Should You Fail, Destroy All Evidence

Well, the better artist won today, and that wasn't me. We started the competition at 1pm, 5 competitiors, the pieces were chaos knights. It was very quiet the whole time, only the rough scraping of brush on model breaking the tension. In the end, a gentleman whose name escapes me emerged victorious. His piece was the green knight. I placed about 4th. I was very defeated by my friends Zach and Josh.

I want to mention how well these gentlmen all competed, they created simple yet elegant entries and earned their places as superior painters. The subjects were definitely a challenge, namely the fact that they were essentially two models to paint in 4 hours. None of us had ever really painted them either, which I feel was very fair.

My impressions and feelings; I didn't like losing! There, I said it. I did bitch after the contest, and I was the only one complaining. I always espouse an attitude of "If you do not win, the only way you truly fail is to not learn from the experience". But I felt I had invested alot into this competition and I was defeated. Looking back, I regret my actions after we wrapped and were graded, what with all the sour grapes talk on my part. I will not allow this to color my attitude from now on, and I learned some valuable lessons, especially about some egregious mistakes I made in painting my submission.

Rule #1-(and this should apply to all things in life) Keep it simple stupid! Don't go crazy building a wild-ass design with poorly matched colors.

Rule #2- Metallics are an accent, not a paint scheme. If you have more time for metallics to be taken to a quality extent, go for it. Otherwise, refer to rule #1.

Rule #3- Be efficient. Take the time to be careful on the delicate stuff, but haste is a virtue in timed competition.