Hello Steemit,
Pretty stoked to be here with you and be able to share my passion.
First things first, my name is José and I´m an artist from beautiful Costa Rica, specializing in miniature art. That means, I paint, sculpt and make dioaramas at a small scale, which is rather convenient because I live in a really small flat.
Art and games, have always been intertwined in my life from a small age; as I grew older I would try my hand at different things like music, graffiti, skating, painting, drawing, scale models, writings, LEGO and tabletop games. After trying so many different things I finally found the one place where I thought I fit in and thouroughly enjoyed the whole.
So what do I do? Well I create art in small scale and have fun while doing so, some pieces can be played with, others not really, however, they all get my full attention from the moment where I start visualizing the piece on my head all the way to the end.
Is that all? Not by a long shot, I´ve also decided to share my knowledge with other people so I created a group here in Costa Rica called "Pintando Minis" (painting miniatures), which is a community for miniature painters where we can share our work and help out each other, but most importantly, we provide free monthly classes to anyone who wants to start in this. So far, with got over 300 people (250 costaricans and 50 from outside), and it's an interesting mix of artists, gamers, painters, sculpters, LEGO Lovers, geeks and just passionate people.
A couple of years ago I started competing in the local IPMS competition, showcasing my works and garnering a lot of good feedback so after making good friends over there, I was asked to joined them this past January and take my work to Guatemala. Back in Costa Rica, I was asked by the guys to show them how to paint figures, so this year I have another round of workshops to provide on a monthly basis to history buffs.
Not being one to sit iddle, I started working with my good friend Errol Ramírez last year and we´ve launched the Red Beard brand producing first scenery and accesories, but with our sights set in making figures soon.
What's next? Well, I´m now working on sculpting a new range of figures for Red Beard as well as using the scenery that we´ve put out, to create small vignettes which showcase the life in Costa Rica (see not everything is for playing). After that, I´d like to put out my own signature brand for historical costarican figures, which should do a service for remembering the great people that built this country and by teaching people a bit about their history.
So thanks for the attention, I´ll promise to keep working on exciting stuff to share with you.!
