We're delighted to announce that the wonderful Cornish Mikey will be painting a Pro Elf team as the main prize for this years ACC. We thought it'd be good to know more about Cornish Mikey, including (but not limited to) such diverse topics as painting, and how he got his name..... You can visit Cornish Mikey here: http://cornishmikey-painting.webs.com/
Can you tell us all a bit about yourself?
Well, the name first of all came about because of where i worked a few years back, a small hotel in the west of Cornwall. There were five Michaels (Mike, Mick, Thrush - coz he's an irritating **** - Michael and me) and two Pauls and about twenty women (hah! The stories i could tell!). As i was the only one from Cornwall, whenever i was needed someone would call out 'Where's Cornish Mikey?' and the name stuck.
Not a particularly interesting story, but you've read it now, you can't unread it!
I'm a sucker for quiz shows and pub quizzes, comedies and...i'll admit it...CSI programmes. Yes, i know the science is ropey as hell, some of the acting is stiffer than a plank and Katherine Willows has started to look like Skeletor, but some of those plot lines are useful for roleplay games, Judge Dredd especially ;-D
Other than that, i spend between 10 - 12 hours a day painting, mostly for customers, some for my club (www.trelawnysarmies.co.uk or search for our Yahoo group) scenery and the like, and if i'm lucky a little something for myself - i painted two of my own minis last week! Two! I haven't done that many for months!
How long have you been painting and how did you start? When did you realise you had a talent for it, how did you improve over time?
I first started painting when i was about 14, with some 2000AD figures from Citadel...Judges Death, Fire and Mortis i think, done with poster paints and a dreadful nylon brush without a point. Getting a decent brush was a great help, as were a couple of friends who showed me basic techniques. When they started to ask me for tips, i thought hello, i'm on to something here. Other than that, i practised on any old figures i had, so i've a pile of part painted minis with different cloth styles, skin colours and textures, hair, metal etc. Seems to work ok! Working for GW in their Truro store made me good quickly, the huge amount of figures needed in a short time - due to a series of managers who couldn't plan ahead if their jobs depended on it - got me the reputation as the 'go to' guy...or the 'i can't be arsed to paint those, give them to Mike' guy...explains a lot about the high staff turnover ;-D
Are you a gamer yourself or does painting take up all your time?
oooh i game alright, but due to real life getting in the way i only manage a couple of hours a week at the club :-( and once a month at a friends house. Secrets of the Third Reich, a weird WW2 game with nazi zombies, werewolves and giant robots is a favourite, as well as Blood Bowl (naturally...), Mordheim and rpg's. But yeah,painting takes up a lot of time!
Why did you want to support The ACC?
Easy, i was asked! I've done bits for several tournaments in the UK - Newquaybowl, as it's the closest one to me, Thrudbowl and fantastic Frank Hill, who i've painted a Vampire team for (with the sculptors autograph, pretty chuffed about that!) and a 54mm Thrud and some other bits for the auction, and the hand painted mini BB helmet for the WaterBowl/MonkeyBowl tournament up North, as seen on the front page of my site as well as the Scrumpy Cup pieces. I've found Blood Bowl players to be amongst the most social of gamers...a helluva lot better than some tournament players i could mention... so anything i can do to help or to say thanks for, is all to the good :-D
What is it that you especially like about painting BB figures?
Well, it's the game really. If i like playing the game i can enjoy painting the minis. If there's a particularly duff game that someone wants minis painted for i'll do it of course, but it's more of a slog and not as much fun. There's a feeling of 'Thank Christ i've got those finished' instead of '..and that...is...it! Another team sorted and looking mighty fine, sweet!' I've played Halflings and Dwarfs for years, so any new fling or stumpy minis get my thumbs up...less of the enormous beards tho, get some character in there!
Do you enter painting competitions? Have you in the past?
i haven't entered an 'official' competition for a few years now, customers orders get priority! Hell, it's the customers that keep a roof over my head! Besides, a competiton worthy entry would take a couple of months to do and i don't really want to say sorry, i can't do your order for another couple of months, coz i'm painting a figure for myself. Fair enough, if it's sold on as a Golden Demon winning item you can get several hundred quid for it, nudging the thousands if you're a 'name' painter, but unless you've got a job as well the hours that go into it aren't financally worth the sale...
Still, out of five Golden Demon entries i've made the finals three times and i've stopped entering my clubs painting competitions coz no-one else would enter, so i must be doing something right
What inspires you when you're thinking of a theme yourself? What do you enjoy about painting to another person's brief?
Sometimes it's 'what colours haven't i used in a while' or 'Jeez, brown again, what else can i do?' But mainly it's the figure itself - a Dark Age barbarian wouldn't look great wearing rubber trousers f'rinstance, tartan works better...although a Necromundan mini could wear either i guess...
If someone has a definate idea of how they want their mini painted, then i'm a happy bunny - i can paint to their specifications without worrying if a belt buckle should be silver or brass or rusty or plastic, does the hair look better as yellow blond, ash blond or platinum etc? With some guidance i can crack on and finish quicker, rather than umm and aah about something that may not be noticed
What paints/brushes etc do you use? What are your "tools of the trade"?
