Wow! I’m back to reality after my awesome trip! I can’t believe how much fun I had! Let me share with you!

So, I drove up to Dallas and met my friend Shoshie for our amazing adventure! We were there from Wednesday till Monday. Wednesday night we went to the meet and greet and got to see all my old friends from last year’s Reapercon! We stayed up way too late hanging out by the fire pit and just catching up.

We got a swag bag full of awesome! Shoshie and I did an ‘unbagging’ video on her facebook page. Go check her out! Anyways, there were goodies from just about every manufacturer I’m interested in. No classes on Wednesday, just time to meet up and hang out before the real fun began!

On Thursday, I had 3 classes: freehand with Jessica Rich, a bones conversion class with Bobby Jackson, Gene VanHorne, and Jason Wiebe, and then chibis with Katie Sommer. The freehand class was great, and Jess gave me some awesome feedback on my planned competition minis. The Bones class was awesome. I made a monster that required ‘deneckitating’ so I could ‘recapitate’ it.

He’s a deneck recap. 🙂 Jason Wiebe had to help me cut Nathavarr’s head off, since he was made of the new, harder bones material. I also made a chaos-y dwarf giant. It was pretty fun. The bones material really  lends itself to easy mods.

Then the chibi class! I was a little disappointed, because what I was looking for was a little different than what was taught. We all know I can paint eyes, I wanted to talk about the highlights that look like lines on the chibis, and how to do their skin that had super contrast. Anyways, my mini turned out looking like this.

I’ll just keep working on it myself. I don’t think I would have been as upset if I hadn’t had to choose between this and Michael Proctor’s advanced basing class. That’s the second year in a row I’ve ended up missing it, and I could hear him teaching it right next door. I just kept kicking myself for not taking that class instead. Oh well..Then we did the enchilada dinner, and we had a ton of fun just hanging out some more. We tried out the food truck earlier in the day, but I wasn’t terribly impressed.

I only had one class on Friday, so we went to the boneyard and played there! Then I took my class with Derek Schubert, and it was amazing. He has an interesting way of doing things, and I really enjoyed learning from the master. I was a little upset that it was a demo class, but it was enjoyable all the same. Getting to pick someone’s brain is always nice.

This is what happens at the melt table. But it was so awesome!!! I had about 96 oz of melt credit, so Shoshie and I went nuts at the Boneyard, and then came back and dug through the melt table. It’s always exciting, and I always find some kind of weird stuff. And I won a hat for the Hubs!

Saturday was another 3 class day! I had Airbrush 101 with Caleb Wissenback, Blood, Pus, Guts, and Gore with Michelle Blastenbrei, and Tips and Tricks with Marike Reimer. It was the best day ever. After the airbrush class, I promptly went and bought one. 🙂 I got a Badger patriot, the entire line of minitaire paints, the hose, humidity trap, compressor, starter kit,and stynlrez primer. It was super exciting!

I can’t wait to try it out! The compressor should be shipped to me this week, and then I’ll post my adventures in that! I plan on trying it out on my dragons don’t share terrain first.

Then I went to the gross class, and it was awesome.We used glue that gives you cancer in California, and it makes these awesome, disgusting threads of grossness. You can dye it any color, or just leave it clear. I’m super excited to try it out on some minis and make them gross.

The tips and tricks class with Marike was probably my favorite class of all. We got to sit there and just pick her brain about several different topics. We did hair, OSL, sheer fabric, sketching out and planning a mini, patterns, loaded brush, and some other stuff too! It was fantastic to just see the way she does things.

I really wanted to see how she did the highlights on hair, and I was not disappointed! I think I really learned the most during this class. I would definitely recommend it, and I will probably do it again next year. That night we did a survival speedpaint, which is always fun. Then it was the awards dinner! I managed to get 2 bronze medals for my 2 entries, and on one I got 2 bronze votes and a silver vote. I felt like I definitely leveled up from last year, but I decided to think of it as the difference between an 82 and an 89: it’s still a B.

So, I’ve made some serious jumps in skill, next year I’ll be even better! Also, Ludo asked me to paint something on his paint caddy he won, so I just kinda goofed off on that…

I thought it turned out cute for a 10 minute job. 🙂

Sunday I didn’t have any classes, so we hung out and waited for the auction and the raffle prizes. I got a t-shirt and a hat, and I was happy with that!

Then we went to dinner at BJ’s since David and Shoshie had never been there, and we got stupid-full. I got my third $25 gift card to reaper and spent that up pretty fast. 😉After dinner, we sat out on the patio by the fire and chilled again. A lot of people had to leave Sunday night, but we decided to stay and leave Monday morning. We hung out and just got to chat and sing sea shanties with Izzy!

I had a rough night Sunday night with this bronchitis I kind of had all week. I went to bed at 0130, woke up at 0300 and couldn’t go back to bed. I laid down in the bath tub, I did a steam shower, I laid down on the floor in the bathroom with all the steam, I took more meds, and at 0430 I finally broke down and drove down to walmart to get cough medicine. At somewhere around 0530 I finally fell asleep. I had intended to leave between 8 and 9 in the morning on Monday, but we didn’t wake up until the housekeeping ladies knocked at 0930. We went and got breakfast downstairs and hugged everyone goodbye, and loaded up to come home! I took Shoshie and gave her one last heart attack while driving in Dallas, and dropped her off at DFW airport. We had so much fun, and I hope to get to collaborate with her more in the future. We ended up painting the same little demon man.

Look at their cute butts! Anyways, we had a great time! Hope you enjoyed reading about it! I’m hoping to get more time to paint now since I start a super secret new job next week!

 

-marinealRose