a few days. I feel it feels really good when those sort of things happen. And yeah, it turned out quite well. And I think that that is another one that is... I'm happy with and I've had a good feedback with it. And I really appreciate everyone's kind words for that one. Because it's good to hear that people like you work, you know. Yeah, absolutely. No, I... Yeah, I love this piece. I love how subtly you're working with all the different blacks, the different black tones, and yet making... Not only are you working with the value of each one of them, but you're also very, very, very adeptly working with the volumes on it and the texture on it so that each part feels very distinct. And what, you know, obviously what I mean by that is, you can, even though ostensibly, like it would be a simple thing to say and reductive, say the hair, her cybernetics, and her ghee, or whatever it is that she's wearing, kimono, whatever it is, are all black. Like, okay, that's a true statement, right? Yeah. But what you then did is so masterfully draw the difference in the volumes and the texturing and the slight color differences between them, like the metal feels much more satin, feels much more like reflective, like a soft metal reflection with its general gray tone. So there's these wide volumes, right? And it's wide sort of settings, areas of reflection. It's sort of like a matte satin feel. The kimono, you captured this wonderful texture where it does feel soft, it feels silky, right? Through that microtexturing. And then the hair, we get that, it feels very much like, you know, oily hair, like what we would have with the sheen of the hair being sort of the sharpest contrast of the whole, of all the different colors. Yeah, yeah, it's good. And it's good to see that you understand the effort that went into it. I think that it is difficult, especially within black. Like black is a hard, difficult color to paint. Yeah. I was concerned, I've had feedback in the past that my blacks are just too black. I don't go enough outside of black. And I was concerned that I hadn't gone far enough with this one, like not enough value contrast. But sometimes I think that if you go too far, it becomes no longer black and you lose the, you lose the black look of it. Like if you look at anything around you, everything that's black, it doesn't have a lot of tone to it. There's, you've got to leave most of it black and it's really difficult to be subtle while also achieving a contrast that makes it look less than flat. I'm trying to think about how I would advise to go about. So the rule I've always, the sort of guideline, rule is always a strong word, but the sort of guideline I've always followed is I try to keep 50% of the sort of surface area of whatever I'm trying to do. Set aside textures and the volumes, the particular thing, right? I follow sort of this generic 50% rule where I think a 50% of it should be in the sort of near, Yeah, the near black tone that I want it to work in, right? And then with the other 50%, and in really, that's again, guideline, you can play around with that number. It's not like you have to get out of your measurement and start mathematically analyzing it by exact percentage. But the rest of you're almost free to do whatever you want with, right? I think of like shiny black cars where so much of it is just not actually black if you look at it. Yeah, exactly. White reflections everywhere, green trees that are getting reflected, and the road beside it that's very pale gray or concrete or something. And yet your eyes still immediately see it as a black car, right? Yeah, yeah, well, that's it. And so that's the challenge in painting black. And there's also the same difference on the other side with white. And I'm planning on doing some sort of experiment using white, I wanna paint a model that's just gonna be white everything. That will be a big challenge. But it's the inverse of this idea here with everything being black, I want everything to be white. And yeah, it's the same sort of thing. It's a challenge like if you do the gradient between those light areas to dark, if you spread that out too far, it will end up looking a bit gray because it will have taken over the black areas too much. And another thing about black is you can be a bit more, you can go a bit brighter on the edge highlights black too. So yeah. Yeah, absolutely. No, this is such a fantastic piece. Absolutely love it. Absolutely love it. Thank you. All right, well, next up, we have a slightly different type of a piece than what we've looked at so far, but obviously it's- The D.W. Yes, indeed. So this is Sill- Specifically, this is Sill, the demon prince himself. Eski's clearly off on a separate mission right now and that's fine, she'll be back. Is that what it's called? I didn't know that. Yeah, they're a couple. Like Eski- Yeah, yeah, yeah, I didn't know that she had the separate part of the name. So okay, that's Sill. Yep. Cool. And so tell us about this one. What made you want to paint this guy? Cause like I, first of all, I get it. I think this is one of the great figures they released in that line. Secondly, to the Keeper of