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Michał Szymeczko, also known as Mihausz, is a miniature painter from Poland, specializing in showcase-level painting for competitions, companies, and collectors. He began painting Warhammer and Lord of the Rings miniatures in 2005, but his true journey commenced in 2017 with his first competition entry. Since then, his passion has continually grown, fueled by participation in international contests and a dedication to refining his style and skills. While not a full-time painter, Mihausz commits to painting daily for 4-8 hours, and sometimes even more. He is a big fan of the Studio XL v2 wet palette and the Reusable Membranes.
I think I have started as most of our generation of painters, with GW stuff. When I was 15 years old I found Lord of the Rings magazine with miniatures in my local newsstand. It was that time of my life when I was searching for some hobby that I could get into very deeply. First I started to play wargammes as LotR and later Warhammer 40k. At age 21 I left that hobby and focused on other stuff until reedition of my favouirite army- space wolves. I started to painting gamming commissions for friends. After few years I met a person who introduced me into professional showcase painting. It was Kaha Katarzyna Górska who taught me how to make first steps in some more artistic aspects of miniature painting. She also forced me to go to my first painting competition Hussar 2016.
Multiple layering and colorful textures.
Back in a days I was inspired by other painters but with a time my approach to painting evolved. Mostly because it is hard to paint unique projects when you are watching only miniatures on the Internet. I have started to search inspirations and references somewhere else. Firts it was classic fantasy artworks done by my favourite artist Julie Bell and Boris Vallejo, then I discover whole world of fantasy canvas painters. I have art albums from Paul Bonner, Patrick J. Jones as long as concept artbooks from games like Diablo, Warhammer, Magic the Gathering. Speaking of the last one, Jesper Ejsing is one of my biggest source of inspiration when working on fantasy creatures like dragons.
I have many! I love all my works but the one that is closest to me is Ylva Maiden of a Wolves boxart that I have painted for Limbo Miniatures. It is a piece that introduced me heavily into display and competition scene. Later I painted second version of Ylva in winter style. Even with a knowledge I had from first version I couldnt make it better than original. Or maybe it is just my distorted perspective because some of my friends thinks opposite. I definitely spend too much time watching my own works when painting them!
For sure it is working with multiple layers on a large surfaces. Such things as complicated muscle parts on a dragon where I can add details by myself like skin fracture, veins, scales, cracks are my favourite. Same is when Im painting fur. I prefer soft sculpted hair tufts instead of heavily and deep carved detail. It gives me more space to arrange direction of fur in my own way. Sometimes it is to represent some kind of movement of a character, otherwise to just add more details to “boring” part.
Color mixing, using lot of colors and being not afraid to test everything what is possible. Even if we mostly try to recreate worlds that doesn’t exist, we still should search for references or inspirations in real world. For example a dragon, most fantasy creature we can imagine. Compared to our world we can use knowledge of how to paint bat wings, elephant/rhino skin, snakes heads, lizard schemes to represent this creature. Internet is full of good examples of any textures. Most important think is just to know how to represent it with brushstrokes, sometimes stippling, layering, long strokes. Texture for me is most fastest part of a miniature that has to be painted.
Successful painting session. That feeling at the end of a day when Im doing step back to check it from a distance and seeing everything works exactly as I imagined before putting first brushstroke in the morning. Feeling when I know I didn’t waste my time and can move to next stage of project. I know that every mistake is a lesson and I spend as much time on my miniatures as they need but we all wants to see progress.
Sometimes it is an idea that requires a specific miniature, sometimes it is opposite and Im searching for a perfect color combination/idea for a sculpt I like. Most of a time I am regular miniature fan as we all are. So when I know what is going to be my next project Im searching for ideas on Google, artbooks, movies. Sometimes Im creating a folder of interesting photos and later trying to mashup few ideas into one project. Searching for perfect tones is also important at first stage of painting, right after building a base. We should think at the beginning if we are aiming into cold/hot enviroiment. What season of a year we would like to represent is also very crucial but it leads us into color analysis.
Just paint, there is no shortcut. You can attend to workshops, support patreons, and watch tutorials but if you want to become a better painter, there is no educational material that will teach you in few days how to paint NMM or fleshtones for example. Painting in any form, not only miniatures has so many aspects that I can truly say it is impossible to get 100% knowledge about everything. You can choose to focus only on painting faces or on creating nice storytelling pieces but if you want to create memorable pieces, you will need, at least, a good understanding of how to paint all elements of your miniatures. Face and eyes are the most important part of a miniature but if you don’t pay attention to all the details, you will lose that strong effect that your perfectly painted face made at earlier stages of painting.
Balancing the whole composition and picking right plinth for a piece. There is a huge difference between round and square bases. We should pick the right one for our project. Then build the whole composition around it, focusing on small details; like wind from movement in the sculpt which should be represented in any vegetation that we are putting on base. Even that’s not most important part of a miniature. A nicely done base increases value of whole work.
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