Flat Art?

[willie]

 Glen that's a bazillion one  Willie

[Hannibal]

Personally, each painting should bring some improvement on the previous. Lie a sportsman, a music player = progress, learn from the past to make next better; competing is get a recognition from mairs that we move forward; the most interesting part in the exhibitions and cp^s is to speak with better painters and learn why we are not ourselves at the top, and what is missing to get there .... Then integrate these suggestions in the next paintings.... slowly, step by step.... and revalidate....
That's the hobby and the challenge !

[Glen]

Says the guy with a bazillion books... 

[willie]

 I agree Michael & Glen this is a hobby not a mania.    If you let it become a mania then you are trapped no matter what you do Models, Figures Collect Books and in the end its not fun any more  Willie

[Glen]

Well, I understand that Michael. I never paint for comps. I don't cherry-pick pieces for there potential to win a medal. I only paint what I want, when I want, to the degree of satisfaction I want. That's the whole hobby aspect of painting miniatures. I often think the people walking around nervously sweating the outcome have lost sight of the fundamental purpose of a hobby - mental and physical relaxation. OTOH, people relax in different ways...


The value of comps, whether you enter or display only, is that you get quick feedback on what you're doing from a variety of different skill sets and intrests. I suppose there are some who are perfectly happy with what they've done and have no desire to improve, but most folks would like to see their technical skills get better over time. Color selection, blending, highlighting, shading, etc. Painting girls that look like girls instead of girls that look like men with breasts and long hair, for example. Comps help do that. For me at least.


Prosit,


Glen

[Michael_43]

Hallo Glen,
I only paint my flats for fun because I can´t paint them in a competition quality. I´m not an artist like M. Taylor
and I´ve not the patience to paint on a flat for weeks.
So I´ve never take part on a competition and I think I can better sleep without the problem of medals.

But I like to visit the competitions in Kulmbach or Ingolstadt. I don´t envy the painters walking nervous
around with sweat on their foreheads...

Best regards

Michael

[Glen]

Well, the 1, 2, 3 system has been around in human contests for ages. Its use in modeling contests predates the open system by many years. The IPMS is simply following their traditional ways and means of judging a contest. Following tradition has also been a constant in human endeavors. There is some irony there... 



In other news, I'm still pursuing my flat art idea. I'm going with a glam pin-up girl in part profile and fluffing her hair (probably red), but I'm not sure how I want to treat the background - plain color, clouds, flowers, something Mucha-esque? My imagination seems to be failing me here. Probably need a beer ...or two.


Oh, and my Steampunk Girl flat (the one holding a pistol by Trost) got a gold at the Tulsa Figure Show. Ya just can't lose with red hair, freckles, and wavy eyelashes. My scratch-built Elf Pin-up picked up a silver. My 45mm Napoleonic pin-up girls (Prussian Hussar and the French Infantrie Legere got best Napoleonic subject. To be honest, there were other, and better, Nap pieces there, but I think the award sponsor was gong for the avant garde, the unusual, etc., instead of the usual - 'Oh look! A British guy in a red coat and a French guy in a blue coat! I haven't seen that since I was on the other side of the display table!"



Glen

[PJDeluhery]

Well said, both Nick and Glen! 
 
I've judged at IPMS events, and the 1-2-3 system encourages fault-finding not rewarding skills demonstrated. Whatever its appeal, however, IPMs sticks to it like grim death. We have won some converts at our shows, but apparently their comments go unheaded. Still, to each his own; and if the IPMS-ers are happy with their system, that's fine with me. The world is big enough for us all.

[Glen]

Nick, it's not a Gold or Silver in the Open System sense; it's more a 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place finish. Like racing. There may be 50 models in an IPMS category - say 1/48 Scale Single Engine Fighters - Axis. Each model competes with every other model in the category and the judges' job is to pick the best one of the 50, then the 2nd best, etc. They usually do this by looking for flaws. The better the competition or skill sets, the harder it is, so it's easy for them to get bogged down in minutiae. The down side is that only three models place, while the other 47 simply go home. The advantage of the open system is that of the 50 models there might be 15 meeting gold standard, another 18 meeting silver, and another 17 meeting bronze. The models don't compete against each other and the builder/painter is rewarded accordingly.


To each his own...


Glen

[Nicholas Ball]

The open system is so much fairer,not only to the Judges,but  also the modellers. I also think it encourages them to display their works and most important,to turn up at shows.

when you have a table of 50 figures plus, how can you say there is only one Gold, one silver  etc.!!!!

[PJDeluhery]

OK, back from the Tulsa Figure Show. Patrick, it would seem your club is in a minority where the open system in concerned; the local groups here are dead-set against it. Most others are as well.

That's been our experience as well. Hard Core IPMS-ers want 1-2-3. To each his own. We have gone our own way and never looked back.

[Glen]

OK, but when I looked at the last line yesterday (Iwas away all weekend), it was in an unreadable micro print. I edited it back up to the same size as everything else. Weird... I also noticed that when I cut/paste text from one area of a post to another, the font size will also change. Changing it back to the original usually results in visible coding before and after the change. Sometimes the fix will take, but often I have to re-type the new lines. This has been going on for the ages now.


Salud


Glen

[marko]

Yes Glen, it had the small font set which I corrected.


mark 

[Glen]

OK, back from the Tulsa Figure Show. Patrick, it would seem your club is in a minority where the open system in concerned; the local groups here are dead-set against it. Most others are as well. I think the Houston group might have experimented with the OS vs 1,2,3, but I seem to recall the local figure group doing the judging. Not sure what their current status is.


I addressed the issue of a display only show on the drive up to Tulsa. The concensus was to ride the fence for the time being, so I guess more investigation is in order...



Marko... why was my 4 June post edited by you? And why was the type so small as it is in Patrick's quote? Were there some glitches?


Cheers,

Glen

[PJDeluhery]

Thanks Patrick.The two IPMS groups in the DFW area have a few figure painters, but not many it seems. There is also a separate IPMS car group. We have an impression that there are more figure painters in the Austin/San Antonio and Houston areas. Maybe OKC/Tulsa as well. IPMS shows here are heavily into aircraft and armor and it shows in the vendor participation. That's the way IPMS generally rolls now.


Years ago, we had flirted with the idea of having a figure show (comp, vendors, displays, etc) and we were even offered seed money from MMD/Squadron at the time, but it never came to anything. The vast majority of the NTFC membership was against it.  We have had an NTFC-specific display at the local library. They have large glass wall display cases and we were able to put in a wide variety of figures, building/painting materials, books,and modeling magazines. We kept everything PG-13, but at the last one, one older gentleman, looking out for everyone else's welfare, demanded the library pull a 15" anime piece of a gal wearing a mask, black corset, and thigh-high boots. He had no objection to Waffen-SS... Personally, I think a simply 'display only' show would not work out even if it had vendors; the local modeling mentality just doesn't seem to support it. Nevertheless, it might be time to revisit the issue.

...Somehow, they never do!!!   
 
My club is not too much gung-ho IPMS. We judge all but 2 of our model categories using the open system, and we find that even the hard-core IPMS-ers are willing to take home an open system award (which they might not have earned under IPMS rules)!