Blimey, brace yourselves...
Daley Rowney brushes are decent enough and fairly cheap, but i get through them like a hot ball bearing through runny butter. Windsor and Newton series 7 brushes are the dogs danglies, get them discounted from www.antenocitisworkshop.com I use size 1, 0 and 00 and they last for AGES and keep a good point. They're pricey, around a tenner each, but i've painted Warhammer armies with one size 0 brush, superb. Even stupidly cheap brushes can be useful, you know the sort of thing, 16 brushes for £2 from Lidl's. Ok, they're crap for painting, but for drybrushing large areas and slopping PVA glue around with they're pretty fine.
I mainly use Vallejo and GW paints, but i've got some from Wargames Foundry when i painted for them, and some Coat D'Arms. P3 paints from Privateer Press are good but may need two or three coats to get a decent coverage.
For basing, ignore GW completely...waaay too expensive. I use fine balast, static grasses and flocks from railway modelling stores, Woodland Scenics and suchlike. There's a good comparison of grass shades and costs on the Antenocitis workshop site.
(keep it shush, but i'm looking into stocking static grass and ultrafine sand myself, 10 grams for a quid verses 15 grams for £6 from GW...shh...)
Then there's little odds and sods that can make a base go from looking ok to spectacular - cat litter for small rocks, dense polystyrene for larger lightweight rocks, small leaf litter, clump foliage, long grass, twigs, moss and all the rest.
What are Cornish Mikey's Top 5 Tips to improving as a painter?
First up, thin your paints down. They'll flow better, so the paint goes where you want it to go, instead of pooling and blobbing coz there's too much paint on the bristles.
Secondly, decent brushes! Windsor and Newton series 7 are the best and are recommended by practically every pro painter for a reason. You will see an immediate improvement when you start to use them. Keep them clean with brush soap and they'll last ages.
Third, and it sounds daft, but have at least three pots of water - one for metallic paints, one for colours and one for thinning the paints - and change the water often. There's not much worse than almost finishing painting a face and a flake of metal paint sticks to the wet surface, or using dirty water to thin down a final ivory highlight and only realizing when the brush touches the mini...
Next is make sure your painting area is well lit. If you're right handed the sun should come from your left, so your painting hand doesn't cast shadows on the mini. Daylight bulbs are useful when you're painting at night - you'll need at least two, one to simulate where the sun is coming from and one directly in front of you shining down onto the mini. B&Q sell tiny little LED lamps for a couple of quid each, well worth it ;-D
Lastly, and it sounds a little patronizing and really not what you want to hear, but practice practice practice! There's only a few really talented buggers who can get away without practising, you know the type, everything they touch turns to gold and the sun shines out of their arses, the rest of us schmoes have to slog and balls things up, learning from our mistakes. But here's my theory...while they may start out great, they level off fairly quickly, while everyone else gets better and better until they catch up and overtake the Peter Perfect's. Ok, it's not a great theory and it doesn't stand up to much scrutiny, but...well, i did have a point, but now i'm just flailing around until the sentence ends.
There we go.
What kind of price range do you work within for your client?
Ah hah, a contentious issue here! I've had to answer the 'HOW much?!?' question a few times, so i'm practised at this.
I paint to five standards to give a decent amount of choice for the customer. I start at Basic standard for a couple of quid a mini to Gamers for £3 each, Collectors for £5, Expert for £10 and Golden Demon for a minimum of £30, often more.
Basic standard tends to be reserved for units of Warhammer minis, but if the units big i usually do a discount, otherwise it'll get too expensive. Gamers standard is the most popular - a lot of BB teams are done to Gamers, plus standard bearers, unit champions, 40k minis etc (there's a marketing thing about setting prices - not many people go for the cheapest option, whatever they're buying, coz they don't want to be seen as cheap and they won't go for the most expensive coz it's too pricey, so they'll go for the middle ground...mind you, that's common sense, shows what the marketing people know...). Collectors standard tends to be used for hero models, there's usually three or four heroes per force, so the cost isn't too bad and they stand out more from the grunts. Expert is for Generals and wizards and what have you, or if someone wants a minis done well coz they really like it, and the Demon standard is for those who want a bang up job and don't mind waiting a month or two.
I use different paints depending which standard you'd like, so the basic standard has Foundation paints and regular GW paints, up to Collectors with Vallejo Game colour and GW paints, then Expert and Demon which uses the finer pigmented Vallejo Model colour with chemical thinners, distilled water and drying retardents so the paint is workable for longer. Really, it's down to how long a mini takes to paint - a Basic paintjob takes maybe a half hour per figure (although working in batches and units speeds things up), Expert level is two to three hours plus touch ups and details and revisiting bits that don't quite work and Demon level is a minimum of a month.
Thanks for sharing with us Cornish Mikey :)
Thanks for letting me witter on, and if you've made it this far well done! Have a cake and a cup of tea :-D
