Whistlin'

Although it's not something that often comes up in our hobby-focused crowd, I'm a big fan of baseball and try my best to follow the Red Sox. I don't have a way to stream it, nor would I have the time to really sit down and watch a game, but I will listen on the radio and I watch the highlights on YouTube every day.

On 5/29 the National Anthem was performed by Chris Ullman, a "4x International Whistling Champion." 

I'm a gatherer of what I refer to as passive hobbies, things that you can do while killin' time. I carry a little sketchbook with me to draw and I'm a big fan of birdwatching, but whistling is something that could fit right in there. You don't need to carry anything, it's fun to do, and just like anything - the more you do it the better you'll get.

Of course - there's people that take it more seriously than others. The video below features International Grand Champion Sean Lomax, and he has some great tips on how to improve your whistling, but just like in any hobby - there are things he says you "need to do" or "should be doing." Ultimately though (obviously) you can just have fun and play with nothing at all.

Here's another great video of a man named Roger Whittaker whistling while playing his guitar:

Hobbies are great. Doing things is fun, and typically we see being bored as a "bad thing." Instead of reaching for your phone next time you need to kill time - take a look around, whistle a tune, or maybe pull out your sketchbook and do your best to draw the next person or animal you see. 

Thanks to this chance encounter with Chris Ullman, I've got a new found love.

Ok I'll leave you with one more quick video of him from 1994:

xoxo

TR

Folk Art and Pure Creative Expression

I'm not shy about my opinions regarding display-level miniature painting. I think it is wonderful if this style brings you joy, and I understand the appeal of spending dozens of hours on one project, slowly solving all the pieces of the puzzle until you get something very refined. However, I've always championed a style that is more crude, quick, and, in my opinion, has a more dynamic character.

Over the past couple of days, I've been digging into the work of American Folk artists. As an art teacher, I hadn't held them in particularly high regard, having been trained to see the "true" artists we learned about in Art History class.

It started when I saw a YouTube video about Coulter Jacobs by a channel called Monster Children. I started thinking about him and how he would abstract traditional tattoo designs (already rooted in Folk Art) into something unique that combined these elements with a crude, outsider-ness.

When we think of artists, we likely think of the "greats"—Monet, van Gogh, Picasso, Warhol—all artists we learned about in elementary school, and whose names are frequently mentioned. However, these artists have styles rooted in rebellion, crudeness, and experimentation that gets forgotten over time as they become household names.

So why do we hold ourselves to such unnatural standards when creating? Why not embrace the inner child, turn off the brain, and just make? Why do our goals as creators often aim to render something to a photographic level or be as realistic as a Bernini sculpture, when most of the artists we admire actively worked against that?

This is why Folk Art has been inspiring me so much lately. Artists in this category often have no formal training and operate outside the Eurocentric, perfection-driven art world. They create for the sake of creating and for fun, and their output is often extraordinary. In turn, their styles develop and their voices become more pronounced through their work.

As creatives, we need to shed this need for perfection and embrace the chaos that comes with child-like play.

I'm reading The Little Prince to my daughter (she can't understand it, but it's entertaining for me!), and a quote sticks out:

“Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them”

Here are a couple videos about folk artists that have influenced me:

'Make' Outsider Art Documentary

COULTER JACOBS

Outsider Art from The Inside

Have fun, get messy, let loose, nothing really matters!

TR 

xoxo

Collage

Been adding a lot of collage elements into my artwork lately. 

Love the hobby, but I find this is a nice way to create two dimensional work as well. They make great gifts/giveaways, and are a fun and easy way to engage in aesthetic thinking without having to really know what you are doing. Play with messy paint, rip up magazines, add stamps - the list goes on and on when mixing media. If you don't consider yourself an "artist" I would consider trying this way of working, no rules, just playing!

Here are some of the ones that I finished:

I lean into the messy side of this - cutting them down to be clean squares when I've felt like I've added enough, but express yourself in your own way and just have fun.

xoxo

TR

Skaven Project #1

My main focus hobby-wise has been a Skaven project specifically for playing OPR Regiments, with a secondary idea of maybe trying out Old World.

I wanted to approach this project differently than I had approached any project before. All my other armies don't have lists of any kind and I just paint any models that I have for the army, and never really "finish." It's a great way of keeping busy and finding hobby time but not great for a sense of completion. 

I'm doing this square base Skaven army with a 2000pt. list first, working towards an end goal.

I would like these rats to be grungy and dirty, and painted quickly to reflect that idea. They are heavily textured in all manner of ways. 

So far it's just been clan rats which I've been painting as I've been bashing and assembling the rest of the force.

Here's one painted:

 Here's what it looks like from the back so you can get an idea of the layers of added filth:

Excited for this project. It is certainly more laborious than I thought it would be but I think it'll feel good to have an end to work towards.

I'll post more as it develops.

xoxo

TR

Mental Space

When I'm not watching movies or TV while painting miniatures, I usually prefer to listen to something quiet in the background, lately it's been big old dungeon synth playlists on spotify. 

I find that listening to quiet music usually gives me the best chance to think while I paint. This hobby has become so important for me because for a solid chunk of time at night I get to go over the events that happened in my day, and think of solutions for problems that I may be facing the next day.

It's made me wonder why there aren't more times like this in my day. In the morning I journal, which has the same effect - but mostly my day feels packed in, busy, but not in a fulfilling way.

Thinking through how I spend my day, it doesn't take much time to realize that a majority of my day is spent subconsciously picking up my phone, and filling any sort of gap looking at my glowing screen.

I can make all the excuses I want to, I'm catching up on the news in the hobby, or I am seeing what my friends are up to, or maybe I'm making plans. However, at the end of the day it is obvious how much mental space and time the phone strips away from my life. 

I'm not saying that I should be better about putting the phone down so I can paint more minis, or be more "productive," but actually the opposite. If I am able to move away from filling any gap of time with doom-scrolling, I'd give myself the option to sit - and to think, getting the same satisfaction I get when I'm painting miniatures.

Who knows if I'll be able to do it, but painting minis has enhanced so many other creative aspects of my life. This lesson of creating mental space has potential to be the most important of them all. 

xo

TR

Blogging and Burden

I've decided to start this blog mid-revelation during my creative journey. Getting to know my closest friends in the New England War Council, and even more intimately, the other Hive Scum boys, has profoundly shifted my recent creative process.

As kids, we act without inhibition. We follow whims, driven purely by curiosity. Why this changes, whether it's puberty or some other source of insecurity, I'm not sure, but we suddenly become tight. We start fretting about others' perceptions, meticulously crafting our public image. Platforms like Instagram exacerbate this, pushing us to become microbusinesses, constantly tending to customer service and ensuring our creations are marketable.

Yet, since connecting with my newfound friends and becoming a parent myself, I've come to realize the absurdity of this "tightness" and the liberation of shedding these constraints to embrace unbridled creativity.

I often view my creative life as a series of ebbs and flows. There are periods of creation when I care little about external validation, allowing ideas to flow freely across whatever medium. However, over time, the desire to "improve" tightens my approach. Eventually, the joy dissipates, and I stop creating.

Now, I find myself back in a state of flow. Ideas abound, and this blog is a manifestation of that liberated creative energy. I'm splattering digital paint, unconcerned with direction or reception. There's no pressure to post regularly or at all—this might be it.

Ultimately, nobody really cares, and each day, we edge closer to the edge. So, I might as well do whatever the hell I want.

Xoxox

TR