Journey to be a Painting Master: Part One

Journey to be a Painting Master

The Beginning

So as Jackie Chan once shouted "Who Am I". I am known online as Katana100. I started the Wargaming/Minis hobby around 20 years (as of this post I am 31) with a couple of small breaks, the standard Uni one and after working for Games Workshop and being made redundant I had a little break as well.

I started in a very classic way, a young lad I went to town on a saturday morning for breakfast with my uncle and we used to go for a wander around the town as their was this strange shop under a multistory carpark called Games Workshop eventually we went inside and this the dark days began... I mean my love of the hobby started. It started with the Kharn the Betrayer and Cipher metal models and eventually I got a starter box. I had a crack at painting them but all i had was a couple of gw inks and some old humbrol enamals and this was the result

Kharn the Betrayer - My very first model

Ciper - Dark Angel Guy

Time has not been kind them as I had no idea what varnish was at the time. I went from there started secondary school discovered that one of the teachers had a club and well as a child i had a horrific competitive streak (thankfully I have learned to not care so much now except im not allowed to play fighting games). Those school years where spent entirely playing GW games, for 40k I had Space Marines and Orks, Fantasy I had Skaven and I had a ton of various Lord of the Rings. I had no idea other things existed.

Terrible Rat Swarm

Uni hit and I mostly feel out of the hobby the usual things got in the way but after finishing my degree I went home and while going through a couple of crappy jobs I fell back into the hobby and after a couple of years started working as an assistant manager in a Games Workshop this started to really push my hobby forward as I had to learn to temper my competitve spirit to be able to teach the game (qualifying as an actual teacher helped a career path I never took) and then I had to learn how to paint the GW way using their paints.
I became consumed a bit by the hobby during this time learning all the lore, battle tactics and everything I could about painting with GW stuff I personally owned almost the entire paint range from this, built, painted and played practically every army going and GW even when this was the height of it being very corparate was a great company to work for and I dont regret the experience but all things come to an end as I was made redundant sadly which no matter how much you love something leaves a bitter taste in your mouth that took a while to get over even if I did understand the reason and i definitly dont blame my awesome manager from the time.

This Knight was one of the last things I painted while working for GW

A little more time passed and eventually I picked up my old models but during this time I had learnt that there was more to wargaming than Games Workshop so my re-entry into the hobby came this time with a wider bredth of interests but as age goes things like career and having children take a lot of you time so I find that I dont play very often as that is simply a commitment i struggle to keep to but painting at home late at night when the kids are asleep this I can do.
This new era was more kicked of by picking up a copy of White Dwarf randomly and discovering the Blanchitsu section and from this Inq28 and AOS28, love it or hate it it is very different to normal games workshop as was a massive departure from what I was used to and it was from this that the spark was re-ignighted.

In my Bitz box I found half a minotaur so had a crack at the Inq28/AOS28 style

The nurgley brother to the minotaur above - using a random Stormcast model as its base
 

But time was rare and I had more little ones so my hobby has been very sporadic and was mostly lived vicariously through youtube and friends on discord but as the little ones get older and no other planned I have had time to reflect what I want from this hobby and that is painting, building has always been a means to an end for me and I really dont have time for gaming and well I dont a hundred percent enjoy it but painting that has always called to me so I descended down the rabbit hole.
This series will follow how I attempt to improve painting  whether that be indivudal models, armies or musings on techniques or art in general.

Katana100 Signing out