Jeremie and Laszlo's painting DVDs. Any good?

[Mr. Green]

i eHi everyone,

 

I'd like to your opinions on Jeremie's 'Painting Miniature" and Lszlo's 'Hot Lead DVDs. I'm thinking of buying them, but I'd thought I'd get some idea of what they're like firts.

 

I like to see how people paint rather than read about it , so I'm thinking a DVD would be good. Does anyone have any recommendations?

 

 

Of course, Istill wainting for Anne's book but I'm hoping a DVD will tide me over till then.

 

Many thanks,

MG

 

Please excuse the spelling, but I was typing blind. For some reason the post options covered the text box and couldn't see what I was writing.

[Flit]

I haven't seen Jeremie's DVD (is it in French or English), but I do have the Hot Lead DVDs. I haven't watched all of them yet, but what I have seen so far is good. He takes you all the way from preping the mini to getting it painted. Shows the tools he uses and where to get them.

 

Thumbs up from me.

[Inarah]

I have Jeremie's DVD and found it to be very good, but a little hard to understand the accent at times.

 

I believe snippets of both can be found on YouTube, if you want a peek.

[Ishil]

I bought Jeremie's DVD, and it's very good. It has a lot on it, though note that it only teaches his painting style, and different people paint in different ways.

 

Ishil

[Dr.Bedlam]

I can pretty much second what I've seen said here.

 

Jeremie's a fantastic painter, but you have to be able to watch what he's doing, and, more importantly, understand his methodology; he's taken the art to the next level, and he blends technique and theory as he goes, assuming that you already know the basics and can understand what he is doing and saying with a very thick French accent which in my case makes the DVD useful; when I sat in on his class at ReaperCon last year, my mind was running about a second and a half behind his hands, because I was having to stop and translate everything he was saying, mentally.

 

Because of all this, Jeremie's stuff is best for the advanced student. If I did not already know what I was doing (and if I did not know anything about basic art, light, and color theory), I would have been hopelessly lost in Jeremie's class.

 

The Hot Lead DVDs, on the other hand, are considerably more accessible to the beginner and to the American, due to Laszlo's lack of a French accent and the fact that he takes you through stages and techniques separately; his approach is more layered and aimed at specific levels of content, rather than Jeremie's "this is how I do it" approach. Laszlo also addresses the art basics you'd need to get a grip on what Jeremie is doing. This is not to say that Laszlo's stuff is less valuable than Jeremie's -- his advanced stuff is brilliant, and I learned a lot.

 

I guess what I'd say is that Jeremie's DVD does not have much of a beginners section. Nevertheless, both are very good, and I recommend them.

[Mercius]

I have both dvds and they are both great. Like Dr. Bedlam said Laszlo's dvds take you from the basic beginner steps of miniature painting and prep and all the way to very advanced techniques, while Jeremie's dvds are very much a dvd of how he paints at the level he paints at. Both are useful for very different reasons. I found the beginner stuff in Hot Lead more useful to me than Laszlo's advanced techniques, because there is a lot of wet blending and it is not a technique that I tend to use much. Not saying it is not useful, just not my style. Jeremie's dvds deal with glazing and washing more, which is how I paint, so watching a pro like him work his magic was very helpful for me to pick up some finer techniques in a style of painting I already use. In the end I think both are worth the money, Hot Lead is more geared toward the American style of painting and has much more tutorials across all levels of skill, while Jeremie's are more geared toward painters who have a grasp on color theory, mixing paints, and more basic painting techniques.

[Wren]

There's an additional option by Miniature Mentor. You can read a review of the product from another forum. I think Jeremie and Lazlo are great teachers, just wanted to let you know about the other option in case you wanted even more video teaching.

[Serenity]

On a related topic, there was an announcement of another video on CMON recently, available at Gen Con Indy and then at CMON afterwards. Four discs and thirty hours of actual demonstrated painting for about $50. It looks like basic techniques will be covered on the first two discs and then an extended complete example follows on the next two discs.

 

Painting Secrets with Natalya

[Dr.Bedlam]

^{Jeremie also has quite a few vids on YouTube.}

[Kang]

Mr. Green, are you using ie6? I have the same problem (been like that ever since the forums got upgraded a few months back), so I type all my posts in Notepad then paste them into the forum, if that helps. For replies I have to hold down shift and use arrow-keys/end/home/PgUp/PgDn, etc. to copy the reply first and paste that into Notepad before I edit the quote (if at all) and start typing. It's a pain in the you-know-what, but it beats typing blind.

 

Anyhow, I own the Hot Lead DVD set and it's awesome. I don't know what level you painting is at, but I think these DVD's could be very useful to any mini-painter whether they're a beginner, intermediate, or advanced. I consider my stuff to be somewhere in the intermediate range, so I can't say for sure how sueful it is for really advanced painters, but plenty of them have said they really like them too from what I've read.

 

I have only seen clips of the other disc(/set?) on Youtube, but it looks good too. I don't know if it is as friendly to newer painters as LJ's discs (other posters here seem to be suggesting it isn't, though that doesn't mean it wouldn't be useful - some painters might have to work their way up to it, is all), but I think there is a lot of really amazing stuff to learn from that one. If you can afford both, I doubt you'd regret picking them up.

 

About Natalya's video mentioned on CMoN: Is that the one I read about where she paints a whole mini for the camera from start to finish and you get to watch it at double-speed? Sounds interesting, though I don't recall what else it entails as I read about it only in passing before the weekend, and it was quite a weekend... Her minis look great though.

 

I think I'm going to hold out until I see something come out in HD (maybe someone already has?) before I buy anymore painting videos though. I still haven't really tried out all the techniques I learned about from the Hot Lead DVD's, so there's no rush as far as I'm concerned. Not suggesting DVD quality isn't good enough to see what is happening on Hot Lead etc. or anything though.

 

Hope this helps,

 

Kang

[vutpakdi]

I like the Miniature Mentor videos. They are generally well done. I suggest avoiding the subscription plan though since the release schedule is sporadic at best.

 

Ron

[Mercius]

I can say that since watching Jeremie's dvds my painting has gone to a higher level, but this is due in part to the fact that my painting style is similar to his and I use the same techniques he does. He really does not cover a lot of basics in the dvds though which is where others will shine brighter. I personally have been nothing but thrilled with both Hot Lead and JBT's dvds. I can't comment on Miniature Mentor as I have never seen them.

[KNWahl]

I don't have them, but the Hot lead Videos look amazing. You can see previews on YouTube

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