In the past it was very unlike me to start a model and leave it unfinished. These days it is par for the course, I have so much unfinished stuff it is hard to know where to start. I’m not entirely sure what brought this change about but I think a huge turning point was retirement. More time to model and browse for new stuff has tested my patience to a higher level and the desire to move on to other projects has simply gotten the better of me. With the lead up to Christmas and the excitement of lots more goodies due to arrive I thought I ought to at least make an effort to finish one or two things which have been around for far too long.
One such model was a 1/35th scale Soverign 2000 figure I had of a British Despatch Rider. The Figure was painted getting on for a year ago and the motorbike, a Tamiya BMW as I recall, was built and painted around the same time. There they both sat while I wondered what to do with them and then I completely forgot about them altogether. Until now.
To get it done I went for a simple base in the end. A bit of old plaster board for the back wall, a few plants for colour and a heap of rubble. All basic stuff. For the image on the wall I chose a religious theme having chosen to go with the Monte Cassino idea. The image is the one clever bit which I will share with you.
Firstly you print off a colour image and cut it out. Next decide where you want it to go, in this case on the plasterboard wall. Apply PVA glue to the plasterboard (it could be a stone, wood or anything you want it doesn’t have to be plasterboard) and stick the image face down and leave to dry. Once dry wet your finger and rub slowly and carefully. The back of the paper will be removed but the image will be stuck to the plasterboard looking like it was painted on. The downside is the image is reversed so if you must have it the right way round, words for example, then you need to flip them first before printing.
Photo’s of the finished model (eventually) appear below.
This weeks 28mm figure is from Hasslefree Miniatures and goes by the name of “Lt. Thoran”. Despite the fact I could have painted this pretty much how I wanted to I decided on a quick and rather dull grey. In my mind it felt more like a realistic colour to go for and besides I have so much to do right now that it seemed the best option at the time. That said it is a great little figure and one I will probably do again at some point and when I do I will go for a far more interesting finish.
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Steampunk
As mentioned above I have got a lot to do right now, not just from a modelling point of view but because of the time of the year as well. Christmas is a time for giving as we all know and this year I decided to push the boat out and give more to myself!
Now I am not entirely sure where the inspiration came from, my guess would be from images found on the “Pinterest” site, but I have been bitten by the “Steampunk” bug. This is very much a new genre for me but I love the Victorian era and a bit of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells’ “War of the Worlds” is right up my street. Some further online searching threw up a variety of figures and images which got my juices flowing and I promptly ordered a number of “Reaper”, “Dark Sword” and “Twisted” miniatures.
I think the appeal is in the detail of the figures, so much to pick out and paint and complete freedom of colour choice too. If I have a dilemma at all it will be how best to base them in terms of a setting. A small base will be easier but a little diorama offers more of a challenge. More research is needed I expect but no doubt I will get my head around it in due course. For now the orders need to arrive and as the “Twisted” figures are coming all the way from Australia I wont be starting anything this side of Christmas I expect.
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Tea In Bed
Now if there is one thing She Who Must Be Obeyed is good at it is sleeping. If it were an Olympic sport she could sleep for England and a Gold Medal would be as good as in the bag. I am always the first up in the morning and come the weekend when our daughter, She Who Thinks She Should Be Obeyed Also, doesn’t have school to go to I will always go down stairs, let the dog out and bring SWMBO a nice cup of tea in bed. Imagine my surprise therefore when Sunday just gone she was up earlier than me and brought me a cup of tea instead.
In an ideal world it would have been a moment to treasure but when she put the mug down on my bedside cupboard she caught my eye and winked. Only a small thing I know but I’ve never been more scared of a drink in all my life!
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Well It Made Me Laugh …
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This week TIM has been listening to …
“Atomic” by Blondie. Back in the day Debbie Harry was directly responsible for the huge increase in Kleenex sales to teenage boys.
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This week TIM has been watching …
“The Blues Brothers” starring John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd. A classic movie with a great sound track. Based on a true story!
This weeks post is the background to how “The Dragon Master” was built. Here is a little reminder of the finished Diorama.
For the most part it was a straight forward diorama, the key element being the textured wings. To start with though I will deal with the basics.
Both the dragon and the figure are both white metal items from Reaper. The figure goes by the name of “Trathus Varr”, a nice little wizard and an ideal choice for the model given the baby dragon perched like a parrot on his shoulder. The dragon is a “Temple Dragon” mounted on a pillar.
