Merry Christmas & Happy Holidays Dear Craftworldians

Dear Craftworldians,

Happy Holidays to all who celebrate :)

Both of us would like to Thank You All for your constant support of our art. Thank you for being part of our Patreon Community, our Students, Friends and fellow Miniature Painters and Artists.

We appreciate being a part of your painting journey and sharing our knowledge, lessons and tutorials with all of you. It's our pleasure to bring you all closer to the essence of our creative mind, depth of our artworks and story behind the thoughts and process. With all of this we are also opening our soul for our community.

Every lesson, brushstroke, color and tone shared behind each work is very personal. Lessons we design are there to put this art of ours into a words. Witch is often very difficult since creativity and talent are much complex then a simple technique.  But following your progress, growth, experiments and learning by our teachings are just a right showcase of how much these lessons and techniques we created (Since May 2020) had influenced this community. Inside and outside Patreon. 

It is what brings that magical feeling of being a part of each journey. Knowing we managed to bring fun into your painting time, bring inspiration for your paintings, give you ideas and freedom to express and opened a possibilities for finding your inner self in this creative expression.

This year we had both good and bad experiences about our profession. From artists side of view, we love the opportunity to express and work on our art freely. And from content creator, teacher and professional miniature painter view, there are different sides of the medal when it comes to popularity and talent.

Many years we worked in this industry as a Boxart Painters, Teachers but also as artists for a private collectors. 

When it comes to Boxart painting, we had experienced being used by the miniature producers for their gains only. Not by all of course, there are many good experiences with boxart commissions that we will repeat gladly again. But in bad experiences, these people would see your popularity only, but not the reason for it. Because of that, you are just one name on the list that is there to bring them visibility and profit.  
It is understandable from commercial side of view, but when community is not that big only way to expand is by recognition and respect of both side. Producer and all artists involved. Since there is so much more behind the scene when it comes to miniature. Concept Art & Illustration, Sculpting, Production and then Miniature Painting.

For us, bad experience as teachers is having our teaching misused. As explained in the text above, every lesson we share is designed to bring better understanding of our art and painting process. And as you might see even better after so many lessons, even as we both use similar thinking and progress ideas there is a difference in each one's artworks. Coming from painterly and artistic background to a miniature painting, everything that we showcase here exist in the painterly world. But, we never even though on taking a artbook or art school lessons to teach here. Rather, we shared our progress that was just part of our painting journey, by analyzing our choices and progress and giving the names and terms to a techniques as we would call them in any occasion. 

So underpainting, that we are all so fond of is used in painting as a sketch of setting volumes or tone to your painting as a initial layer.
When we started teaching, we already worked on defining and bringing color use trough color practice closer to our students. 

Analyzing our painting progress at the time, we realized it would be a good idea to have people free their way of color application and color use, by placing a paints on the miniature and mixing tonal variations in between paints. So, even as you can't understand it in the definition, you don't have other choice than to experience it and with that learn from the expertise.

We realized, we need to give a name to a technique for easier understanding. So as we would name it on Serbian language "Podslikavanje" we named this technique "Underpainting" . As a term that is easily understood and recognizable. Instead of tonal volume layer, we used this technique to set up and ambience and volumes of piece. But not only that, we brought this technique to spark your experimentation with color interactions.

Before starting with Patreon, we have travelled to many other countries teaching this use of color.

Then we have, overlapping layers, once again term named by simple explanation of a process. In our further design of color use and color interaction lessons, we wanted you all to play with the painting layers. Having them interact with one another, by overlapping. In some occasions only for the tonal interacting and change of color hue, in other situations to create interesting surfaces and textures and once again, to spark your imagination and bring you insight to so many possibilities. 

So even as we don't insist on calling technique our own, these lessons are all very personally designed from our view, perspective, progress and insight in order to bring better understanding of ART and Painterly style to different style of learners. People from both art or hobby world, making your painting progress and ideas, fun, inspirational an unique. 

Many of you used these lessons as explained above, it a great way building your painterly style and signature. Always being appreciative of our lessons.

But there are some people that are just taking all of this hard work for granted. Impersonating. Not crediting. And sharing these lessons in false meaning, without understanding their purpose.

It might look like these people are gaining something by their misuse of our teaching and art. But, we believe it is not something that can be long lasting. The only bad thing with this treatment, is that it can hurt the artist. As mentioned, we create everything we share very personally. Our soul is in every piece we share, every tutorial we make and every sentence we write. We try to ignore these occasions, so that we will not feel the hurt and close inside our own creative bubble. And that is one of our wishes for a New Year as well.
To learn not to care about bad treatment and misuse. But also that someone, who need to hear this can read and learn to appreciate efforts put in our work.

As you know, we both live this lifestyle. Our every day is about painting, arts and gaming. If you see us as an inspiration, remember to nourish the source. If you drain it it disappear.

We feel like it is time to pull this from our chests, and go freely to a new year and new beginnings.

Ps. We are Orthodox Christians. So we have luck to celebrate this holiday double. Today with all of you, and in January with our family. What can we say, we are jolly people. Aside of all the things that can make us sad, we always find a way to push further and bring as much as possible to the community we love and appreciate. Stay creative and Happy Holidays :D

Ps. What do you guys say for some live painting in the next days (or January) let us know in comments. Cheers.