Apocalyptic Survivor

I've been busy bevering away on a couple of terrain related projects for the last little while, but I took a break and painted this figure last night. The figure is from Gripping Beasts MoFo Range, and is one of their Argentinian Commando's from the Falklands War.

As an aside you should check these figures out they are really good, and could easily be used for other things as they are reasonably generic in terms of clothing. As ably demonstrated by my version of the figure. As soon as I saw this figure I thought it screamed Apocalyptic/Zombie Survivor.

I painted up the jacket in blue as a civilian puffer jacket, the type which were popular in the 80's. As it happens I chose the colour as one of my enduring childhood memories is of my dad wearing one of these whilst doing DIY.

I wanted to make the figure look like he had scrounged up most of his kit, so old green trousers, good boots, civi watch cap. Some random belt kit and a simple rucksack. As these are designed with the 1980's in mind the figure is carrying an SLR, but I don't really see this as an issue and if anything adds to the survivor look.

I'm pretty chuffed with how this turned out all in all. Although I think the skin still needs a bit of work. And annoyingly my camera has washed out the jacket shading.

In other news I was in Hobby Craft getting some new paint brushes and stumbled across these 3inch wide, 5mm thick circular plywood basis. They come in a pack of 6 and I got them for £2.79 (if memory serves). I rekon they will make some nice bases for small tabletop dioramas and as bases for support weapons.

They appear to be from something called "Lara's Crafts", and other shapes, sizes were available. I found them amongst the dolls house stuff and presume they are for scratch building stuff. They work out at 46p a base, which is pretty good.

A Mile Stone

It was my wife and I's 5th wedding anniversary  today which is apparently the wood anniversary (or so my wife informed me) We popped out to a local craft center and whilst there picked up a rather nice wooden bowl which had been carved locally to commemorate our little mile stone.

On the way back home we popped into a local shop for a cup of tea and to say hello to my sister who works their on a Saturday. Whilst there we discovered they were selling dice. I found these rather nice wooden ones which, given the occasion, it seemed only right to buy. My hope is they bring me luck and fewer 1's in my games!

Below you will now find a picture of french mounted troops which is the property of Parragon publishing and I am posting so I can re-post elsewhere to discuss the origin of the rider with a fellow wargamer.

Wayland Yutani Thailand?

Well only a few weeks now and I'll be home, noticed this on the side of the building near work, presumably this is the Thailand office of Weyland Yutani!

News Flash

My blog will probably be quiet for a while (although I will update with some thing) as I have just secured a 3 month contract dealing with flood claims in Thailand based in Bangkok. This came out of the blue when another UK based 6 month contract ended and an old employer asked me to fly out to Thailand at the end of this week.

The money is insanely good and its a bit of an adventure as I haven't been to Thailand before. I won't however be doing much (if any) model painting over the next 3 months as I will be working 6 day weeks while I am away and wont really have time for much painting.

But when I get back my financial position will be waaaaay better so I will probably be topping up the lead pile over the next few months so I can get on with some serious painting on return.

In the interim I'll post snaps and anything interesting from my work abroad here.

Support Iron Sky

Just thought I would hop on my soap box this morning as I received an email advising me that the distributor (revolver) for this bloody funny looking film has decided that it will only be released in the UK for one day. This is obviously plainly stupid. The team that have produced the film are trying to get a wider and longer UK release and have setup a website to ask for the film to be released in your area.

Go here http://www.ironsky.net/site/support/how-to-support/ and sign up to show your support and get this film released to your area. I for one have signed up as me, my wife and Dad all want to go and see this and currently its not being released (it seems) in Aberdeen.

The Man Cave

Since I moved late last year I have not really had anywhere to paint, and my work space (real work that is) has been limited. Well that's all changed. For the last two weeks (not solidly off and on) my dad and I have been converting part of the houses loft into a home office and painting station for me, and another desk (not pictured) for the wife to use.

I'm seriously happy how this one to one modelling project turned out!

As I work from home I needed a proper home office space, so I have a 1.5 metre long stretch of desk along the back wall with my computer on it . To the left of that I have another 1 metre (or thereabouts) section of worktop with all my painting stuff set up and ready to go! I've even got some shelves under my desk for all my work reference material and  a good number of my modelling reference books (ospreys etc)

The art around my desk was painted for me by my wife over the last few years. The coat of arms (fictional) was painted and made up for me by my wife a couple of years ago and I thought I would share it. Sadly its one of the last things she painted for me as she is now suffering from a medical complaint which prevents her from completing such detailed painting.

The sharper eyed of you will probably also notice I'm using my Xbox 360 as a monitor stand. I bought a new computer monitor and needed it up a bit higher, and it turned out the xbox was the perfect height . I never used it anyway so no loss really.

Oh and most importantly of all there's plenty of room on my desk for a large Gin!

Hopefully I should now be able to get more painting done.

PVA GOLD!

I was in Hobbycraft with the wife today browsing around and found this. Now I usually get tubes of PVA glue about this size if not bigger from the craft section or from Homebase and it costs me £1.50 to £2 at most.  I could not believe that Gamesworkshop are so greedy to try and charge people £5.10 for PVA glue. Now maybe I'm wrong and this version of PVA has flecks of solid gold in it, but I doubt it. I hope no one has been daft enough to buy this.

In other news I have been building a small house using some textures and bits from Scalescenes. Its worked out pretty well given that I didn't work on it to hard as it was a test. Once its done I will pop some pictures up.

And so it begins

In September myself and some of the GWP chaps will be putting on a VBCW demo game. I am shamelessly hosting a map I need to post on the forum there, here. Cheery bye. 

I say where's my weekend gone?

Well thanks to mother nature dumping a gazillion tons of snow on the north of England and Scotland I found myself being called at home on Friday night and asked to go to Newcastle a mere 3 hours and 200 miles from the house to investigate some claims. Well I say some what I really mean is lots, in and around Newcastle on Saturday followed by more in Newcastle and then on the way home today.

It was a very long knackering weekend, having worked all week to then get tasked up the road to Newcastle quite late on Friday. Still pays the bills.

It was clear though (as can be seen in the picture) that Newcastle really has had some snow!

Down side was I didn't get to do the painting I wanted to do. On the upside it meant my wife couldn't force me to clean out the cupboard under the stairs, so not a total loss then.

The end is nigh!

Or rather my first holiday in 3 years is over. Just back from a nice 7 day break in a friends villa in Majorca, despite being the end of the season it was still very hot and my wife and I (despite slapping on quite a bit of factor 30) managed to burn ourselves a wee bit. While I was away I decided I wanted to start building some more scenery etc. This was sparked by picking up a model railway magazine and becoming fascinated by how detailed some of the layouts are. Also ordered 8 ww1 British Infantry from Musketeer Miniatures to flesh out my VBCW force a bit.

1:1 scale model

Well in an effort to relive my childhood I have spent the afternoon building a fort with my wife. She however insists on referring to it as "the chicken coop". Anyway a little shot of my work, the outer walls are large pallets dug into the ground supported by large posts sunk into the ground and held in place with postcrete. A very nice little diversion on a sunny afternoon.