As the dragon was already on a pillar I decided on a sort of “Game of Thrones” type setting and so I cast a few pillars and arches using a “Hurst” mold which I had purchased a while ago but rarely used. The plaster absorbs watered down acrylics nicely and for the most part produced natural shading and highlights. The wizard was a straight forward paint job but he has a fair bit of detail and was fun to do. He was painted entirely in acrylics.
On to the dragon wings. This was not something I had ever done before so it was always going to be a bit of a risk but I had done a couple of small samples using Citadel Textured paints and could see no reason why it wouldn’t work. Alas it didn’t prove to be quite as straight forward as I had hoped.
Attempt No: 1
For my first attempt I painted the upper wings yellow, allowed it to dry and then applied a coat of “Citadel Mordant Earth” textured paint which was then left to fully dry over night. Come the following morning it was clear under a magnifying glass that the textured paint had shrunk but the lines revealing the yellow paint underneath were so fine they were barley visible with the naked eye. Nothing for it but to strip it down and start again!
Attempt No: 2
I concluded that I needed to put the textured paint on much thicker. After re-priming I once again undercoated with yellow and set about putting a thicker coat of “Mordant Earth” on a section of the wing rather than the whole lot. This time if it didn’t work out I would have less to clean up. We live and learn!
Left overnight to dry once again the result was an improvement but only in places. I wasn’t entirely sure why it hadn’t worked but concluded that the level of thickness might have been uneven and hence the patchy result. Nothing for it but to strip it down again and try something else.
Attempt No: 3
Third time lucky?
Not sure where I was going to go after this attempt but I decided to have one more shot at it.
Once again I undercoated in yellow only this time I put down a textured coat of “Citadel Martian Ironearth” first. I followed this immediately by putting “Mordant Earth” directly on top. This way I could be more certain mthat I had built up a decent and even thickness. Once again it was left to dry overnight.
Come the morning it was looking pretty good and I was pleased with the result. There was, however, a problem. As part of the shrinking some of the newly formed dragon scales had started to lift. Bollocks! I quickly mixed some diluted PVA and washed it over the top and much to my amazement it all settled down.
All in all I felt I had cracked it (please excuse the deliberate pun!). Here on it it was a case of repeating the process on the reminder of the upper wings and then again below. Relatively plane sailing after that. Finish painting the dragon, assemble the base, fill any gaps and apply highlights etc, etc. and then good to go.
Below are a few work in progress images taken in relation to Attempt No: 3 followed by a few more images of the completed diorama.
This week we have another Knuckleduster figure, Buffalo Bill Cody.
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Green Stuff World
This company make some great tools and various modelling bits and bobs and I have been pleased with things I have bought from them in the past. Having said that I had pretty much forgotten about their site until I was prompted to take another look at it the other day.
I am keen to try and do a few things with clear resin and was trying to check out products along with how best to work with the stuff. One internet search led to another and before I knew it I was on the Green Stuff World site. Seems they do some interesting UV resin which dries within a few seconds using a torch and appears simple enough to use as it is a one part product and not a two part one which cures after 24 hours or more.
Long story short I checked out a few YouTube video’s and decide to take the plunge and buy various bits. I am exited about using it but it will be a few weeks before the stuff arrives as it comes from Spain. Once I get a chance to check it out and experiment with it I will let you know how it goes.
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You know when you are getting old when …
… you are lying in bed and the wife says “make me scream with one finger” and the best you can come up with is to to poke her in the eye!
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Well It Made Me Laugh …
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This week TIM has been listening to …
“Every 1’s A Winner” by Hot Chocolate. Prompted by a TV advert I decided to get my Greatest Hits CD out and give it a dust and a play. Glad I did, it made for a nice change of mood.
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This week TIM has been watching …
“Nowhere Boy”, a great little film about the early days of John Lennon. Unrelated to the film “Backbeat” but a great prequel nonetheless.
You may recall that I mentioned in a previous post that I had an idea of how I might use my recently acquired Citadel Textured paints. Some interesting ideas were received in response to my invite to guess what I might be up to and they have given me some ideas for other things I might do further down the line. However, what you see here, which hopefully has come out OK in the images, is the use of these paints on the wings of the Dragon.
This week I will leave you with the end result and next week or the week after I will post a “Making Of” article for those of you who might be interested. For now though some photo’s of the completed diorama.
This week we have another Knuckleduster figure. The range is being added to all the time but sadly at a rate I cannot keep up with. Some of the latest figures are based on the spaghetti westerns with figures from the Clint Eastwood “Dollar” series and of course the “Good, The Bad and The Ugly”. They also have figures from the film “Once Upon A Time In the West” starring Henry Fonda and Charles Bronson, possibly the best film of the genre.
