Intimidated by a Slip of a Girl.

This is Marike Reimer. You can find her website here, and I urge you to check her out (her work, guys!)

She will be one of my teachers at this years GenCon Indy. For the second year in a row I am forgoing playing anything (I know, it's a game con) in favor of shelling out moderate amounts of cash in an effort to improve my painting skills. With the help of Marike and Zach Lanier (who I took a course with last year and who had at that time earned 14 Golden Demons, with 11 being Gold or Silver. I actually got to hold his Commissar Yarrick. I'll wait for the childish titters to cease before I continue.), and others of their ilk I hope to raise myself up from local acclaim to maybe regionally acknowledged. Eventually I'd even like to teach these classes myself. I'd also like to be served bloody Prime Rib by my Victoria's Secret harem girls. I believe in dreaming big.

But here's my big dilemma. Marike won some pretty big trophies in the P3 Masterclass competition in 2008, and in her interview in No Quarter Magazine (yes, she has been INTERVIEWED by a gaming mag that I read.), she proclaimed that she'd been painting for (wait for it).... SIX YEARS.

Tomorrow I turn 42. I started painting in junior high. That means I have been painting minis longer than she has been alive (or pretty darned close). Yet while I'm good, I'm not even within shouting-with-a-bullhorn distance of her skills. So yeah, I'm a little intimidated. Okay, I'm a lot intimidated.

But I'm not scared. If anything this churning in my guts is making me want to chain myself to that table until she takes one of MY classes (while my lovely lingerie models rub my shoulders and bring me dewy tall glasses of lemonade freshly squeezed from between their all-natural bosoms of ampleness +5. Again, I dream big. Sue me.)

So next Wednesday I'll load up a couple of works-in-progress and hit the highway to Indy. It could be the most important and meaningful trip of my life. Or it could be another 4 days of the best non-gaming in the mid-west. Whatever happens, I'm gonna stare that pretty little gal in the eye and freehand my ass off.

Excelsior!