Quite a few weeks back, I announced some piece of great news. I had receive a commission from one of my favorite author (my absolute favorite being either Orhan Pamuk or Omar Khayyam depending on how I feel (I tend to like the later when I’m drunk which is actually the state in which he wrote most of his poetry(Yeah double parenthesis in a text is weird so let’s make it triple just for the fun of it))) George RR Martin. His books were truly inspiring and a delight to read when we were over exposed to a bunch of small stature men with quite hairy feet. ***SPOILERS ALERT*** I have laugh and cry reading them and I swore his name in a voodoo like incantation, not for the red wedding, but for having the audacity to kill Rob before Joffrey. REALLY?
I have always known that George RR Martin was a great figurine collector. What I never expected was to have a chance to have one of my minis among them. I still remember my stunned expression when my good friend, Aaron Lovejoy, told me he wanted to commission a piece from me. I only wanted a signed book (which I got, thanks a lot). This was the icing on the cake. I think it never took me that long to draft an email to negotiate the terms of a commission.
When I accept a commission, there’s usually 2 main factors. 1) that the project will be a challenge and keep me on the edge and 2) that I find it inspiring. I truly believe that if these two conditions aren’t met, both I and the customers are wasting their time. If I am not inspired nor challenged, I have nothing pushing me to give my best, which will then take me longer to complete being a waste of time for me and a waste of money for my client, which will not get my best.
M Martin truly challenged me. I am accustomed to more “modern” minis. Kits with more details and finesse. What was negotiated was in fact the total opposite. Now, don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with this mini nor any other in the same style. But let simply say that kits originally dating back to Ral Partha are not my usual cup of tea. It was definitely a chance to get me out of my comfort zone, to work with an iconic piece from the mini world which I would never had approached otherwise. I was jumping, face forward, into a pool of old school.
And instead of jumping from the 2 meters… I had to take the 15 meters tower… For those of you that followed the progress on Facebook, you have seen the excruciating process. For the others, expect a kind of tutorial/step-by-step of my approach when I come back from vacation (end of October). My goal was simple, take something old and make something new out of it. Not a simple task with an iconic mini, sculpted by David Summers directly from the world of Larry Elmore. And on top of that, it is for George RR Martin. No pressure. I slept fine. No stress. No issues. Who am I talking to? Hello? … scotch…
Overall, I am quite please with the result. I think I achieved my goal. I’ll be waiting for the final approval of the client. As said, I hope it is worthy of the great dragons of House Targaryen. In the meantime, here are the pictures. As said, expect a tutorial on the approach in 2 months.
So now, some sleep, then GD UK entry.
For you guys, keep painting!