Adventures in Cambridge

On Sunday, and Saturday actually, Alfonso had descended upon UK thanks again to The Weekend Workshop once more to impart his knowledge of colors and painting upon us unsuspecting people! Quite the cast and crew appeared once more for this class, many familiar faces from previous classes appeared!

However, due to the family returning from Turkey on the Saturday I was unable to attend.... the whole thing that is!

I dragged Junior along with me for a day out to see the painters and do some bonding time before school begins once more. We even brought some of junior's Lizardmen models, and he had a crack at them over the day..

Working hard at it, and trying to make sure that we got a consistent coverage!

Which lasted all of 30 minutes before he switched over to legos, or coloring, or more legos, or back to painting or, or, or.. yeah.. you get the picture.. but considering that he was there for the whole day he was quite well behaved ( told by others, not just his old man here! ).

Which as you can see was important as the store began to fill up with painters for both Alfonso's class, and also John's fundamentals class.

See.. painting and coloring quietly while taking in all the inspiration around him!

But the main purpose of the trip was to see the 2 main guys do their thing, and see what kind of information I could glean off of them.

As you can see from the huddle here, the techniques being taught were highly secretive! And thus held in great esteem and close attention by the attendees there... except Peter. Seems he didn't sleep much and thus was yawning the entire day.

Luckily I was able to sneak a shot of the test piece, and some of the instructions laid out from Alfonso here in the class... the rough sketch of light and shadows was the main focus for the NMM aspects.. and how to break a model into parts was also clear from random paintings on the white paper..

Craziness as always in a painting class.. but with all the teachings, you can see how the students got right down to work here.

Of course Mike was there again, and as always the only thing I could understand from him was his tattoo..

Or maybe not...

Though while all this was going on, John was also running a beginners class on the fundamentals of painting on a separate table. One that Sam sat on as well, and was looking on with fascination..

Quite the group appeared here to learn how to make paint flow better, where to put highlights and shadows, and general painting theory. Was a unique little class structure that also included a figure ( Hordes Troll ) and 3 Army Painter brushes. Plus John explaining things to you in proper scouse fashion.

No idea how or why John had blue and white paint on his lips, or the black smudge on his face, but junior couldn't stop pointing at it and asking if he should stop painting maybe to clean up.

Though jokes aside, the group learned quite a lot from John, and I think we can see some great looking gaming pieces coming from them soon! Watch out tournaments and local clubs as these guys are aiming for the Best Looking Army awards!

At the end of the event though, we all said our goodbyes. Thanked the teachers. Thanked the owner of the store for letting us take it over for the weekend. And picked up our loot from the weekend of shopping ( I mean we are in a gaming store.. who can resist that temptation? ).

Alfonso also graced the Lee Family with his presence after the workshop and spent some time around the Lee Studio giving some advice on composition for a few pieces. Thanks again for the time spent, and the good chats after what can only be described as a long tiring but successful weekend of teaching!

And I am smiling.. just have too much epic beard to show it properly! Until the next encounter and adventures in painting! Enjoy the day before the end of the week...