Secrets itself. I think this is a gorgeous figure, but what's your yen? That Keeper of Secrets, you painted it, Crystal Dragon, got to see that in person. That was one of my favorites. I don't know if you saw my post, but it was in there, I loved it. Awesome. That was my favorite of yours. Anyway, this guy, well, jeez. I think that was one of those ones that I saw and I'm just like, jeez, I have to paint that. It was the stuff on his back, those big spikes. Yeah. That sort of acts as this natural framing device for him, right? Exactly, yeah. And I didn't like the D-Minet so much. I thought that it probably like, it covered up the spikes a bit more than I wanted to. So I decided I just didn't want her in the scene. This is another games workshop model that I think is one of the best in recent years, from a personal perspective. I feel like I could do a much better job if I painted it again now. And especially after my learning period with Craft World, I feel like it looks a little bit sterile. There's not enough variability in color and it's technically well done, but it could also capture a lot more attention if it had a little bit more to it somewhere. I'm not exactly sure how or where, but yeah, that's just my general feeling now. But I think it's pretty good and the non-metallic gold is pretty good. It's a real standout. I think it is the absolute strongest part of this piece. And I think it's freaking gorgeous, as a matter of fact. Like as simple as I can say it, not only just in the execution, the execution looks wonderful, right? Like obviously it looks very much like you've trapped the light in it in a completely believable and realistic way, perfectly fine. But actually the thing that I love about it is the way you've captured sort of secondary reflections and where you've decided to place your primary and secondary reflections. Cause obviously there's sort of some general rules, you know, about the volumes and shapes and non-metallic, but you can be kind of loosey-goosey with those often because, you know, there's lots of different light in the world. It comes down to instincts. Yeah, exactly right. Yeah, so highly polished gold will just reflect kind of everything, right? Because lights bouncing all over the place, off everything in the environments, creating all sorts of secondary and minimal reflections and things like that. And I think your choices here were just really strong. One in the highlights behind his head that really draw your eye there with the, it's a great counterbalance to that sort of neck piece he wears, right? That does a weird job of kind of just framing his head in this weird white light. But when you have that extra there to balance it out that's brighter, I think it actually makes that feel more like it belongs there because it's an interesting challenge normally where that bone cage or whatever he has feels kind of overwhelming to him. The purple tips on it are also really nice because it does, it creates a wonderful set of rings. I think a lot about painting in rings and it creates a wonderful set of concentric rings around this guy going toward the center of the purple to gold and then, you know, and then more purple and then his skin. Yeah, yep. Well, yeah, I try and do that a lot. I think this probably came from Kasha from learning from her. She does a lot of different sides of the color wheel from dark to light. And so, yeah, having that purple ring around the outside and then yellow sort of in the center, that's something that you've got to try and think about in certain circumstances. And that's what I was trying to do there as well. And I was trying to give the sense, I don't know if it worked or not. I was hoping to try and give the idea that, you know, those spikes were kind of alive and moving. And so, but then whenever you look at them, they're just, you know, solid and in place, but when you like sort of gaze away. Right. It's like a slanish type thing, you know, they move in your peripheral vision, but whenever you look at them, they just snaps that position. I was trying to think of it like that, you know, they're alive. And so part of the reason why they're purple is because they've been poking into people and killing them and stuff. Absorbing their souls and things. I don't know, that's what I was hoping to try and achieve. And I felt like that was a big reason why I wanted to paint this piece because I just love those, that mandala. I don't know if that's the right word, but that feeling of, I don't know, like the God watching from behind sort of thing. Yeah, sure, sure. And yeah, with non-metallic metals reflections, it's something that I'm still trying to understand properly. I would say is that getting the reflections right is a big part of making the non-metallic metal convincing. There are other elements to it as well, like the way that you need to just go from, you know, big areas of light straight to dark and then that little bit of blend here, you need to blend from light to dark in such a small area. That's a big challenging part of non-metallic metals and then choosing the right reflections. All of that is really tricky. And I think