Elevator Stories & Mini Painting – Gen Con 2009
by Chris Hussey
As we moved through the Con Hall on Thursday, we tried to grab what we could that really caught our eye. One of those thing was mini painting. It’s been around for a few years, and basically allows people to sit down, grab a mini and some paint, go to town and take the finished mini away with them. One interesting item of note, about 90% of the people painting mini’s were female.
And of course, Gen Con wouldn’t be what it is without the gamers. And they are an interesting lot. We cornered some of them in the elevator as we rode up and down to our room.
August 14th, 2009 in
Blog Entries, Chris Hussey
The free painting table is a really cool idea. I have no artistic talent what so ever so mine would turn out very poorly, but I would do that.
I just did Paint and Take the first time today. This was my third-ever painted mini. The two folks to my sides were both pretty new to mini painting as well, on their second minis. I saw a lot of couples come and go, and a bunch of folks with kids giving it a shot. I’d buy that most people doing this aren’t heavy mini painters at home.
It’s also a great demonstration that you don’t need to spend a huge amount of time to paint a figure. It did take me an hour or so… and the output looks pretty good! Not competition quality, but better than prepainted figs, so I’ll probably be going home and doing more. It isn’t too hard to find an hour….
I went to a similar event at a Swedish con a few years ago, and realised I was completely horrible at painting… but it was very fun, and it somehow helped realise that it’s not so damn important to be good at painting… the guys demoing were horrible too :)
All in all, it’s just an awesome thing to do on a con, since painting is (I’ve realised since) more than half the fun of miniature gaming ;)