You might have noticed a decent-sized gap in my posts, with the last post well over a month ago! I’ve been pretty busy with work these last few months with a big project finishing, but primarily my spare time has been taken up with cycling. I’ve signed up for a charity ride in October, which will see me ride 200+kms over a couple of days so I need to get in shape! The ride is to raise money for cancer research, here is the fundraising link if you’re interested in contributing. I used the opportunity of having nothing on the painting table to spend some time refitting the painting setup which put my painting desk out of commission for a few weeks as I 3D printed the new setup – more on that later. Regardless with a window with no new painting to show off, I figured this would be a good time to do a post I’ve been thinking about making for a while: a retrospective on my attempts at display painting and more specifically attempts at the Golden Demon competition.
Hard to believe since I’m so into army painting these days, but for a few years around 2007-11 I was mainly into display painting, and had quite a few cracks at Golden Demon. I’ve never photographed these before which is a bit of a shame as a few aspects of them have aged poorly over the intervening years, but from that we can extract a bit of advice so not all is lost!
The Early Years 2007-2008
I had my first crack at Golden Demon in 2007, and got my first and only result (barring some finalist pins) with a bronze! This was an interesting category they called “Master” where we had to paint the special golden demon model for the year unconverted. You can see the Gold and Silver entries over at the Golden Demon Compendium.
Of note (and you’ll see this again on the next model, much worse) is the water. I used PVA for it (I had nothing better at the time!) and while it looked fine at the time it has gone a bit cloudy since then.
Next up is my 2008 entry: Merry from the Lord of the Rings
This model is minuscule so I was pretty happy of the detail I managed to get into it at the time. Funny story about this model, the way Golden Demon used to work in Australia was that you would have a round in individual stores, then the models that did well in that were sent to Sydney for the “proper” Golden Demon event. This model was sent to Sydney and we sat around the Perth Games Workshop store waiting to hear results. The phone call came in and I had won … the Youngbloods (under 14s) category! As a 20 year-old that was a bit of an issue, and we duly called the Sydney store to let them know my model had ended up in the wrong category. They ended up re-judging the Lord of the Rings single miniature category and I ended up with a finalist pin for my troubles.
From an ageing perspective, a couple of lessons from this model: 1) as above I used PVA for the river and that has gone completely cloudy over the years – don’t use PVA for your water effects! 2) The moss I used on the base was nice and green when I put it there and as you can see it’s gone a lovely golden colour now. I believe you can seal moss with some products nowadays to prevent that from happening but I had no idea about that at the time.
The Staff Years 2009-2011
I joined the staff at my local store after that and so needed to enter the Staff category rather than the regular categories. This made trophy availability a bit tricky as the staff category was just a single category judged on top 3 across all the staff in the country and there were some very good painters in the staff at the time. I don’t quite remember which order I painted these miniatures in, but I think this is right:
Eowyn is one of my favourite models I’ve ever painted, she’s gone a bit glossy over the years unfortunately, but given the size of the model I was very proud of the detail I captured there. It was also one of my first attempts at Non-Metallic-Metal which was all the rage at the time.
Lokhir Fellheart is a very cool Dark Elf model from the old Warhammer range. I remember having lots of fun painting this model, trying out a more limited palette. The sculpted waves were fun to do as well. Also some NMM on this model.
This work nob with banner marked a return to a more “realistic” style with metallic paints and some nice grime. I was definitely inspired by some of the French painters a the time which had some really great treatments of metallic areas.
Wrapping up
I hope you’ve enjoyed my trip down memory lane, it’s been fun looking at and thinking about the context of those models. I was lucky to even get a trophy, looking at the standard in painting competitions these days the bar is so high I’m not sure I’d be able to compete.
As I mentioned at the start, one of the impediments to me doing any painting has been my painting desk has been out of commission as I printed new infrastructure. I backed the PaintPal Studio XP kickstarter which is a modular set of paint racks, and got the files a few weeks back.
It was quite a lot of printing, but it’s made for quite a neat setup. I’ve already started painting again and hope to have something to show soon-ish, I’ve embarked on something a little bigger than my usual posts so it might still be a while away.
You wouldn’t be French if you weren’t into cycling, I reckon! 😉 In all seriousness, that sounds like a wonderful goal to set for yourself and while your updates are missed, there are no complaints here!
This is a fantastic read and you had a really interesting Golden Demon journey. I love the variety across the miniatures. I’ve seen some display painters that basically do the same type of miniatures and paint styles over and over and I don’t like to see that as I’m not sure they’re really pushing themselves as hard as they can.
Was the dwarf model metal? To my eyes, the sculpt looks rough and lacking in detail like metal sculpts often used to. I commend you for earning a bronze trophy on it, all the same. It looks great!
You were brave to enter a hobbit in Golden Demon but he looks quite nice. My favorite mini though is that Dark Elf. I haven’t seen that sculpt before and I love your color scheme. Its bright and bold and different! There’s something to be said about taking a miniature you really like, getting creative with how you paint it, and just trying your best at the same time.
This was probably a good period to enter in Golden Demon as any kind of miniature could work well as an entry. I do think that with GD nowadays, some miniatures work better than others and if a miniature doesn’t offer some opportunities for complex painting, you probably won’t go very far especially in the competitive categories like 40k and AoS single model. That’s just my speculation though and I have not won anything at Golden Demon so what do I know!? 🙂
Thanks Jeff! Glad you enjoyed the post. I have to say I was keen to hear your thoughts given this is more your discipline!
The dwarf slayer is a metal model for sure, and perhaps not the cleanest cast. I do agree with you in terms of model selection these days, hard to get away with a model that doesn’t showcase quite a few painting techniques and that does limit model selection. I think of it as bit like the professionalisation of sport, these days you have to do all the things right to place, back in the day a baker could win the Tour de France 😉
That makes sense on the Slayer model and it is still wild to think about considering the current GD climate. One other thing I neglected to mention is that at one time (and I would guess that it was around the time you entered your pieces but possibly even before or shortly after that time period) the LOTR/MESBG category was considered one of the easiest to potentially get a trophy in. Those days are long, long gone and a lot of the people who take home multiple trophies now “dip” into it. I like the Tour De France comparison as well. That is bang on! 😀
It’s true at the time the most prestigious categories were definitely Warhammer and 40k single miniatures and there was a bit more room to play in the others. Still occasionally some of the better painters would fire of some amazing entries in the “other” categories and disappoint all those that were aiming for an “easier” trophy. As with all these things you have to be in it to win it!
Good to hear about this part of your life! 🙂 I do like the minis, particularly Eowyn! Interesting to read your comments on PVA – I’ve seen it go quite mucky if you leave it enough years so I only ever use it to stick and seal card and always paint over it!
Thanks John! I definitely wished I’d learned that lesson before I painted these models, but you have to learn some way or another!