Euro review!

Alright.. so life is beginning to get back to normal for non-review posts.. sort of.. Figured it might be a good time to do a data dump of how Euro was this time around.

I had attended it for the first time with Burak last year, and had great success. Both in purchases, and in the competition. But mostly in meeting up with new people and expanding my knowledge on who does what and how the show works a bit more.

This year, no Burak. He bailed out to go to Greece or something with his girlfriend.. So I took the family with me instead this time around!

And we had a slightly better room this year by staying at the Carlton. I say slightly as although there was no 5am fire drill to wake us up on the Saturday morning, the room itself was such that it was slanted. Yes.. the entire room had a slant to the left when looking out the window. Enough to give anyone with a bit of drink in them nausea if you try to stand still for too long :)

As for the show itself, it was great to be able to go around and meet up with all the people one has either met previously, or met online, or just stalked quietly from the depths of Facebook. Thankfully it all went well though, and no restraining orders were issued.. thus far ;)

It was great to meet up with some fellow Canadians.. to which there seemed to be quite a few! First up was Jeff Burns and Rick Taylor from the Prairies. Rick with his Geisha piece, and Rick with his Elizabeth I flat painting both taking medals at the competition! Which is not surprising when you consider how much work went into both pieces by these Canadian Masters :)

We also saw the boys from The Bent Bristle show up. Alex and Anthony from Toronto were over to show off their new model ( review to come as I was able to get an early copy! ) and to rub elbows with Europes elite for painters. Not me of course, but people like Fernando were in hot demand by these boys I was informed ;)

It was also good to meet up with a lot of the local UK painting crowd, and to see many of their pieces throughout the show as well. Too many to name really, but a pleasure to chat with them all. And more chats to come as we meet up again in shows like Scale Model Challenge or Monte San Savino that is yet to come!

To name a few, and in order of photos, Mario, Scott, John, Fet and Luke. All great pieces in the end, with some doing better than others for one reason or another. But to me all fantastic pieces in the end that each should be really proud of!

The quality at the show was way higher than it was last year though, and this I can only put down to the huge Asian Invasion we had! And this is a great thing as it will really push the community to go bigger and higher in their painting for future years as well!

People like MJ Miniatures, Nuts Planet, Young Miniatures, and others all showed up with their top artists works. And it really blew the show away to see some of it up close and personal!

They have such a unique and clean style. Even when the diorama is to depict something a bit older or worn, it still comes out very cleanly painted. Something that is a bit opposite to some of the Europe painting when we try to age things up. It can get real dark and dirty, but still great. Just a different style.

The last photo I found out after the show was all scratch built! I shared the SBS photos on facebook, but it is just too much to behold there.

As always I really appreciate what everyone brought. Unfortunately this year I did not take photos of all pieces that were on display. Half because I was lazy, half because it felt like there were more people and it was already difficult to get to the point of taking photos. What I was surprised is that although I did take photos, and in my normal click, shoot, move along style, I have received a lot of kind remarks saying that they were well done photos overall! And the 300+ likes, 200 shares, and 10k or so views of the album help support that! So thanks to all that shared and liked it on Facebook, and helped to crash my FB account for the last week. Literally making my phone rumble whenever I turn the wifi on from notifications.

With regards to my own accolades at the show.. the best awards I received were the comments on Jack as a figure. The people who bought one from me while there ( thank you all so kindly for supporting us! ) and the comments we received for improving the next piece in the series! I did get a few awards at the show as well, but they come secondary to the above. Plus I am not in agreement that some of my pieces should have received as high of a score as they did when looking at the competition ( mostly in Fantasy Busts! ). So am not looking at it as heavily as I would have liked, but know where to focus my efforts on for next year :)

Hopefully you liked the above, and below is the loot from the show as well. I may have gone a bit overboard on the books this year, but I think it was well worth it. To the point that I had to purchase another book shelf ( or 2 ) to fit them on! :D A photo of that is required at some point once they are assembled!

More goodies for the resin pile, that I hope to begin to dive into soon after this season of miniature show madness comes to a close :) 

So expect a lot of product reviews in the near future as I get through this backlog, and get back into the blogging scene as well. But for now.. enjoy the above photos, and hope to see you at a future show at some point!