Painting Contests

Ever since I started painting my Ultramarines back in mid 2008, I had always been a pretty seclusive hobbiest. Being that I'm such a slow painter, I had always spent most of my time painting instead of playing. It was only recently that I had enough models to start playing regularly. On March 25th, however, my local Games Workshop was celebrating the 25th anniversary of Warhammer 40,000 and was running several events that weekend. Two of those events were painting contests. Naturally, I entered them both.

The first contest was on Saturday night and was done in-store. Everyone was to bring a fully assembled and primed model to paint in store. We had two hours to complete the event. Given that I usually take upwards of a week to complete a single model, this would be a problem for me. I brought an Ork Nob from the Assault on Black Reach set because it had a nice amount of detail but should still paint up fairly quickly.

I had some problems during the contest because I just wasn't used to painting that quickly. Also, I used half the time painting just his skin. When the store manager called for us to put our brushes down, I clearly wasn't finished. I set him down in the judging area anyway and this is how he looked:

The pin was my prize for winning

All in all, I'm pretty pleased with how the model turned out. Judging was done by everyone in the store, so the manager gave everyone in the store an opportunity to vote on what models they liked the best I ended up taking first place in that competition, along with a Necron player from the Youngblood category.

As for the second contest, we were to submit a model that we had completely finished. No painting in store, no rushing to finish. Just submit a model that was already done. The only stipulation is that the model had to be a space marine. Naturally, I was pretty confident on my ability to do well in this competition. I ended up going with my Captain. In this contest, the judging would be done by the store manager. I ended up taking first place in this contest as well, though a lone space marine scout gave me quite a run for my money.

My contest entry

This awesome scout made me worry. I though he was gonna win.

That's some pretty awesome camo on that cloak.

My trophy for winning!

After winning two contests in a row, I don't think I'm going to enter the next one that rolls around. I don't want to discourage other painters from even trying. I don't want to be that guy. Instead, next time there's a competition, I'm going to offer to make the trophies for it. I think that would be neat.

Through all the competitions, I still haven't forgotten about my promise to make the Eldar armor tutorial. It's coming along quite nicely and should be ready to be posted in a few weeks. Keep checking back! The tutorial should be posted before too long!