DVD Review - Painting Secrets with Natalya

Lucky me had the chance to get my hands on some painting DVDs for this weekend and spend some hours watching and enduring some of the stuff I saw there :)  I will start with the "Painting Secrets with Natalya" DVD set from CMON. The set was published 2011 contains of 4 DVDs and says about itself that it contains over 13-15 hours of instruction depending if you believe the printed cover or the product description. You can divide the set into roughly 5 chapters where Natalya tells you how she paints her miniatures. If you wonder who she is, maybe you know her from her artists name Alexi-Z or go visit her page now. Since Natalya speaks russian, the DVD is either in russian or in english (with voice over on the portrait parts). The painting footage is dubbed with music.

I like her work and after seeing the trailer of this set I was really curious how this set would turn out.

If you missed the trailer you can watch it here in all its beauty:

So lets break this thing down. I think you can divide it into some rough chapters without going tooo much into detail. A pretty good idea so we will start with *drum roll*...

Chapter 1 - Getting ready:

The first chapter starts with a short introduction of Natalya. At this stage she says one sentence you will remember at the end (not original quote): "After watching this you won't paint like Natalya but you see how I do it and hopefully it will help you improve painting". She then goes over explaining which tools, brushes, primers, basing materials and paints she uses.

Chapter 2 - Preparation:

Chapter 2 talks about cleaning, priming, pinning and the general preparation of a miniature. In the first part the miniature is freed of mold lines and is prepared for pinning. Natalya then shows how she uses modelling putty to prepare the surface of the miniature. If the video is sped up, you see it by a "2x" logo in the video. That seems to be the fastest it gets accelerated therefore you can watch looooong periods of greenstuff or pinning work without even some comment. 

At around timemark 42 min she starts priming the miniature. 

Chapter 3 - Basic painting: 

This part starts with a basic coloring example of dwarf skin. Although it is titled "basic painting" it is nowhere near a beginners advice how to do that. The skin color is mixed, layered and blended directly on the miniature. The explanations somehow is a bit funny "in the shades I use darker brown" "on the highlights I use lighter color". Who would have thought of THAT!

After 45 minutes of applying the base skin tone, the miniature is switched (a female miniature) and again the skin is painted. This lasts about 60 minutes until she then starts to paint the leather boots and accessoires! Yes it is really impressive how the skin looks after this period of time especially when you think that she started with a dark brown and now is on a pretty light skin tone but well...

After another hour we go a bit more into the details. Painting of the hair! And of the cloak. Cheerio! You can watch it again for around an hour, speed it up or just switch to the next chapter...

Meanwhile another teaser to ease up the wall of text:

Chapter 4 - Painting Faces, NMM, Freehands

Again two miniatures are used as example for painting faces. The already known dwarf and a female miniature. For me the dwarf part is not really interesting. The part where she paints the female face is pretty nice because she explains why she does this and that coloring. And the brushwork is absolutely insane! 

After 45 minutes the NMM part starts. It shows metallic and gold NMM and was the first thing in this set that helped me understand the principal theory behind NMM a bit better.

The freehands sadly come later in the next chapter. But until now this was the best chapter so far.

Chapter 5 - Watch me painting a complete figure

Yep you can trust your eyes. We can now watch Natalya paint a complete miniature! Or we can hit the fast forward and save us nearly 6 hours of "I paint teclis" footage. If this should be an instruction video? Well I think we speak different languages here...

Conclusio

Perhaps you have already read it from my comments but am I "exited" about this DVD? Let me start with a quote from the set description:

Learn how to paint like an international winner! See every brush stroke, and fully understand by watching the complete process. You will never see another tutorial like this!

Learn how to paint like [...]: Let's see... NO! How if the basics are not explained and even the really expert stuff isn't. In my opinion you can learn more by watching Youtube tutorials...

See every brush stroke [...]: Aehm jep. Every stroke. For hours and hours until I fell asleep or find the 128x speed button on me remote... The set would be much better if the painting process would be accelerated by more than two times (and that not often enough).

You will never see another tutorial like this!: Right! Such crap is hardly to produce a second time. If you even could call it a tutorial.

Would I buy this DVD set? Definitely NO! I am really happy that I only borrowed it for watching. After some time the music really gets on your nerves, the 13 hours of "instruction" are only a bad joke and for improving there are way too few explanations how the stuff is done. The 50 bucks could be spent much better. Either for a nice dinner with your beloved one or for another DVD set of your choice. Perhaps I am a too bad painter to understand the Secrets of Natalya but (as much as I like the results of her work) I think the DVD is only to get some cash flowing...

If you wonder which DVD you should spend the money on, just wait a bit, I have something up my sleeve for you :)

Hope this was somewhat helpful for you. If you have a different opinion of if I have missed something, please state it in the comments.

So long,

Paradoxon

P.S.: Sorry for this massive wall of text. I first wanted to include some screencaps of the video but wasn't sure if I violate the copyrights. I think so: therefore no pictures. Instead I tried to work with the official video stuff from CMON...