I’m now back from Bavaria with probably too many pictures and a stomach full of wurst. (I love wurst. This is a Good Thing.)
The show was, much like last year, a real blast. I recommend it to all my painter friends now because it’s small enough to still have a great feel of community, while still being big enough that it doesn’t feel like you’re just invading some local show. It’s also in Ingolstadt, which is a really lovely city.
In the end, I came away with bronzes in both fantasy masters and historical masters, so I was very, very pleased. I had wurst to celebrate.
A few notes on the show:
- Talk of the town was obviously Kirill’s absolutely incredible NMM. As plenty of people observed, it doesn’t really work in the hand – even less so than ‘normal’ NMM does. However, the finish is utterly flawless, and I cannot even begin to comprehend how you think about putting the paint down to achieve the effect. If you have the chance to see them in person, you’ll no doubt see people holding their phone up to compare ‘in the flesh’ to camera image, and it’s really remarkable.
- It was, to be fair, quite quiet at the show this year. I’d say there were about a third fewer pieces there, but that’s to be expected with three other reasonably major shows on the same weekend, and a flurry of other shows and events in the coming weeks. The quality on display wasn’t really effected, however, which shows how much love there is for it. With a bit of luck, it’ll be on its own weekend next year. I’ll be there. Buy me a beer. Or wurst.
- I have seen comments online that historical was vastly outnumbered by fantasy, which is true, but many of the people making this comment were clearly annoyed that fantasy was ‘taking over’ and had decided not to come for that reason. It really shouldn’t need to be explained that they are very clearly part of the reason historical was so outnumbered. Seriously: if you’re worried that the love for historical pieces is dying out, the better solution is to turn up and show off what historical can be. I love both fantasy and historical for very different reasons, and I’m still perplexed that some people can be so incredibly tribal about it. Then again, I don’t count rivets, so maybe my opinion is invalid or something.
- Wurst.
A note on the pictures:
- I tried to get a picture of every single entry. I don’t think I actually managed to do this, because some stuff turned up quite late and I never realised it had appeared, some stuff was always cluttered with people, making it hard to get in there, and some entries I may have just not seen. Still, I think everyone deserves to have someone take a picture of their work – you enter pieces because you’re proud of them, and it’s nice to see that someone else has, at the very least, noticed you. Also, we can all see pictures of all the winners online – everyone takes pictures of them, many of them are on Putty and Paint, and inevitably we all talk about the really impressive stuff (*cough* Kirill *cough*).
If I somehow missed out on getting a shot of your piece, my apologies. Anyway, here they all are, very deliberately in a random order:
Fet Paints 