The figure we have here is based on the character Ramon Rojo from the film “A Fist Full of Dollars”
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Telford 2019
It was my intention to post a load of photo’s of Telford but as expected a week on and there are plenty of YouTube and Facebook posts now out there. The presentation of these is far better than I can deliver so if your interest extends beyond this post then just search under “IPMS Telford 2019” and a whole lot of goodies should come your way.
My personal favourite is linked below. The guys voice is a little irritating but 1 minute and 35 seconds in and you’ll understand why!
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Telford 2020
Telford 2019 has been and gone and it has already hit me that I must plan for next year. More than that I need to plan quickly for January 2020 and the Plymouth Club annual competition. Having entered what I consider some of my best work into the Telford competition these models must now be retired leaving me … bugger all for January! Quite how I am going to achieve this with so many others things going on right now I do not know but I will will revisit my retirement strategy to see what can be done!
The good news is I have identified figures/models for four of the six categories I am planning to enter and have an idea for the fifth. As some of these will result in Christmas presents I am going to have to wait a little longer before I can get started. It is too early to say for sure but I suspect these builds will be a key feature of my 2020 blog posts.
The good thing about next year is I will be able to look forward rather than backwards, something about 2020 vision!
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This Weeks Top Tip
Most women need a little reassurance so when she says “Oh, you want to see crazy?” Reassure her that you do not!
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Well It Made Me Laugh …
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This week TIM has been listening to …
The Rolling Stones and Brown Sugar. Hard to resist a bit of Mick and the boys.
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This week TIM has been watching …
“Taxi Driver” starring Robert De Niro.
A journey back in time when De Niro was cool and appeared in films like Godfather 2, Raging Bull, The Deer Hunter and Goodfellas. Sadly now he’s just a Focker.
In Wednesdays’s post I made reference to a bronze medal I won at Telford for a figure I had yet to post on my blog as I only just got it done in time for the show. To put matters right here is the figure along with a couple of photos.
The figure is a 28mm Reaper Dark Legends wizard that goes by the name of Tom Goldentome. A reasonable amount of freehand on this one which is why I thought I would stick my neck out and enter it in the “Fantasy Figure Under 60mm” category. Not much else to say other than it was painted entirely in acrylics
This weeks miniature is a 28mm figure from Gripping Beast and goes by the title of Ragnar Lothbrok, King of Norway and Sweden. I have done this figure a couple of times before but this time decided to do a winter version as the plan was to enter him at Telford. One of the trophies up for grabs was from IPMS Norway for the best model with a Norwegian theme so I figured why not?
More on Telford below but in the meanwhile a few snaps of good old Ragnar.
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Telford
I had hoped to put out a “live” post over the weekend direct from the Telford show. Those of you who are kind enough to follow this blog regularly, if for no other reason than you have nothing better to do, will know that I failed completely!
So why did you fail TIM? Well for starters another one of the guys dropped out at the last minute which left me and another Plymouth Club member Tim (yes really his name is Tim), with more to do than we had bargained for. No only did we have to pick up the surplus work of the third person between the two of us but we also felt it was incumbent upon us to drink for three people too. Sadly that is where all plans to post to the blog largely went out of the window!
I am still in catch up mode following the weekend so next week I will try to put a post together with a few photos and hopefully some links to sites which will have far better images than I have. Usually someone puts something up on YouTube and I am sure in a few days something will appear. Not putting too many photos up on the blog will also save me from using up my WordPress storage allowance which would be drained considerably by hundreds of photographs.
So what can I tell you now?
Well, for those of you not in the know Telford is the UK National Modelling Show and proudly claims to be the biggest show of its kind anywhere in the world. Is that true? Well in total there were 218 clubs present, 27 of which were from overseas and on top of that there were 168 Traders there too. If it isn’t the biggest then it would take some beating I reckon.
For only two of us we put on a decent display in support of our club and attracted a nice load of comments and general interest. The pair of us also managed to spend a small fortune but with a combination of Christmas coming up and the fact that neither of us gave a toss anyway meant this was not much of a problem. Besides, we had already come with a few raffle tickets to explain to our other halves that we hadn’t actually bought anything, we just got lucky in the raffle! How we expected to get away with that this year when we didn’t last time is anyone’s guess but women generally like a tryer so we were feeling confident. One of the reasons I like figures rather than big kits is at least I can smuggle most of my purchases in doors in my pockets.
