Banshee Workshop Review - Augsburg!

Ok.. so yesterday's post was a prelude to today's post. Which will go into the full details of the workshop from last weekend.

I can just say to begin with that it was a huge learning curve, with expertise that could span weeks or months, and became probably one of my most emotional workshops I have gone to so far in my "career" of going to painting classes.

I am not the highest or best painter out there ( regardless of what my ego whispers to me at night while I sleep! ), but my expectations of what to learn from the class was that it would push me a bit out of my comfort zone. Something that I was prepared to have done to me...

Reality was that the jump in talent and technique was much higher than I anticipated!

Now this is not a bad thing mind you.. because I have gone through this before ( waaaaay back when I started going to classes such as Dervish's class... who was also a student in this class! ).

Stephan doing his style in the Banshee class.. 

Heck, there was even the Massive Voodoo crew as students in this class! So painting alongside some of my teachers from previous classes was pretty epic for me as well...

Oh and this creepy guy also.. no idea why he was there, but at least he stuck around to give some more insight and advice on how we can make fun of him more ;) 

There was a ton of theory to put into place ( and some of it I had a grasp on thanks to earlier classes with Banshee ). But due to the extremely high talent found from those participating in this class, Alfonso was able to kick it up a few notches and go quite deep into the theory.

We started with some simple things such as the light to dark on basic colors theory and practice.

I was able to get this down fairly well enough. Which I am thankful for, though I have done it a few times.. And it can always be better though..

The next practice for colors was a super secret technique that Alfonso is the master of to understand and explain.

I tried to post a photo of it above, but this happened.. nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition while posting online!

But that's ok cause you can see everyone was still hard at work trying to finish up their activities here.

And another of Banshee's explanations where he takes the largest piece of paper he can find.. "liberates" our paints from the confines of how we use them today, and shows us the color theory and ambient nature of the colors.

When we did begin to look at our models, we began with trying to come up with a color scheme. Although I had already painted the Ronin previously ( as can be seen here ) I had chosen the Damiyo from the Andrea range. Probably not the best choice in the end though as it was quite a difficult model to figure out. more so than any of us at imagined! Such is my life to choose the hard path ;)

Though it was funny to hear a comment from Alfonso about painting and painters who try to highlight without white. That some want to add color to their pieces, so they just highlight with yellow. Was happy that I left my Ronin at home then, cause that is kind what I did to it :D

Above are my 2 ideas for the piece. The first one being too much red on it ( even if my piece was primed red ) and the second one was more likely to happen. But at least this way I had a plan of action on how to tackle the model.

As you can see.. Banshee was quite enthused with the model and gave me some tips on how to tackle it as well.

No idea why I focused on the back ( probably cause the folds are easier to manage? ) but this is where I worked most of the technique. Banshee constantly trying to push me into more extreme contrasts as you can see on the front side. To really sketch out where the light would fall, and how it would fall on this clothing style/texture.

When I had gone and blended it too much, Alfonso came back to reintroduce tonal change into the piece, as well as helping me introduce texture to it.

One of the impacts of the class for sure for me. To understand when texture is enough, when to add more, and how to not lose it while glazing or painting over and around it.

We basically spent all of Saturday night, and Sunday working on our pieces, and the below shows the results from what can be said of being barely 10 hrs of painting ( if that really! ).

Such high contrast, energized pieces started from the class participants here. And all in different warm/cold patterns. Starting from white, grey, black, red or multiple color primers as well!

Fantastic results really.. and I suspect that due to the amount of energy everyone had while leaving on the new techniques that they all learned that we will see a huge influx of Ronin's ( and maybe a Damiyo? ) appearing on places like Putty&Paint or Facebook soon enough! Looking forward to that!

And again the great group of guys doing their thang at the end of the workshop.. posing for the camera while I attempted to get it sorted and ready for the group photo..

Hope you enjoyed the review.. take a few things from it.. wish I had more photos but the intensity of the class was one that made me focus more on painting than taking photos.. but below are a few shots also of the guys while we watched Banshee make his magic on his mini bust!

Enjoy the weekend!