NaMoPaiMo With Friends

       NaMoPaiMo is a community building event. It is a great way for people from all over the world to paint a model horse "together". In most years people will get together for painting parties. We are still not in one of those years though, so painting parties, like everything else, looks a little bit different. Last weekend I actually go to do some painting with a bunch of different people. 

Screenshot "borrowed" from Jennifer Buxton

     My friend Fabian held a painting party on Saturday. I checked the time, asked Google what time it was in Colorado, did some math (not hard, lol) and figured out when I needed to get online to join the Colorado painting party. Which is not something I would normally get to do, so that was definitely fun. 

      I also managed to make a lot of progress. I spent 2 hours visiting with friends, chatting a bit, and painting endless spots. 

    Barnaby is looking decent, sometimes, and from some angles, but I still have a long way to go. The good news is the reference is super spotted, so it is sort of hard to mess up, in some ways. 

     Sunday I had a smaller painting party with my friend Tamzyn. She just recently moved to Massachusetts and under normal circumstances we would have been able to get together for some painting time. She is probably only about an hour and a half from me (depending on traffic) which is not a bad drive at all. We have been chatting online for a couple of months now (maybe longer, I don't even know what day it is today) and our painting party on Sunday was the first time I have "met" her. I had a lot of fun!

     We started out on Google Meet and then the connection got lost and I could not get it back. We switched to Zoom and the connection went in and out a bit. But we hung out for about an hour and I painted a bunch more dapples. 

    I am thinking that maybe another hour will finish up this first, endless round of dapples and I can add some more shading. This is definitely a very involved pattern I chose to do this time around. But NaMoPaiMo is about stretching ourselves and trying new things. I have only ever done one other dappled gray before (a micro). And that was also the first time I did dapples. This time I went a whole different direction with dappling. I think it is working out fairly well. 

    I go back and forth on whether or not I like how this is turning out. Sometimes I think he looks great. Sometimes I think he looks like he has bits of white paint dabbed all over him (which, he does...). Sometimes I can sort of  "see" how he will turn out if I keep on going and trying some new things. Sometimes I go back to thinking that maybe he just looks like a horse with a bunch of white paint dabbed all over him. Either way, he is fun. Painting "with" friends has been a lot of fun. Maybe sometime soon I can put together a painting party. Painting with friends is definitely a lot more fun than painting alone.