Genesis

Hello Readers,

I have never done this, "blogged" I mean so please bear with me while I make a huge number of gaffs and generally buggar it up to buggary. 

(Please note all the pics in this intro have been pulled off the web, if they are yours please let me know and I will remove them).

My name is Lee, I have just turned 41 (eek), I live in Colchester, Essex with two mates and 4 bonkers cats. While I cannot draw or paint in two dimensions for toffee I have had numerous hobbies with an artistic bent in three dimensions pretty much all my life.

Mmmmm.....the first I suppose would be (showing my age) Dungeons & Dragons at about 13. While I hardly ever played the actual game (too long winded) I use to love reading the manuals.

For those who don't know it was basically World Of Warcraft when computers did naff all. You would choose a class of character be it fighter, elf, dwarf, wizard - or magic user as they were known - and many others and indeed others in between (elf/wizard etc). You would choose your alignment (stretching my memory here but good, neutral and evil were the main but there permutations within that too - Lawful Evil rings a bell). The stats (health, intelligence, wisdom etc) would be determined by rolls of one of many die (the plural of dice!) needed in the game (there were about 10 I think, all different shapes).

So you would have your players and one chump would elect to be the Dungeon Master. This is the guy who controls the game who needed to make a plan of what it was you were exploring (like a castle, or ruin or well...a dungeon) and draft a story. The players then plod about rolling the numerous die (the plural of dice remember) pretending to be the characters they were...and then arguing a lot about really pedantic points...hence while I didn't play it much. 

Monsters advance on the players..what will they do? Roll a D20...yawn!

My interest was really painting the figures. While there were numerous makes Citadel Miniatures where the mainstay and by far the best, made of what is now known as white metal (lead/tin alloy I think) they were beautifully sculpted and cast. A magazine came out for these uber nerds, White Dwarf (still going strong) which showed all the latest techniques on how to paint the little buggars. It also told us about new products....the main being Citadel paint and later on washes and inks used to create special effects in relation to artificial shadows and light...but more on that later. 

Looks like an Orc Thief - an odd combo to be sure! Noisy buggars they are....drooling everywhere.

 
As with all things interest in D & D waned and was replaced by Warhammer. Same sort of figures but the game is played in a different way, on a large board with chunks of figures being moved after measurements are taken with a ruler. 

Sunday Battle Reenactment - think of all that that horsey shite!

Think of a war film where the posh gits in the control room move representations of planes about with a stick and you get the picture. While the figures where essentially the same it meant painting numerous ones of the same....over and over and over again, very boring from a painting perspective and liked the game the game even less than D & D. 

While this is still played, it was superseded by Warhammer 40k, much the same thing really but set in the future so swaps swords for guns etc....I was even less interested in this.

Space Marines and a tank...thingy...that's cheating!

So....times moves on and I moved more into the realm of science fiction being a big fan of Star Wars/Star Tek et all...but the only modelling really was odd AMT/ERTL kit. Now these are things I am not very good at, I get glue everywhere and to be honest I find these sorts of things a complete pain in the arse to paint. Moreover, there is not really a great deal I find you can you add your own flair....artificial light and shadow don't really apply to these sorts of things very much but it did lead me on to something much more interesting.

USS Enterprise E - you sexy beast you!

While you can no longer seem to buy them there was huge range and sub-culture for models of characters from film, TV, horror and sci-fi. Generally available in either 1/6 & 1/8 scale, made of resin or vinyl one could barely call them model kits. Large pieces that usually only perhaps needed the arms and legs sticking on and the smallest amount of filler or preparation. 

Sir Pin of Head of the Wilmington Cenobites - and a weird Japense girly thing...no idea why that's there.

The art & skill however was all in the painting, using techniques such as drybrushing, washes, blending, powder brushing, under brushing, wet brushing all to create effect/dirt/light/shadow. These techniques are still used to great success by all sorts of modellers with an emphasis on the guys that create military master pieces. Try our friend Google and you will see numerous examples of this.

"I have such sights to show you....on your left you will see Wilmington Gentlemen's club....now can anyone open this bloody thing, my packed lunch is inside it!"

While I never climbed to the top of the tree I was reasonably respected in this field, and had one or two magazine covers showing stuff I had done (alas now lost to the sands of time) but again.....time moves on, life gets in the way and these things are put aside.

 And I didn't do anything like this for years (the sci-fi stuff was my early 20s). Then I met my friend Matt. I knew he had an interest in trains but wasn't until he let me rummage through his cupboard to find all of the goodies he had collected that I realised how much. I had wondered though why he had all these bits and pieces but nothing actually like a working layout, despite numerous scratch built items and a loco kit he designed himself (Merseyside Class 502...more about that later) all made to the highest level of precision I had seen. Simple answer and I think common to many folk with an engineering interest was he didn't like painting them.

Hello Ying meet Yang!