Alright true believers here we are with our next installment of my coverage of the Award winning miniatures of my friend - and all round neat guy - Dragomir!
This was Dragomir's entry for the 2005/2006 Canadian Golden demons. It gets a double date because this was the year where they "reset" the date of the Canadian competition and consequently pushed us past the one calendar year between shows.
It was a heck of a day with some truly incredible models on display. The slayer sword winner was actually one of my all time favorite models - an Ogre Mercenary by LITW friend Jeremie Bonamant. Other highlights included fellow Team North America member Angela Imerie's Beautiful Terminator Librarian (which I thought deserved the gold), Mathieu's incredible Ogre Rhinox (this is the moment I knew he was going to be a truly brilliant painter) and a silver with some beastmen in WFB Unit for myself, your beloved narrator. ;)
And of course Dragomir's entry! While it only recieved a bronze (in itself no small feat as gold and silver went to David Warselynk and Jeremie Bonamant respectively) it REALLY impressed the Forgeworld judges who immediately declared it the FW Best in Show (again no small feat considering Mathieu's Rhinox!!!).
It was really great to see the FW tank designers discussing the refinements Dragomir made to this Leman Russ Destroyer and making comments like: "See thats how I told him it should be done!". They really appreciated Dragomir's attention to detail and very subtle and precise modifications. Here are some shots of the tank building process - and thanks to Dragomir's support and meticulous nature - you can see the whole thing step by step HERE in the galleries.
It should not be entirely surprising to anyone who knows Dragomir that he would excell in building Inperial tanks, as his modelling background really comes out of years of building historical armour and models. I think this really is a large part of what gives Dragomir's work such a unique look and a very different feel than many of his contemporaries.
The thing that I get a great chuckle out of is that so many people in this hobby are reallly just starting to look across to the world of historical modelling as inspiration for developing defferent techniques and looks. This by contrast has been Dragomir's playground for a long time and continues to draw more fans and admirers to his work and a greater than ever number of enquiries into how he creates these fine pieces. I know that I have picked his brain on several occasions about these so called "historical" techniques and will continue to do so for the forseeable future. One great example of this is the "salt mask" technique for weathering that you can see so well in these pictures. After bascoats have been applied salt is applied to the model using a wet brush this is then sprayed over using an airbrush to add the top coats of colour. When the salt is removed it has blocked or "masked" the basecoat - giving the appearance of natural weathering and paint flaking!
In our next update you will get to see several of these techniques applied to his monumental 2007 entry and a little further down the road you will get to see what I have been doing with what I have learned from him as I give the world a look at my 2008 Toronto Golden demon entry..... Keep an eye to this space - updates every week.
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