Catching up part 1: Painting Buddha Workshop Hamburg

Painting Buddha Workshop 2013 - Wu Dao, Hamburg

15 hours of sleep not enough?

We all know those fun and intense weekends, the ones that you really need to recover from on the next day or two. Like with 15 hours of sleep. 

Crazy Times at the Painting Buddha Cave.
Ben eyes the Button-Maker. All hand-made for you!

It's been almost a month since we held our first and only 2013 Painting Buddha workshop at the Wu-Dao in Hamburg. Since then, we filmed season 1.2 with Stephan "Derwish" Rath, season 1.3 with Matt Cexwish & Ben Komets, parts of season 2.0 with Chris "Monkeyman7x" Octive and last but not least season 3.0 with Kirill "Yellow One" Kanaev. 

On top of that, we went to events every weekend (GD UK, Hussar 2013, GD Italy) and this weekend we will be heading out to Monte San Savino our second to last event this year before we head out to Nice at the end of November.

15 hours of sleep... 

No, not per day. How about 15 hours of sleep in 7 days? That's how much sleep I got when we filmed with Kirill "Yellow One" Kanaev last week. I will have to edit out the 'thudd' sound from when I fell off my chair during filming... True story, bro! :D

I am getting too old for this :D Ain't nobody got time for sleep!

Catching up

So between now and Wednesday I will write as many of the outstanding reports for you to SHARE & ENJOY as I can. First things first, let's start off with the only Painting Buddha Workshop in 2013. 

Happy Monks & little Bruddhas

Reference material. Ommm.

Shifu Heiko Klisch's school of Kung-Fu, the Wu Dao in Hamburg, is no longer a secret location when it comes to excellent workshops. And what would be a better location for a Painting Buddha workshop in which we paint our 'Happy Monk'?

While it was not Ben's first workshop, it was his first for Painting Buddha. 

So on Friday twelve little Bruddhas converged on what was to be the painting center of the universe for a weekend. In retrospective Ben and I found that this size was perfect for a workshop, as Ben had the opportunity to spend the whole weekend giving one-on-one advise. 

Our youngest Bruddha, Ellie, wearing her "Ben"-fan earphones, built her first base and painted her first miniature ever. 

And believe me when I say that her first mini looks better than most of the first miniatures that we have painted in our lifetime. Her Happy Monk even has a towel! A true hitchhiker!

Another one of or our new Bruddhas, Christoph, painted his second miniature - and after some very intensive wet-in-wet training from Ben, his second miniature looked stunning. He wet-blended stones on a wall and it was hard to say which was Ben's paintjob and which was Christoph's!

But that was not all for him - he went on to win the free ticket, getting his workshop fee back! I'd call that a successful weekend ;) And because he's a hoopy frood, he asked us to donate the money to 1love, one of the organizations we pledge a total of 16% of our profits to. What a guy!

All Ur Bases R belong to us!

Basebuilding was a very important part of the workshop. Every participant had to come up with a 'theme' for the Happy Monk. We had Jungle Monks, Gravity defying Monks, Anime Monks with Magical Disks, Japanese country Monks, City-Monks, timeless Monks with a watch and - as mentioned before, a monk entering a bath-tub with his towel... Both ideas and results were amazing!

"OK, now do this on a square millimeter!
Chop-chop!

Wet-in-wet

Painting in wet-in-wet is a very simple concept, but it takes some practice and experience to master. 

With this technique, Ben is able to create award winning entries in almost no time! Whether you want to paint high level tabletop-miniatures or showcase stunners, this technique is great if you don't want to invest hundreds of hours using homeopathic dilutions of paint. 

With one-on-one training and some simple exercises with Ben, everyone was able to pick this technique up. 

From here on, all it takes is regular practice - we are looking forward to seeing you triumphantly raising your deserved award at one of the next events! ;)

Motivation. Focus. Dedication. 

I have been to many a workshop and I have to say that the participants of our first one were the perfect students. Everyone was absolutely motivated to learn something new and focused on what he or she has learned during the workshop. There were some very late nights and very small eyes the morning after involved, I call that true dedication!

Thanks to all of the participants, it was all-in-all a wonderful weekend full of perfect painting!

Plans for 2014

Workshops are not our main business. With all the DVDs and other projects that will be coming in 2014, we unfortunately won't have time to hold that many workshops. So there will be very few workshops that we will be organizing in 2014. We will definitely let you know much longer ahead of time, as our last workshop was almost like a last-minute-deal. Stay tuned ^^

In 2014, we will be back in Hamburg, for sure. On top of that there may be a hand-full of other locations that we think about going to. If you would like a workshop in your city, just let us know where. If it's on this planet, we probably can work something out ;) 

Thanks & Pics

Our buddhalicious thanks go to: 

• all of the workshop participants - you guys are true Bruddhas! Bruddha hwaiting!
• Shifu Heiko for inviting us to his mysterious Kung-Fu temple of painting secrets
• Crazy Wenky for donating the workshop plinths
• Stone "Der Fels" and Tuffskull for allowing me to use their pictures

You can see some of the workshop pictures here on my picasa web-album.

Happy "Happy Monk" Bruddhas. Thank you all for a great weekend!

Mati just informed me that every post should at least mention 'Cake' once, as everyone likes cake. So there you have your cake: Wet-in-wet blending like Ben? Piece of CAKE!

SHARE & ENJOY