that there isn't any kind of magic bullet that you can give people to say, okay, non-metallic metal do this and you'll get bang non-metallic metal. It takes time. You need to probably do many models in non-metallic metal before it really starts to sink in. And I think that's what makes it such a valued technique is because it's not easy and it does take a lot of practice to get right. So that's why it's respected so much, I think. Yeah, there's also the learning it. The true metallic. Go ahead. Not that true metallics can't have the same amount of depth to it if they're done right. Right. Well, it's also in practicing it, you actually teach yourself so much about everything else because it really forces you to think a lot about light about volume, about the environment, right? And so it's almost like you're really focusing and it makes you deliberately practice a lot of really valuable skills when you work on it. You have to think about everything that's around it and this element that's right next to it here, okay, that's going to interact with this thing and give it a little bit of color. You really need to think about all of those things and it's not easy to think about those things when you're painting such a small thing. Right. So absorbing that and thinking about bounce lights, which is something that I don't do a lot of yet, is having an extra highlight in an area that is in a reflection. There are some artists who do really good stuff with that and I really envy that ability for them to be able to get really nice ideas behind the bounce lights and I'm trying to try and understand that a bit more now at the moment. Yeah, I'm on that journey with you, my friend. It is, I'm right there beside you. All right. It's fascinating and fun. I agree. Now the last piece we're going to look at today and I am excited about this piece. This is the troll, this is a very recent piece. This is such a gorgeous piece, my friend. Thank you. Wonderful implementation of these colors, of these tones. Obviously, yet again, we're in sort of a pink and a magenta and cyan kind of spectrum here with a little bunny that's hiding in his hands that he's shielding away and keeping safe. This is obviously a recent work. The use of the various tones you've captured here, the life in the eyes and especially, I really want to draw everyone's attention to just how much is going on in the eyes. Everybody probably looks directly at the eyes for humans and we're trained to look at other eyes. But I want people to really look at the area around the eyes as well and see things like the color tones you've added, the blues and stuff in the bags under the eye, the yellows and the deeper browns and sepias around the edge of the eye, the red tones and the veins and the eyeball itself and the whites of the eye as it were. There's so much richness there in these small color tones you're doing. And that's just obviously one tiny area. I could repeat that same story all around the piece, right? Yeah, well, yeah, this is my first piece since after my learning with Marco and Alex from Craft World. And I feel like that's another one where I'm going to say that I feel like I got lucky everything seemed to come together well with this one. You know, sometimes when you're painting something, you get to a point and you think, ah, damn, I'm going to have to change that. It's not working. This one, everything just fell into place. It's a good feeling when that happens. It's sort of like a spiritual feeling when you're painting and it just comes out of you without thinking too much about it. It's kind of like your subconscious takes control and it just happens. You have the idea and your consciousness is guiding things, but that's how it sort of felt with this piece. And talking about around the eyes is, yeah, that was the area that I probably spent the most amount of time on. Truly there is a rainbow of colors around his eyes. There's everything there. There's green, there's everything. The whole color wheel. You can't really see the green too much, but in some of the highlights, it does go up into a little bit of lime green just to give it that extra little bit of contrast. And that's something that I didn't use much of until I got some advice from Craft World to do that. And so there's not a lot of green in this model actually. It's like the side of the color wheel that's not there, but there is a few points where I did include it. On the horns, on his teeth and in some of the bags around his eyes, there is green. And then you've got the whole transition from purple to orange and yellows and pinks in his skin. That was the intention. He was supposed to be protecting his little bunny from the nasty orange light, even though the orange light is probably to something like the sunset. So he's just a big dumb troll, but he's protecting what he loves. And I feel like it came out well. I'm happy with this one. This is one of my personal favorites as well. So I can't disagree that it is one of my best. Yeah, it's gorgeous, man. This is absolutely just top notch fantastic work. So this does nothing but excite me for the next pieces I'm going to see. That's