Day 1

Our journey to Nova started Thursday morning as my wife and I geared up and headed to Manhattan for our 4 hour bus trip to Washington DC. I have used this bus service before and overall the trip there was relatively comfortable, although I think I may opt to use the train next year to change things up and travel even more leisurely. Once in DC it was quite easy to get to the new hotel venue from Union Station as this year the Nova Open was held at the Hilton near downtown DC which made the commute almost half what it was previously. Since we arrived on Thursday we were able to avoid the check in rush that happened the day before also avoid the card issue where apparently key cards weren’t working so staff had to walk guests to there room to let them in.

Speaking of the room, this is probably the only disappointing aspect of the whole experience. The room was actually quite small compared to ones at the Hyatt Regency from last year and at a higher price point. It had a nice large bed and tv with a relatively spacious bathroom but not a lot of walking room; I have gotten pretty used to the suites at the Hyatt where I could basically run laps in there. Also, the pillows provided were probably some of the worst pillows I have used and I am seriously considering bringing my own next year. However, despite the room size and pillow quality the new venue had a major upside that I think more than makes up for it and that was the food options that were available.

Soon after arriving we took a moment to settle in and quickly refresh ourselves before getting ready for the classes we had scheduled that evening. My wife had a drybrushing class by Games Workshop at 5pPM which left me enough time to find some food before my scenic basing class at 6PM. One quick google search later and I find myself at a local pizza place called Duccini’s where I had a slice the size of small baby. The slice was huge but not at the expense of taste and it was pretty affordable to boot and made a mental note to come back.

With a full stomach I headed off to the scenic basing class taught by Amanda Kopet (@synchroneyess). I had taken a scenic basing class at prior Nova’s but was always eager to try and learn more because I felt I was lacking in that department. The class was very hands on as she gave every student a wooden cube that would act as our plinth as well as access to a myriad of different basing materials such as cork sheets, bark, milliput, resin columns, sand, roots and more. I was able to make a decent looking scene even going so far as to embed some paving stones into a layer of milliput I had put on the ground to better integrate them. I also learned a bit more about framing the scene as I felt that what I had made felt too open but at the advice of Amanda Kopet I added a root to act as a tree on one side. This had a marked effect as it filled in a bit of that negative space and gave more dimensionality to the scene whereas before it felt a little open and flat.

Once class was over I met up with my wife and headed back to our room in order to turn in for the night as we had quite a day planned for the official day 2 of the convention.

Day 2

On Friday we had to wake up pretty early as my wife’s first class was at 9am, so we got up at around 7:30AM to get ready and grab some breakfast at a local joint called Jolt ‘N Bolt Coffee where I got a bacon, egg, and muenster on ciabatta and my wife a toasted bagel with cream cheese. The food wasn’t bad for what it was, although I felt a little bad for the staff because it seemed they like they weren’t used to the surge in customers the convention had brought. Afterwards, my wife went to her basics bootcamp class but not before we hit up the vendor hall real fast to get some supplies for her like a an Exemplar wet palette and a painting handle for me from Game Envy. This left me some time to meet up with Ian Tallmadge (ipt_minis), a friend and one of the admins of the Minipainting Discord.

As it turned out, we were taking the same class that morning which was the semi-private class with Will Hahn (sik_willy_miniatures). However, I had not read any of the instructions and had to rush to the paint and take and sign up for it so I would have a mini ready for the class. It was the first time I had taken a higher level class like this and it being semi-private means that we only had three people in the class, me, Ian and another painter by the name of Sean Glynn (@sg-miniatures). This meant that we got to have a lot of one on one time with Will so that he could help us in whatever we needed which is something you can’t get in the larger classes one normally sees at Nova. I elected to have him help me work on getting more texture in my painting and he had me work on a leather texture on the large hat of the mini I was working on. The class was a blast as Will was a super chill guy so it felt more like guys just hanging out than a formal class and the time went by pretty quickly. My biggest takeaway from the class was less about the technique but more about overcoming a mental block I had were I was too timid when doing the technique and by extension too timid in a lot of my painting.

Afterwards I hung out with Ian and he introduced me to a lot of other talented painter who I would spend a decent amount of time with over the course of the convention such as Kyle Dalton (pale_king_hobby), Dave Szymanik (bourbonbrush), Aaron (waxy_sandwhich), Dan Dugal (Imladrasil) and Evan P (evan.m.paints). When my wife was done with here classes I met up with her and went back to Duccinis to get some pizza and check out some of the con floor. I then headed to my last class of the day for me which was a class on painting Infinity miniatures by one of my favorite minipainters, Steven Garcia (@torkathor).

This class was more in line with what I was used to, it had about 15 people in the class and Steven Garcia went over some techniques that would be helpful in painting minis from Infinity. One interesting tip he taught was how he created reference photos for his work; what he did was place the primed mini under a strong light and would take pictures at different angles to see which angle was best. Also, the strong light would help show where the natural highlights are in the model, giving him a map he could follow when it came time to paint. He would also place colored post it notes directly underneath model so he could get colored bounce lighting on the underside of the model which helped define the darker details as well as see if where any bounce highlights would be if he was doing environmental lighting or secondary light sources.

Another thing he taught was a way to get more vibrant reds and yellows on the model without mixing in other colors. It was done by laying down a layer of pure white on the model first and then painting over that with the red; since red was naturally a very transparent color the white undercoat helped maintain the vibrancy it would have otherwise lost when painted over any other color. It’s a technique I had seen done by Flameon miniatures but being able to see it in person and do it right then and there helped cement the idea in my head. One of the last things Steven Garcia went over was a simple NMM on the sword. I didn’t get too much out of this as I was already pretty familiar with this concept. Overall it was a fun class and I definitely intend on incorporating the reference photos idea into my workflow

After the class I found my wife in the board game area and we went back to the room to wind down and eventually turn in. It was a hectic day as Friday was the day with the most classes for the both of us and we eager to get some rest as we still had two more days of the convention left and I had a class early the next day at 8AM. It was also at this time that I realized that all the classes I had signed up for were all 4 hours long, including the 8AM one and was at that point beginning to lament my decisions. Luckily, Saturday was also the day I set aside the most amount of free time so I could explore the con, check out the vendor hall, hang out with friends and explore the surrounding area.

So with day 2 in the books, I’ll see you next time.