As I started to work with Bromance paintings I felt that I had done my share of scale models for a while. I had been building them since 2011 and I realized they were getting more and more laborious. Working with paper has its advantages, but after years its disadvantages became more apparent. Some material, like water are almost impossible to create and to be able light the model properly was often difficult.

During my MA-studies I took 3D modelling course, at the time we were using software called Maya. I was already then planning to use images created with Maya as a starting point for my paintings. For various reasons it never happened.

When I was wrestling with my thoughts how to start Bromance paintings I downloaded Blender, which is another 3D software. I had briefly tried it few years ago, but it felt clumsy in comparison to Maya. Now I decided to learn to use it as I could not afford to buy Maya and Blender is open source software and free.

After completing classic donut & coffee mug tutorial I felt semi-confident to start to work with it. Of course it was a struggle, but slowly I started to get hang of it.

The very first model that I would use for the painting titled Dam came together quite quickly. Naturally I re-built the model few times, but in every instance it looked bit better.

What makes Blender so good for my purposes is that it is easy to take steps back if I am not happy with something. I can also ignore the laws of physics and copy objects with one keystroke. To make a tree out paper takes at least a day. With Blender it takes half of it. And if I want to make a forest I would need to spend two to three weeks working with each tree. With Blender I can copy one tree, as many time as I wish and just remodel them and as if by magic I can have a forest in less than a day. Of course my trees are not realistic as in video games or animations, but realistic enough for a painting.

But to be frank, Blender is very complicated software and it takes years to learn to use most of its features fluently. I still feel very much as a apprentice with it.