Now as some of you know I have taken to entering a few things in show competitions. A degree of success, albeit confined to the South West region of England gave me a little confidence to enter the national competition. All in all I decided to enter eight models. Three in the Fantasy Figure category, two in Fantasy Diorama, one in Mounted Figures below 60mm, one in Vignette (up to six figures, no vehicles etc) and one in Single Figure below 60mm. To be honest I wasn’t expecting to achieve anything other than to learn what I needed to do to up my game. It came as a pleasant surprise to learn that I had done far better than I could possibly have dreamed of.
I’m not sure how I managed it but I got to walk away with three Bronze Medals, one Silver and one Gold! As an added bonus the Norwegian Model Club decided to award me a trophy for good old Ragnar (see above). I reckon they got wind of the fact that we are booked on a cruise to Norway next year for our holiday.
So what won what?
Bronze Medal
“What Was That?” came third (I decided to edit the title for the show!)
A Reaper Wizard I only finished just before the show came third and he will feature in Saturday’s post.
“Custer’s Last Stand” – A six figure vignette which I had done a very long time ago and have never put up on the blog as a post. The figures are 54mm and come from Andrea Miniatures.
National modelling competition etiquette dictates that all these models are now retired. This leaves me with quite a whole to fill. Alternatively I cannot see myself topping what I achieved this weekend so I might simply decide to retire myself too.
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This week TIM has been listening to …
Bruce Springsteen and “Born in the USA”. Not a major fan of Bruce but how can you not like this?
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This week TIM has been watching …
The End Of The F***king World (Series 1)
For those of you who do not know this is an 8 part Channel 4 TV series which originally aired a while ago but with the second series having just finished I finally latched on to it! Decided to binge watch it during the week and while I was away at Telford. I think it is one of those love it or hate it programs. Personally I absolutely loved it but my son hated it so clearly opinion is divided. I will start to binge the second series as soon as I can.
This week we have another 28mm miniature from Gripping Beast. This one goes by the name of “Gunnar” and is only available as a single figure by mail order, otherwise I think he is part of a pair. He comes with a couple of weapon options but as you can see from the images below I decided to go with a sword and a spear.
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Telford
The start of this week and the rest of it is essentially dedicated to me getting ready for Telford. We have four members of the Plymouth club attending and we have been allocated a total of 12 foot of space to display our models. One of the guys isn’t taking any models with him as he has onward plans after the two day event which leaves three of us four feet each to fill.
On the one hand it is nice to have a decent amount of space to call your own but on the other it is a lot of items to transport. This is particularly true for me where so much of my work these days is in 28mm scale. One way or another I have a lot to pack and to pack well if I want to avoid damaging anything. In fairness I don’t mind, for me at least it is the last show of the season.
One thing is for sure, very little else will get done on the modelling front so not quite sure how I will get a post ready for Saturday or for the following week when I get back. If time allows and I have sufficient WiFi access at the show and my hotel I might get out a couple of Telford progress posts over the weekend. So if you see a post on Saturday all well and good but if not I will try to pull my finger out for a mid-week one when I get back.
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I’m On The Case!
Now those of you who follow this blog will know that from time to time She Who Must Be Obeyed and I do not always see eye to eye. It will not surprise you that another old chestnut arose last week which became emotive. On this particular occasion I was, in no uncertain terms, being reminded that the thermostat in the guest bedroom was no longer working and needed to be replaced. Needless to say I wasn’t having any of it.
“When I say I will fix it I will fix it. I don’t need to be reminded every 3 months that it hasn’t been done!”
There are times when she can be so unreasonable.
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A Brush With Death
I saw this which was mildly amusing so I thought I would share it given our common interest in painting.
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Rermember …
With Christmas rapidly coming up I am sure a great many of us will have an extensive wish list of must have items to add to our existing and outstanding essential items from previous years. With this in mind it is worth reminding yourself that it cannot be classed as “hoarding” if your shit is cool!
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This week TIM has been listening to …
“The Jean Genie” by David Bowie. One of my favourite artists who alas is no longer with us.
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This week TIM has been watching …
Monty Python’s “The Life of Brian”.
It has been a good many years since I last watched this so I anticipated it being more than a little dated. To my pleasant surprise much of the humour remained just as funny to me now as it did back in the day. Just goes to show I haven’t matured!
Here we have a little vignette I put together of Brian Boru, First High King of The Irish, a legendary Irish Warlord – so says Gripping Beast who produced the miniature. Just a little figure I was rather taken with and for which I felt the pose warranted a little more attention than a simple 25mm round base.
As with all the Gripping Beast figures I have found to date they are nicely made and enjoyable to paint. Not a great deal to say on this one. Simple paint job on the figure and an opportunity to make another wire tree as I hadn’t done one in a little while.
The Imperfect Modeller 