Paint Club - Poor Y'all! (long post)

Aly's Fire Dragon

I have played my share of Role Playing Games (think: Dungeons & Dragons) over the years, but this year I have gotten really involved with one called Pathfinder: Rise of the Rune Lords. The players include my husband Rob, my 17 year old daughter Elle, Elle's boyfriend, and our best friends. We've been using little cardboard cutouts to represent where we are in a room, forest, wherever. I don't particularly like the cutouts and wanted to personalize my figure to better represent my character. Luckily, we live only 20 minutes from a company that manufactures figures for RPGs and has a retail store. Our friend Christina had even worked there! So off we went to Reaper Miniatures. Not only are the staff incredibly kind and helpful, (to the point of giving my four-year old, Aly, paints of her own, albeit used) they also have a Paint Club, led by one of the best painters in the industry, Anne Foerster. We came to Paint Club to paint our models, and Aly came along because all six of the adults were going and there was no one to watch her. It wasn't crowded, so we all got to work and she got to watch. We had only a few issues, and she admired the paints available to use and kept showing us her favorite colors.

Now, you need to know that Aly's favorite art medium in the world is paint. She got paints, nice brushes (for a four-year old) and a giant pad of paper for Christmas. But she saw us all painting figures and wanted to be just like the big people (it's hard to be four in a house of adults.) Reaper has a great line of plastic miniatures called Bones, so I let her pick one to paint. She chose the Fire Dragon. He's nice and big for a miniature, so I thought this would be great. So she and I went off to Paint Club yesterday.

Let's just say it didn't go well. Several of the people there thought it was incredibly adorable that a four-year old wanted to paint a figure. But Aly didn't want to just paint a figure. Being the chatty and opinionated child that she is, she wanted to talk to people and tell them what colors THEY should use. The casual painters didn't mind, and thought she was cute. But it really bothered the serious painters, to the point Anne had to say something to her. Anne was completely in line - Aly was interrupting people, and I was trying to fix a problem and hadn't realized how obnoxious she was being at that moment. So we packed up and went home.

Anyway, this is a very long post to apologize to everyone at Paint Club for her behavior and assure them that she isn't coming again until she learns some manners. I will be back whenever I can!