Early hobby builds

 

Carrying out home improvements recently has unearthed a stash of old finished and part finished models, of which a few have since been cleaned and re-photographed. Still finding my feet and experimenting with all sorts of new materials, many early builds were painted in rattle can base coats! There are a few early attempts at adding resin and photoetch aftermarket parts. I hated the stuff until I finally discovered the rubberised black CA. There are a few builds I am still proud of, and I still like to look at them, but there are also some terrible builds with some shocking construction flaws and paint finishes. Getting a consistent paint finish without any construction gaffs was still a long way off. They might all be flawed in some aspect or another, but they are all physical evidence of my creative journey. May I apologise in advance for some of the photography.

Back behind the wheel

Whilst I do love to model wheeled vehicles, I’ve never actually built a non-military one! And that’s odd since I have always had an interest in 1:1 scale automotive stuff. I purchased a Tamiya GR86 kit a little while back as I had once owned a Subaru BRZ but am still yet to build it! I suspect that as I'm so accustomed to applying a myriad of weathering effects over an operational vehicle's often rushed paintjob, I am a little intimidated by the smooth unblemished, immaculate paint finish that would be required.

I’ve always fancied building a few scale representations of cars I’ve driven over the years and that got me thinking about another predicament I found myself in. Getting the mancave ready to work in again I had planned a few upgrades, and one of them involved a trip to a hardware store. Trouble is, I didn't actually have a 1:1 scale car to pick the stuff up with!

Italian mountain road diorama (part one)

 

 

 

This started out as groundworks for a vehicle project that turned out to be slightly too small and then took on a life of its own.

My inspiration was taken from images of the terrain around the Brenner pass in northern Italy during the German army’s retreat north through the mountains. Looking at photographs of the kind of materials that were used to build these roads I found a contemporary pic of a cycle race over the same terrain. I liked the idea of the tight bend and added height element that it would bring to a display.