what this does. Oh yeah, well yeah. I hope my next one can come even a little bit close to this. I'm feeling decent about it. It's not going as smoothly as this one. So I've already had to make some changes along the way. So you know that it doesn't necessarily mean that the next piece isn't going to be good. It just isn't going as smoothly. And we can't have it go smoothly every single time. Oh, that's right. You wouldn't be learning. That's right, that's right. Got to be pushing it somehow. All right, let's bring Dave back on screen here. So we're going to minimize out the photos. There we go. Welcome back, Dave. Everybody can see you again now. I always warn people before I go back, just in case people got comfortable with not being on camera. All right, so now it's time for the lightning round questions. Folks in the chat, if you've got some questions you want to ask Dave, feel free to drop those in. So while people are hearing that and giving a few moments, we'll start with my questions. All right. Yeah, sure. And hold on to it. Do I have to like answer these really quickly? That's the point of the lightning round? No, you don't have to answer quickly. I mean, quick-ish. Okay, okay. But you know, it's not, it's not like, good it. Okay, okay. We're not in a race. Okay. All right. What do you listen to while you're painting? Are you a podcast man? Do you do the audio books still? Is that your background, music? What is it? Yeah, it's audio books, pretty much exclusively. I love audio books. I think Audible must hate me because I'm constantly, because they've stopped my ability to return from my own library. I have to chat with them to return and get another book. So yeah, I don't know, but that's part of how the service works. And they said return anything for any reason. So I do listen to a lot of books. You know, I think I probably listen to a lot more than most people because yeah, when I'm painting, I love to listen to books. And I think it's funny because like, if I'm really enjoying a book that I usually do a better job, a better paint job. Like it just, you're in the zone. It puts you in that space where you're really happy. You're really into it. And so it just draws it out. I listened to Harry Potter once a year in August. It's my favorite book series of all time. And I seem to do good work in August. So I don't know, maybe that has something to do with it. Nice. I always look forward to August. All right, next up. One of the toughest questions I'm gonna ask. So here we go. You must pick only one. That is the challenge of the question. Yeah. Who is your favorite miniature painter? Past or present? Um, it's probably Arnau Lazarou at the moment. Okay. He's just been doing some really incredible stuff. That came out quickly, but there are others who are really right up there. But I'm just really loving his work with Shadows at the moment. I've played around with Shadows in my work and I know how difficult they are. And he's just been pulling off some really incredible stuff. I hope I pronounced his name quickly. I'm not really good with European names. I'm sorry. No, that's all right. I know who you're talking about. Yeah, Arnau Lazarou. Is it Lazarou? Is that how you say the last name, probably? Lazarou or Lazarou? I don't know, sure. Going to, as I said when we were all fair at the beginning, going to me for pronunciations is the wrong idea. I'm not your man. But yes, I know exactly what you're talking about. Good. Yeah. But I think the one that stands out for me is the troll where he's got the eye and the gap. I tried to do something similar with that after my Masculine's class. And mine really did not turn out as well as his did. It is just so amazing. I've been, I've sat there looking at that through, probably a good hour or up when I probably add it all together. I keep coming back to it and just trying to study what he's done and how he did it. I'll come back to trying something like that eventually one day. It's just, it's so good. Nice, nice. So yeah, very, very, yeah, he's good. Very, very impressive work. All right, next up. What is your favorite, and again, you can only pick one. What is your favorite color? Of paint or otherwise? So it's the specific paint? No, no, no. It doesn't have to be like any particular brand. Orange is a valid answer or something, you know, like that. Yeah, so at the moment, it'll probably change. I asked me in a few weeks, it'll probably be something different. But at the moment, I'm on a bit of an orange pick. I'm enjoying orange. Not like orange, like really bright. Not saturated orange, yeah. More like a sunset orange. Sure. Or if you think about sunny skin tone from Vallejo. Sure. Somewhere in there or German orange. Somewhere around those ones, which is what I used a lot of on the troll. But yeah, I'm liking those colors the most, especially when that's interacting with a purple shadow. Nice, nice. All right. And this last question for me, you can sort of construe this any way you like. But what is your favorite type? Type can be anything here. You can group however you like to group. What is your favorite type of minis to paint? OK, well, I'm