About me

 

Hello.

 

First of all thanks for reading and watching at my humble stuff, and my apologies for writing in a bad english language.

My name is Giorgio*, I was born in 1973 and I live in a village near Verona, Italy. I think this is almost everything, since I have not so much interesting things to say about me. Anyway, some more necessary informations will be added below.

 

 

*Also known as "Tato", the nickname given to me by my younger brother since we were children.

 

About my work

 

Ok, this is not really a job since I mainly do it for my pleasure and interest; moreover, I have no artistic formation or skills and the few things I know come from readings and watching others' people works. But even if I'm only a semi-professional modeler and I can't reach top results - i.e. prizes winning, I like to call it "my work" because I always put in it all the effort and care I can.

 

If I remember well, I was always interested in buildings things, especially models representing in small scale something real. Initially with wood or any usable material foundable in my dad's do-it-yourself room, but above all with plastic bricks, then when I was sixteen or so I timidly approached plastic kits hardly attempting to build cars' models, because I was – and still I am – a great automotive and racing cars enthusiast.

 

I firstly came in contact with soldiers and historical miniatures painting in 1994, when I purchased a modeling manual.

Even if I was not a great history enthusiast and no interested in military things or uniformology at all, I was really fascinated by those early '80s beautiful sculptures, realistically painted with enamels and oil colours, depicting historical frames, feelings and great emotions in a small place; I was also very attracted by the painting technics explained in the manual, so I told to myself that I really need to do at least a miniature painting experience in my life, even aware that I have poor technical knowledge and no artistic capability at all.

Twenty years passed before founding the right conditions and enough bravery to finally give it a try.

In the meantime many things changed in that scenery: better materials and castings, new advanced painting technics, new colours – acrylics instead of oils and enamels I mean, an oversaturation of new manifactures and brands (not always a good thing in such a tiny market, in my humble opinion), a new generation of younger and very high skilled sculptors and painters... watching at the masterpieces' pictures in my old manual I've suddenly discovered them to be simple standard paintings in today average level, and of course I've found myself even more far from that world.

 

But strangely, instead of being more discouraged as my usual, my interest became bigger and bigger: so when in mid 2014 I returned to plastics modeling after a long pause (with the initial idea of building only two or three cars), I've also planned to mess up with a figure.

 

About my painting technics

 

Well, differently from all the others, to be honest I'm pretty sure that I haven't a painting technic exept from putting some colour over the surface of a model or a miniature, really. But I think this is also the main reason that push me on: probably I will continue till I will be able to learn something about modeling and miniature painting: and this is a world where you may learn only doing something and something different each time, at least I think in this way.

So still I make a lot of mistakes, first of all having the wrong colour's dilution: sometimes this could lead to interesting effects, but it's not exactly the safe way to paint, believe me. Furthermore, differently from most of the miniatures' painters, I'm unable to paint using only "big" brushes' tips, but normally I use very small ones, on their sides too. And again about size: if you see in the gallery, you can easily notice that I'm more attracted by big scale figures, also a trait that distinguish me from most of the other miniatures enthusiasts in the world.

That said, and after some experiments and a lot of "trial and error" attempts, nowadays I find a bit comfortable starting with the main base colour (ok, the one I suppose to be the "right one" accordingly with documentation too) and go towards the light and down to shadows till I've reached a sufficient result for my taste, accordingly with the sculpture's volumes and general lighting. I use a lot of washes and subtle filters too: to correct some of the many mistakes I do, but also to reach more precisely the colour I desire and add more realistic effects when possible. I consider drybrush an important technic, especially to reproduce the terrains and some rough effects. I don't have a preferred or standard contrast and brightness level: it depends a lot by the subject, the situation and environment it is supposed to be. Of course, as many I'm usually influenced by the "boxart" picture (if present) and other visual or historical references.

About the colours: many waterbased acrylics for models and figures above all, from two or three brands normally; some ready-to-use acrylics inks; few oil colours for artists; special modeling waxes for certain metallic surfaces or details; sometimes even colored crayons and soft pastels.

 

About my reference artists

 

Often I find myself watching astonished at other peoples' works, struggling to imagine how they could reach that technical level and those results, happy to see that around the world there are so many talented enthusiasts and to know that there are so many things I may learn. As most of non professional miniatures 'painters' and modelers of course I'm mostly attracted by professionals' works. Some of the masters I like are Diego Ruina, Danilo Cartacci, Claudio Signanini, Gianfranco Speranza, Francesco Terlizzi, Pietro Balloni, Gaspare Mazzamuto, Angelo Amorese, the Cannone brothers, Sthepen Mallia, Julio Cabos, Davide Chiarabella, Mariano Numitone, Bill Horan... but I like also the style and way of work of many others, even if less famous and prize winning. If you ask me to mention a single name, my preferred one is surely Sergey Popovichenko. But we have to remember that without talented sculptors the painters' work is obviously impossible: infact some of the names I've just mentioned are also sculptors themselves, that leads them to the high top of this almost little known and not rarely even treat with disdain kind of art.