About

The evolution from gamer to painter

I'm Mike, formally speaking Michael Reckhaus ( just to give a hint where the nick "Rockhouse" might originate from) - Hobbyist miniature painter and diorama builder. How it came about?

All started with the usual Blabla - samey same as most of us.

• Warhammer - entry point to miniatures 1998 at the age of 15
• broke up with it at 22
• restarted 2017 by coincident

But the switch from gaming to painting focus might be more interesting.

First Serious painting

In my youth I was all but a painter: Nickname "Schrubber" - I colored 90 skinks in 5 days. 

But in the second run of my hobby life, I became attracted by a painting competition for "Da Red Gobbo" in the local warhammer store.

It was just for honor and reputation, but sitting together in the gamestore to paint something with others, chatting and exchanging ideas without any bad thought was magical. 

Maybe memories are deceiving in retrospective, because I won the competition. But still I believe the result didn't affect the path from gamer to painter - it were the painting sessions and atmosphere.
 

That was December 2019 and we all know what happened a few months later...

COVID

When the stores closed - the magical painting days were gone - and the painting area never returned in the warhammer store. Now the good thing about the hobby is, that you can do it at home, so Covid couldn't stop painting. But alone is not even half as fun.

I looked up the internet for places to share my work and joined some Facebook groups, like Painters Motivating Painters, Paint all the Minis or Tabletop Minions. But it missed the personal aspect. 
Don't get me wrong - the groups are great and the people do alot for the hobby - but it is a difference if you discuss your work in a small group where everybody knows each other, compared to groups with thousands of people and many posts a day.

So the search went on and I'm not sure if my memory is correct - I think it was Facebook - where I stumbled over the Discord invitation to the GMPC - The German Miniature Painting Community discord.

Discord

Although I'm an engineer, I lost a bit track of the progress in social media world at that time. Discord, Instagram, twitch ... These we're totally unknown to me. But for curiosity, I joined the GMPC discord and found exactly what I missed so much since the stores closed.

The discord was about 300 people where ~50 were very active members that met regularly in the voice channel. We chatted at lunch time, in the afternoon, at Christmas Eve - whenever possible. The community organized frequent painting challenges including video feedback and award ceremonies.
Probably that has been the reason why painting became my most beloved hobby till today.

Even though the GMPC community is not that active anymore, it resulted in a lot of friendships. Some very close that I still meet in person and some loose that I meet every other painting related event.

Workshops

The Internet is a strange thing. I've been member of the GMPC for 12 months and decided to go to a workshop by Roman Lappat in Augsburg, 500km from home and sharing a hotel room with someone that I've never seen in real life before.

I picked up McHotdog and we drove to Augsburg where Nekropainter had already been waiting in order to take the first painting class of my life.

And what a class that has been. 

It changed the way of observing the environment, I lost fear of color mixing, raised interest in art, and trained the sense of mood and environments.

 https://massivevoodoo.blogspot.com/2022/01/review-advanced-workshop-augsburg.html 

I visited many workshops afterwards, but the intensity of that first experience has never been reached again.

And why a blog now?

I take any piece of free time to do painting related stuff:

Join workshops, visit events, read books, browse putty and paint or insta and of course ... Paint

The number of my Miniature projects is constantly growing and I'm searching for a way to proper document challenges, ideas, decisions. 

I'd like to create glimpses to the past and archive thoughts, ideas and challenges I had with every project.

Maybe a blog is the right format and in best case - someone sees it and leaves with an inspirational idea as takeaway.