going to say busts because I like painting busts because I don't have to do a lot of prep work. You can get the bust and get going. So I do like a lot of other things. But in terms of my favorite thing to just pick up and paint when you're really in the mood and you have a great idea, I'm going to say busts. Nice. All right. And then I'll follow that up with a question from the audience here, which is, are you a futuristic person like sci-fi, fantasy, more realism, historical, that kind of thing? What sort of really gets you going when it comes to that? Do you have a particular time period or thing or theme or genre you like? Yeah, so I'm sci-fi all the way down the down the line. I've loved Stargate, Star Trek, Star Wars, all of the all of the space TV shows and all the stars. Yeah, all the stars. And I listen to a lot of really cheesy science fiction books. I think a lot of people probably might not like them. I like the books that the characters are like their perfect heroes. They never do anything wrong. They get everything right. They don't have any big problems, no big bad politics. Like, I definitely grew up in the 90s and I definitely like, you know, those action heroes where everything goes good stuff. Like, I don't like, even though I do like Grimdark of 40K, that's a different type of thing. I don't like a lot of political intrigue and I don't like traitors and betrayal and torture and things like that. I like, you know, fun adventures in science fiction. I do like fantasy as well. Like Harry Potter is an example of that. I'm probably a big into the fantasy side of things rather than realism and real life. So definitely. Nice. So those sort of sci-fi heroes, they're the descendants of like Flash Gordon or Buck Rogers or those kind of like their modern day equivalents, right? Where they were just great heroes who were here to sort of save the day and save space and that kind of thing. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Like they call them Marty Stoose or Mary Sue's, I think. Sure. I like books with characters like that in it. And I know that that's probably not a popular thing to like, but that's just what I like. I like to take it easier. But yeah, I think there's times when I go outside of that as well, like, for example, the 40K grim darkness. But, you know, you know what you're getting into when you go into a Warhammer fiction novel, don't you? So, yeah, I don't think there's anything wrong with that at all. I say like what you like. That's always the right answer, especially when it comes to art and things like that. There is no wrong answer with this stuff. So I support that 100 percent and also. One of my favorite, favorite, favorite movies when I was young. So very informative on me. I haven't seen it. You got to watch some Flash Gordon. If you're into this kind of thing, watch some watch some Flash Gordon. You'll get into it. I was like, yeah, I've had the recommendation to try out Buffy. So, yes, because of you and Trent. So definitely going to see if I can figure out how to watch that nowadays. Um, it's I think the good version of it's on one of the streaming services. But I know you guys have different streaming services in Australia, too. Like some of the stuff that's on Netflix here is on like Fox tell there or whatever. So I know there's like kind of a different break to where some of that content is. But, yes, you just need to. The only thing you got to watch with Buffy is stay away. Not that this has anything to do with what we're talking about, but I don't care. You mentioned it. It's my favorite show of all time. Stay away from the remaster. The remaster is terrible because they didn't do the right work with the aspect ratios and the coloration and stuff like that. It just it makes the show much more visually ugly. So just find one of this as the originals on it streaming and you'll be good to go. And it is it's worthwhile. Yep. All right. Let's see. We've got a question. From Nathan Gaming, who says, when are you going to paint that lamentor you promised me? That's Nathan. That's my that's Nathan. And you would have met him at Crystal Dragon when I'm going to paint it one day. There you go. That's that's a good answer someday. All right. Very nice. And then so thanks for watching, Nathan. So Big asked the question of like, how much do you feel like he asked it a bit simpler, but I'm going to expand his question slightly. His direct question was, is it practice or are you a genius? So let's put it this way. How much do you feel you had natural art talent? How much do you feel has been practice? It's all practice, all practice. I sucked at the start. I honestly did I like I put up a post on my Instagram a while ago where there was the change in my work from start like very early on with the space marine. Some people said that, you know, my first space marines were pretty good, but I can't see it. It just, you know, it's just a base coat and edge highlighting. Yeah, I didn't have any artistic training at school. Like I mean, I did graphic design in year 12, but that's about it. Right. I've always been a bit creative, though, like with anything I