Santa's Sack

What did Santa bring me this year? Not too many minis thankfully, I already have plenty of those. In fact, no minis at all. I got a couple of art books, a set of paints and something of a new diversion - a set of sketching pencils and pad.

I love looking through art books, you can learn so much about colours and setting a mood. The subject matter in this case just happens to be fantasy, but more general art books can also be very inspiring. The Tolkien art book is one for the real Tolkien nerds - full of sketches of maps and line drawings, most of them very basic in fact, showing that all art starts with basic lines on a bit of paper (let's not get into a digital discourse). The Paul Bonner book is the opposite end of the spectrum, full of gorgeous fully rendered paintings of intricate detail and superlative technique.

The Kings of War paint set is a little experiment. I wanted to try the paint brand and picked a starter set to use on my vikings (even though it says Undead on the cover). It contains a limited range of colours, which hopefully will give my figures a certain look. I am not explaining myself very well here - more on this in a future post.

Finally, the sketch pad and pencils. Strictly speaking I have had these for about a month, but I class them as a present to myself so lump them in here. I am trying to teach myself how to sketch/draw. After reading a few online tutorials I decided just to jump in and start scribbling. The Paul Bonner book contains lots of preliminary sketches, so I am getting started by simply copying them. This gives me a chance to get accustomed to the pencils and start on the lowest slopes of the learning curve. As you can see on this dwarf, I messed up the eye and need a decent eraser to fix it. But hey ho, Rome was not built in a day.