Interview with Vincenzo Celeste from MiniaturesDen

Hi Students!

This week we bring to you a new and very interesting article. As you know Alfonso (aka Banshee) has an exclusive private coaching pledge called “Become a Pro” oriented to talented painters who want to improve their skills.

We want to give you a better chance to know more about the artists in this pledge, like Will Hahn (here the article) and Vincenzo knowned by his Twitch channel called “Miniatures Den”.

– I’m from Genoa, Italy and I’m 29 years old. I’ve been painting miniatures for a bit less than 3 years

– I like videogames. Back when I was younger I was into competitive games such as League of Legends and Battlefield, now that I’m older I enjoy single player games more, especially Roguelites.

– My favourite movie of all time is Sign. It’s not an incredible movie per se, but I find the message of it to be very inspiring to me. As a book, I’d suggest “Twelve Rules” from Jordan Peterson and, as a song, I’d say Sound of Silence, the original version.

– I started the hobby at the end of 2017, I painted for about a month before stopping and going back to it in mid 2018.

– I started the hobby with Warhammer Age of Sigmar, especially Underworlds. I think it’s still the best boardgame GW has ever done. Unfortunately I don’t play it anymore because the community in my area died out and there’s not many people to play with.

– Well, besides Alfonso, my favourite painters are Marc Masclans and Kirill Kanaev, when it comes to minipainting. I also love a lot of 2D artists and often look at their work for inspiration.

– I don’t really have a favourite brand. My recipes are always changing and I try to use as many different colors as possible to learn them and master them. At the moment I’m using Kimera, AK 3rd Gen and Reaper a lot. My favourite brushes are Roubloff 1010 and Tintoretto Serie 37.

– I’m still evolving as a painter and looking to improve myself, so, hopefully, my last paintjob is always my best paintjob yet, at least when it comes to technical execution. I’m particularly fond of the Witchhorn paintjob I did a while ago, mostly because I think I found a great way to portray the pitch black cloth using Black 3.0.

– Pretty much the same, the pandemic hasn’t affected me much. I’ve always been a bit of a recluse and since I started minipainting I focussed on it as much as possible.

– Mostly to get feedback and, hopefully, have a bit of support in my work. Back when I started there weren’t many painters willing to give feedback so I wasn’t sure what to do with my painting. I started streaming in the hope of having the community help me out in my decisions and in figuring out what was wrong with my painting. Even after all this time they’re still an invaluable part of my painting process, as they’re always giving me great ideas and opinions on my paintjobs.

– There’s too many to count. My stream is a painting stream but we also talk very often about other topics, and often our discussions end in very funny moments. For example we wondered what would happen to someone exposing their butt to space and fart…

– To be themselves and not invest too much money in it, when it comes to equipment. Most people will encourage others to stream, because it’s the “nice” thing to say. I want to be honest with people. Streaming is a lot harder than it looks and it’s always a good idea to see if it works for yourself before investing into expensive equipment. I used a very bad camera for 7 months before upgrading it.

– I think the Italian painting community relies too much of key figures to “work”. I’ve been noticing that often, especially from less known painter, there is more effort into “being noticed” by the famous painters than actually working hard on improving their work. I think suggestions, feedback and input from great painters is always an amazing thing to get, but it’s also important to walk on your own legs and create your own style, without depending on others to achieve “success”.

– My biggest goal is to be a worldclass painter and teacher. I know it’s gonna be almost impossible to reach, but I want to leave a mark in the world of minipainting even after I’m gone. I would like to build something that can last in time.

– Because Alfonso is, in my opinion, very similar to me. We see things in a very passionate and honest way and neither of us is interested into forcing our stylistic choices on the people around us, but rather are more interested into expanding a philosophy which can help all painters, of all styles, to improve and enjoy this hobby more.
I think that I have a lot to learn from Alfonso, both as a painter but also as a human trying to make sense of this world, even when everything seems against me.

– So far it’s been great. Alfonso pointed some interesting aspects of my painting which have given me a lot to think about and apply. I think it’s been a very helpful experience.

– Make a wet palette and learn to mix as soon as possible. Not because it will save you money from buying lots of different paints, but because it will enable you to understand color and value on a more personal way, rather than just following along some recipe found on line.

– My projects for the near future are to keep working on my commissions as well as start my competition pieces for Monte San Savino and SMC.