do, I put a little bit of a bit of a, I don't know, a visual flare to it whenever I was doing any reports at work and stuff. I tried to make them look good and appealing and stuff. So there has been that side of things. And whenever I've had my personality analysed by those those corporate analysis things, I've got a mixed corporate analyst nature. So yeah, it's all practice. You've got to practice a lot of practice and just slowly, slowly progressing forward. I think that's something I can say that I have as a strength. I know how not to push myself too fast. And I always pick a little thing or, you know, I always try and just do a little bit outside my comfort zone. That article at Trent did again, I'm going to say his name again. That article he did about the zones of learning and stuff. That is a brilliant, brilliant article. And I think that that has helped me really clarify things in my mind and just going out of your comfort zone, but not into the panic zone. I think I'm pretty good at that. I have had my experiences of going into the panic zone, but because the whole entire purpose of painting for me is stress relief and, you know, maintaining that, you know, calm zen attitude for my entire life. You know, I structured everything around trying to do that to keep myself healthy. And I don't want to be I don't want to be going too far too fast. And right, getting panicked and losing my love of painting. So I'll just take it slowly and slowly improve. And I know that that means that I'm going to have like a lot of, like, you know, only average pieces. And I feel that about myself. You know, I have a lot of just, you know, that's pretty good. It's technically well painted, but it doesn't really, you know, go, wow. Yeah, that's sick. But, you know, every now and then I get lucky and something comes together well. And I can say I'm happy with it. Nice. Nice. All right, let's do one more question for the audience here and we'll end on that and we'll call it a day. So Will says, how long ago did you first start your longest running project or rather the longest project you've done? Like, what's the longest sort of project time that you've worked on something and then sort of correlated to that? Do you have to finish one project before you work on another? You know, do you work serially or do you often work on multiple projects at once? OK, so, yeah, this could be a big answer. The longest project that I've worked on was the All Fuddies diorama. And that one, I split up. So I painted a little bit of it and went on to something else, a little bit of it, went on to something else. And that probably took about, I'd have to check, but it was it was six to nine months for the whole thing. So that was a huge amount of time. Mortarian was probably similar to that as well. But I think I did him a lot more all at once. Like, I'm pretty sure I spent a month there painting him constantly for a bit. I did do some parts in between some other models. I haven't done any big, long projects like that since, but I do have a few in the works at the moment. So there are some that I have ongoing. But in general, I do start a piece and finish it. Start a piece and finish it. But then I do have ideas that are going to take a lot longer. Right. And so I do plan them to go in between others. So you might be able to see it over there behind me there. In that cupboard, there's probably about 40 prepped models waiting for paint. Gotcha. I like to prep everything, have it ready to go. Because if I feel like I have an idea and I have a good idea. You should be able to jump on it. Yeah, I want to be able to pick it up and just go. Because sometimes that happens for me. I'm stewing about not having an idea. And then suddenly bang, I have to all drop what I'm working on. Go straight to that if that happens. Because you've got to you've got to really jump on those opportunities when they come. Right. Yeah, when the muse strikes. Now, I hear you there 100 percent. Yeah. No, good stuff. All right. Well, Dave, been an absolute pleasure, sir. Thank you very much for joining, having me on the show inside. You're very privileged to be interviewed by you. Well, thank you. I don't know if that's I don't think you should. You should feel like you're you're the art you do is amazing. It's very inspiring. I know I'm one of those people who your work has been very inspiring to. And I'm sure there are many others out there in the audience. So it's been great to talk to you. I'm glad to hear it. Thank you very much. Absolutely. For everybody else out there watching, hey, give this a like. Make sure you hit that. That helps other people find the show. And that's so important because I want to make sure more people see Dave's work, start following him. Let's get that out there. So hitting that like button gets to get this gets this promoted. More people see it. Every it's a win for everybody. And all it takes is you clicking a little button. So click the little button. Isn't that easy? But thank you very much for watching, everybody. I really, really appreciate it. Thank you, Dave. As always, absolute pleasure, and we'll see you all next time.