The Little World

Never mind the Isle Of The Damned or the Isle Of The Doomed – they are just comic book fiction. We have a real Aisle Of The Darned at my local hobby shop. From the start of it to the end, it is shelf after shelf of paint. No-one I know has ever successfully traversed the length of it without suffering – I know I have tried every thing I could think of; horse blinkers, toothache, and a picture of Golda Meir in fishnet stockings…nothing has ever been able to keep me from looking at the paints.

It was bad when there were 6 different systems on display. Now they have added two more, and the toll it is bound to take on the mental health of the Little World is too terrible to contemplate. We used to be suspended in chains between lacquer, acrylic, and enamel, and could writhe and twist in torment on a decent basis. Now we have nationalism added  – one of the new makers of paint is Australian and tells us about it. It is like looking at a Dick Smith advert but instead of peanut paste we are being dunned to buy Flat Red.

The terrible thing is each new system is a system…not just a jar of paint. Each of them has sets of military and space cadet and airplane colours – each of them has a finishing system that has proprietary thinners, flatteners, glossers, brush cleaners, and retarders. One painting system even has salad dressing and a rather nice perfume for cats. It is as if the mad scientists who used to make nerve gas have converted to model car paint.

I’ve never painted with nerve gas, but I believe it dries to a rather good satin finish.

I bought two cans of spray paint today – though there was no need to. I have a couple of airbrushes. But I wanted to make sure I was not missing out on the final satin or gloss finish for my models and I doubted my equipment. I sort of hope it will be outrageously better and sort of hope that it will be worse…and then I can say I was right enough the first time. It’s a lot like marriage, but without the in-laws.