Author: fetsmilner

As it’s the end of almost certainly the worst year in living memory (certainly in my living memory) for the people of the first world, it’s the usual time for reflecting on how things went and considering what they might be like in the next year. I suspect I’m not alone in hoping that 2021 is a marked improvement.

On the plus side, there’s the news that we have a number of viable vaccines being rolled out, and, with luck, the Tory government over here in the UK will discover that they’re not completely incompetent and corrupt, and we’ll actually get an effective rollout. I’m not holding my breath on that one. Over the last year, the government has shown that not only is it hideously corrupt (see: contracts for PPE) but also incompetent to a level that even a banana republic would find embarrassing (see: literally everything else). Someone more optimistic than me might hold onto the slimmest hope that this time the Tories won’t fuck it up.

What I am looking forward to is a gradual return to model shows. As it stands, Salute has not yet been cancelled, but I suspect that’s going to happen, as I can’t see a show of that scale going ahead in April, when the vaccination programme will presumably still be getting going. I believe the earliest show I have some confidence of being able to go ahead is Scale Model Challenge over in the Netherlands. That’s actually an excellent start for the show season to get started on – it’s a brilliant show that I thoroughly enjoy, and it should be a great way to kick it all back off.

That is, of course, assuming the UK isn’t still a pariah, given both the pandemic and Brexit. I am married to an EU citizen, though, so I might be able to smuggle myself in a suitcase or something.

Anyway, what has 2020 been like for my painting?

Initially, it was a bit of a write off. I didn’t have much of a routine, and all the disruption of moving to working from home sort of put me off for a while. On top of that, while I’m not terribly competitive, I do like to have shows as deadlines for my projects. With all the shows being cancelled left and right, my impetus sort of evaporated. It took quite a while to get back into the swing of things, and I had to make a concerted effort.

In the end, I actually ended up probably more productive than I have been for years. Not only that, but I think 2020 has been my most creative year. As you’ll see from my summary image, I managed quite a lot and across different genres and media. Pretty pleased, really:

Notably, I hardly did any of my original plan. Lady Gaga is still sitting undercoated and begging me to finish tidying the sculpt, I have an assembled bull, and I’m still putting off some of the other things that would require sculpting. However, I did get Putin done, and I’ve started my still life project. I think five of those will do, not counting the vegetables (because the composition isn’t up to scratch).

And on that note, here’s my latest tiny frustration:

In case you’re wondering, it’s a vase and I’m making some sunflowers. Lots of tiny pieces of paper to make the petals. The bit of plasticard will be a smart phone and I’ll add a coffee cup for composition.

It’s actually been weirdly difficult to come up with ideas for the series. I tried looking up modern still lifes, but they’re honestly mostly terribly contrived. ‘Here’s my iron next to four pieces of fruit and an antique candlestick’ sort of thing. They’re not a reflection of life at all, merely exercises in composition. It’s a bit sad, really. What I’m aiming for is a series that suggests that life is going on somewhere nearby, so the scenes need to be more naturalistic.

It also occurred to me that these are all scratch builds so far, which means I can enter them in a different category where that’s available. That’s novel.

Since my last post, I’ve finished off the android and I’m pretty happy with how he came out:

He’s up on Putty and Paint, too, if you’re interested.

I’ve also finally finished all of my commission pieces with this recreation of the mallards:

They’ll be getting packed up and sent off to their new owner later this month, along with the scaups, whio, wood ducks and the dog on jetty.

So, what’s up next?

As those of you who follow me on Facebook might have noticed, I’ve been posting cryptically about vegetables. In particular, I’d been sculpting tiny, tiny carrots and potatoes and the like. These could be useful for any number of purposes, and I imagine a lot of people have probably done the same before for their dioramas and vignettes. I can’t think of too many models that would benefit from carrots, but I’m probably just oblivious.

Anyway, I thought I’d explain myself a bit, starting by showing off the result. Note that this is really just a proof of concept rather than a ‘finished’ work. The composition is pretty terrible and the painting was rushed, but I wanted to assess whether the idea was sound:

Hopefully it’s fairly obvious that I was aiming for a still life.

