Category: Painting
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The Anti- Camo Stand
If, like me, you like to build model aircraft – and if, like me, you like bright colours… Join the Western Front club. They concentrate themselves upon WW1 subjects and, while the allied planes may be a bit formulaic or muted, the German ones can give you all the colour you want. I concentrate on…
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The Courage To Brush
I once lacked the courage to brush. It was in my early days as a scale modeller – before I popped the top on my first bottle of Revell paint and recoilled from the heady fumes. I was frightened to lay brush to plastic for fear of spoiling the model. The phase didn’t last long…
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The Swedish Curse
Cold winters. Long nights. Trapped in the hangar with nothing to do. Add an active crew in the paint shop and an account down the local Bunnings paint department… And there you go. Camouflage schemes that involve 45 different colours with hard lines and geometric angles. And every modeller who wants a Viggen or a…
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Portion Control
That wonderful catering phrase that means keeping serving sizes down to boost profits. Less jam and more return. I also wonder if it is practised in the scale model supply business – particularly with model paints. I use the Big Two Japanese brands of alcohol and spirit-based acrylic paints- the ones in the round jars…
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The Bird
In this case, I believe, a Puffin. I was delighted to see that someone entered a model of this bird in the WASMex competition this year. A recent video we made mentioned the kits that were once produced of North American songbirds and asked where they had got to. Perhaps the idea has never gone…
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The Dorchester
When You Take The Office With You This model of the AEC command vehicle nicknamed the Dorchester was one of the highlights for me at the recent WASMex exhibition. I think the appeal was the fact that the modeller left the roof off and super-detailled the interior. I cannot tell from my photo whether the…
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” I’m Just Going To Buy A Paintbrush “
I won’t be in the hobby shop long. I won’t look at any new kits. Or tools. Or range of paints. Or die-cast models. I won’t spend much money. I don’t really need anything. I’ll only browse. Just window shopping. Home in fifteen minutes. You’ll never guess what happened…
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The Puppy And The Old Dog
Makes you nostalgic, eh? We start with such high hopes and so much precision. then we encounter The Kit From Hell and the bottle of nuclear waste thinner and it all goes wrong. As the years go by the mat gets punished for our sins but the models get better. We watch as markings disappear…
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If I Can See It
You win. If the enemy can see it – you lose. Basic rule of camouflage. And it is also a principle to remember when building a scale model for display – especially for public exhibition. If you want ’em to look, attract their eye. This is a challenge for the modeller who is depicting a…
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Soviet Hound – Part Three – Delicacy Rears its Ugly Head
Or is it a frugal conscience? Or just inability to mix paint right? I wondered this as I inspected the Mil 4 model this week after spraying the grey undercoat. I had run out of Base White 1000 – my preferred undercoat for models that are going to be white or yellow – and was…
