Dogma 48 event

In august I attended the Dogma 48 event held by a wonderful group of Danish painters. A meeting where you bring a project that you want to do for a painting competition. You get 48 hours to complete it and that is the challenge of the event.

I started my day traveling from Sweden very early on Friday 05.20 and this set my sleeping rhythm for the rest of the trip, I was usually the first to be tired and first to wake up and well wake the others 🙂

But now I am getting ahead of myself. Before boarding the train i got to see some posters of fantastic paintings that was hanging in the train station.

On the way down I am unsure of what to expect but very exited to be going there. On arriving around 12 I meet up with Tue and later Bo that guides me around Copenhagen after I have left my bags at the studio.

We go to different shops in Copenhagen like Faraos and GW store and also we where going to a paint store where they sold a special mix that they thought that I should get, very sadly the place had closed down and the mix they made are now not available.

Instead we had some beer and cider at a local board game bar, just a fantastic place and a wonderful time talking and discussing different things. (no Bo wasn’t always surfing internet 🙂  )

Now on to the event in itself, most of the participants arrive some time before 19.00

Tue announced at 19.00 that you are allowed to start your project and the countdown is on,  I had kind of a clear vision on what i should do when I started, i have two bust that was exactly the same and had material to put them into frames as photo. I had thought to paint one good and one evil or use winter and autum theme on them.

But here it all changed due to the fantastic thing dogma 48 is, it is a collaboration from all people present to help each other to do the best that you can during the short period that you have. I had prepared the figures and was trying them out on my frames when Tue comes by and says “they should fit better if you cut away the backside of the figure”. I fast decided to trust his advice and Tue helped out with the first cutting part, I think he enjoys the part about cutting other persons figure in two halves.

 

Now there was no turning back…after this I got into a conversation on my theme with some other of the people being there and it also ended up changing my vision, instead of the original version it became that I should do one young version and a older version of the same person, after she has lived a hard life.

This aspect of exchange of ideas is a really nice thing, sadly I think that this being my first year I was very centered at my own piece and next time I will give more time to help other people also, not that I didn’t help but my mind was very centered around my creation at the time.

I started to paint the figures one old and on young versionAlso other people where working on there projects, there was a lot of different projects from total kitbashing of 3 different models I think to make one model out of it. Some people doing some OSL pieces for the first time.

I think Dogma 48 brings out a wish to push forward but also encourage yourself to push your boundaries that you are comfortable with. It encourages you to go forward.

Tue was on this occasion not doing his own project but had decided that he will support all others with the project they where doing, a great idea and great help for others, I do think that after 48 hours Tue himself was quite tired in his mind due to all different questions that turned up due to the very different projects that people worked on.

I got stuck in how to paint one of the figure to look old and got a pointer to look into makeup and how they transform a young person into a older on, I set about to search internet and read up on what I had to do.

The picture below shows where I am a bit on the way, I have worked on the face and stomach to get an old look, the makeup pages did a lot for the final result and will be a resource in the future for other projects.

I think at this time I was starting to get a bit stressed since the 48 hours we had started with was ticking down and not so many hours left at this stage if I remember correctly.

Also to do this you get tired due to the fact that you are very concentrated for a long period of time and next year I will take short breaks more often to go out and just take a short walk, this to get away from the project but also to get some reflecting time. This time could also be used to check up on the other participants and how far they have gone and see if there is anything where one can help out and give pointers where needed.

In the end I finished my project with one hour to spare, yes there are more things I could do on the figures but I was very tired and the risk that I would mess something up or not finish what I did want to add/change in the hour that was left was to great so I decided that now it is finished.

Most people where finished with there project at this time but Bo and one more where still going at it, Bo definitely was stressed about his project and what he had envisioned. He did a kit bashing project for the first time and he wanted it to look like a Mexican wrestler build out of a robot kit and a car kits. Most of the time he spent building it and I think it was much harder then he expected from the beginning, pieces didn’t fit or didn’t work out as he had envisioned it. In the end he did finish it and as he said himself that it not his best piece, but definitely something that he is glad that he did and that he learned a lot by doing this. it didn’t turn out 100% to his vision but the result is still great and the will of Bo and help from others he finished it with 5 minutes to spare before Tue said that now time is up 48 hours have gone by. It is now 19.00 on Sunday.

It has now gone a lot of time since the event and I have come home, my son has been sick, I got sick after that and well I have worked and some time has gone bye. I had thought that I would write this much earlier but the energy hasn´t been here. But today I had inspiration and a will to do it 🙂

 

Dogma 48 first visit what did it mean for me:

  • I got to meet a lot of great and friendly people and a hospitality that i will not forget
  • The event really do encourage helping each other out with problems due to the short time span for finishing your project.
  • A great event and very fun challenge that I encourage all that can to do, just take the idea and do it with some of the people you paint whit.
  • I warmly recommend other people to go to this one of a kind event.

I will finish this post with some more pictures taken from the event, the neighborhood cat that wanted some attention and finally some pictures of other work from the Chromanaut crew that was standing in the studio.

1 Comment

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  1. Hi John! Thanks for the great report 🙂 I’m really happy that you enjoyed the workshop! And some great little pieces you got finished! It was good to see you step out of your comfort zone and try out something new.

    I won’t lie, I didn’t really like my stupid Mexican Wrestler Robot while I was working on it – the kits themselves were fighting me and didn’t want to stick together, and I got stressed out a lot about all the small things that just kept going wrong. But I powered through it, and I definitely learned some hard-won lessons 🙂

    I’m not that unhappy with the piece now – sometimes you just have to leave things and get back to them to see the merit!

    We’ll be doing another Dogma48 in February, so I hope to see you there, and bring the other Swedes 😉

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