I’ve actually been thinking about doing still lifes for some time, but it turns out no one really does loose fruit and vegetable models (or at least not at the scale I like to work at – there are probably 120mm scale things around). The thing that grabs me about them is the ability to set a scene that has no characters in it. You can extend this idea to create scenes that imply someone’s presence, which is something I think I’ll try out for the next one, but I do like the simplicity and peace evoked by something like this.

I obviously also need to work on the composition. I’ve chosen to use the same plinth I put the ducks on for this one, but it could be that a slightly larger area will give me a bit more freedom and force me to really clutter it up carefully.

For anyone interested in how I made things, it’s all pretty simple.

Cloth was made by rolling a sheet of magic sculpt with some talcum powder. This stops it sticking to anything and means you can handle it without leaving fingerprints. I made a rectangular sheet and draped it over the base, which is just the plinth with a bit of sculptiboard stuck on. It was possibly a little too thick, so I had to force some of the folds into it (most folds are around the back) with a paintbrush handle.

Carrots were made by rolling some magic sculpt into a rough carrot shape over three short strands of copper wire. I don’t remember what gauge the wire is (maybe 0.25mm?) because I bought it about 15 years ago. If you check out craft websites, it’s easy enough to find and you’ll get more than you could ever possibly use. The leaves are fronds cut from some paper ferns and glued to the copper wire with PVA.

Cabbage is just a ball of magicsculpt with some strips of paper glued on in overlapping sections, then a bit of magic sculpt to round it out and tidy up.

The potatoes and radishes are just rough shapes that anyone can probably do better. If you’re interested in making your own vegetables, I recommend doing something more interesting than potatoes. You can always knock out some spuds with whatever putty you have left over at the end.

For once, I’m updating to post about only one model. It’s not that I’m without other projects at the moment – that would be laughable – but that I’m mildly consumed by the project I’m working on.

I should probably finish up the last ducks for the commission, but they’re a distraction. They’re currently just a couple of undercoated figures and a blob of magic sculpt on a plinth, so not much to talk about, either.

Anyway, the project I’m finding so engrossing – which you might have seen on Facebook or Instagram – is an android soldier from Mr Lee’s Minis, sculpted by Christoph Eichhorn (perhaps better known as Trovarion). Several years back, I painted the other android Christoph has in his range on Mr Lee’s Minis, and enjoyed it quite a bit. I’m not sure what put me off getting this one, but I’m quite pleased I did, because I can now apply all the stuff I’ve learned since then.

This piece is also a good example of showing how sometimes my ideas evolve as I’m working on a piece.

To start with: the inspiration. I bought the model with only a vague idea. I wanted to make it almost an anti-war model, taking the clearly military gear from the front and subverting it. The gear on the back is a little less uniform, which ties into that. Running with this idea, I thought it would be neat to take some of Joker’s motifs from Full Metal Jacket and apply them to the figure.

As you can see from this early shot, that didn’t really work out:

For those who haven’t seen the film, Joker is a soldier assigned to the journalism corps in Vietnam, and he enjoys displaying things like ‘Born to kill’ on his helmet right next to a badge with the peace symbol. I attempted to put the slogan over a shiny face plate initially, thinking that this would provide enough contrast to be readable, but it unfortunately just highlights how artificial the text is. Back to the drawing board for me.

So, with that failure out the way, I re-evaluated what I was aiming for and – crucially – the model I was actually painting. While a shiny face plate is a cool idea – it makes it look more like a visor, which is an interesting take on the model – it doesn’t actually work terribly well because the surface itself isn’t smooth enough. I had a hell of a time trying to get the shiny effect because the way light actually interacts with it doesn’t support the illusion.

I also realised that the model has already done part of the work for me with regard to subversion. As noted previously, the back of the model already has extra gear that doesn’t entirely gel with the idea of a dedicated soldier. I suppose you could make them work, but the badges and patches beg for something more – and something that stands out a little.

So, with this in mind, I decided to stick with the general Vietnam theme for the military stuff and have ended up with possibly the greenest model I’ve ever done.

I think the pair of pouches are the only parts so far that don’t have any green in them, other than the splash of orange on his antenna, and they still have that green strap.

It’s been a fun exercise trying to differentiate the really green parts, especially as they’re all based on different mixes of the same few paints (old GW Dark Angels Green, VMC Military Green and VMC US Dark Green).

I still don’t quite know how he’ll evolve, but I’m enjoying the journey a lot. In the end, how green will he be?