Mermaid - study in Blue

Going through the storage case, I found a pair of miniatures I'd agreed to paint for a friend an awfully long time ago. The figure shown here is from Reaper Miniatures, #03078 "Pearl the Mermaid", sculpted by Werner Klocke as if the cheekbones didn't give that away!

Pearl's lower fins and her forearm were separate pieces, which meant that they'd gone missing in my storage case somewhere. An hour's hunting turned them up, and I experimented with epoxy putty and finally CA super-glue to fasten the pieces in place.
I tried to get a "coy, curious" expression, and the sculptor's style of heart-shaped faces helped wonderfully.
Pearl started with a coat of Armory white primer, then a wash of very thin blue ink to pick up all the contours. After that, I worked up her skin in shades of light green. (Mostly Ceramacoat hobby acrylics, although I also used some RAF Interior Green I bought to paint Spitfires with The Nephew.) The hair and lips were worked in in tints and washes of pthalocyanine green and sap green hue (both from Golden Artist acrylics).
The figure was CA'd to a standard 25mm round base, which was then coated with a slurry of fine sand and 2-part epoxy. This base treatment turned out looking exactly like the sandy sea-bottom, requiring no further paint.

After giving Pearl a coat of Testors Dull Cote to protect her, I went back in with a 40-60 mix of Satin and Matte varnish (Liquitex)to try and get the 'wet look'. Her skin received slightly more Matte than the scales...

Pearl will be returned to her owner after her long absence, and I'm going to get to work on her companions (including the little 1:300 scale buildings the gentleman asked me to paint) as soon as all the plaster work and painting in the master bedroom is done...

And there are still all those zombies on the bench in nothing but their primer!

"There & Back Again": The Colonel's Book

My brother is an officer in the Ohio Army National Guard, and his unit was mobilized for deployment to Afghanistan shortly after the first of the year. When he was last deployed overseas (Iraq, 2006), he asked me to make him a journal, in which he recorded his diary notes, reflections and the like. He packed that book to take with him on this trip as well, but it only had a couple dozen blank pages left. At his request, I made this journal as Volume II and sent it to him at his unit's preliminary training site in Louisiana. He figures he'll be ready for Volume III shortly before the unit actually leaves for Afghanistan.

The book is 9 x 12 inches (22 x 30 cm). The binding is boot-weight black leather. (About 9 Ounces, or about 3.5mm thick.)
This style of soft binding is common in Renaissance paintings, and books made in this style were the common workbook of merchants, clerks and military officers on campaign. My brother liked his because it could be carried easily in a military map-case.
The book strap is riveted to the cover with three rosette nails. These were made from a pattern from the Higgins Museum in Massachusetts, and were acquired as part of my project to build a 15th century set of brigandine body armor.
Here's the book laid open.
Each gathering of pages, called a "quire" or "signature" is stitched into the cover with heavy waxed thread.
The binding-stitching is knotted at each crossing for protection. If need be, these pages can be removed from one binding and incorporated into another book. Additional "signatures" can also be sewn into the cover to expand the book's capacity.

Happy 2011

A Happy New Year to all, and I hope your accomplishments in 2010 will be dwarfed by those of the coming year!

"Gilding the lily"... Part 2

Interestingly, this common phrase is (like so many others) a mis-quotation from Shakespeare. The quote, from King John (1595), actually reads:



To gild refined gold, to paint the lily,
To throw a perfume on the violet...
Is wasteful and ridiculous excess.


While I was waiting for terrain-glue on the Llama Dioramma to dry, I picked up my new 5/0 brush and this figure, which has been sitting untouched. I'd already primed it and blocked in the clothes and the skin base shades, but she needed detailing and an appropriate facial expression.

Here’s Josie the Survivor, modified from Hasslefree’s Kendra figure. There are a few tiny touch-ups still to be done, but I’m pretty pleased. Sorry about the grainy photo - among the future projects is the construction of a simple light tent for shooting these things...
All that needs to happen is to free her from her cardboard painting base and to glue her securely to one of the 20mm transparent bases I ordered from Litko Aerosystems. I saw photos of AKULA’s minis on clear bases and loved the “invisible” look.

Litko’s website allows one to specify custom bases, and I chose the 1/16th inch (1.6mm) clear acrylic material. So often, 28mm figures are seen standing atop these plinth bases that are 3-5mm thick, which adds six to ten scale inches to their height. No wonder cars and doorways look so small!

Once Upon a Time in the Andes... (Part 2)

I was off from work on Christmas Eve and spent part of the day finishing the Llama Dioramma for Josie. Feast your eyes on its splendor!

The llama family, at Josie’s request, was re-painted white. They received several washes of blended Raw Umber and Vallejo Cold Grey, and were then dry-brushed successively with Ceramacoat “Country Twill” & “Buttercream”, and finally with Vallejo Cold White. (Vallejo Bone White proved too dun-colored to make proper, brilliant llamas.)
I laid down a scattered coat of Scenic Cement, and then dusted the prepared base with Woodland Scenic’s Coarse Turf in light and medium green. The same glue was used to fasten the terrain piece to the base of the dome.
And here’s the finished piece, done for Christmas Day. My lovely bride was delighted, and I was too, since it's the first deadline piece I've completed on time in quite a while. (And we'll ignore the fact that it was supposed to be a project for last Christmas!)



Once Upon a Time in the Andes...(Part 1)

My bride likes llamas. I don't read too much into this, but if pressed on the subject, I'd surmise that it's because they're cute and fuzzy and, if you tick them off, they spit on you. Suffice to say, she thinks they're neat.

So, MegaMinis actually makes a set of 25mm scaled llamas - a family of 5 ran me $8 USD, and I set out to create a mini-diorama for The Lovely Josie to display on her desktop. The enclosure is a bell dome which I think I sourced from Woodland Scenics. (This project was a non-starter for her last birthday, interrupted by wedding planning, among other things…)

The Llama Family, primed in Testor’s Aircraft Gray. Not all these guys are going to make the final cut.
I cut a piece of ¾” (19mm) insulation foam and used a piece of sandpaper on the benchtop to bevel a slope onto its upper surface. This will be the base for the terrain insert.
Here’s a test fit, with additional foam terrain added and carved a bit. Three llamas is a good number to fit into the dome, although as you’ll see their final arrangement will differ somewhat.
I wanted Papa Llama to be standing on the crest of the outcropping, which required shifting the alignment of his legs, neck and head. As you can see, these castings are pretty delicate-looking, but I still needed to take a Dremel tool with a cut-off wheel to carve away his base and around his neck & head.
Here’s Papa, positioned atop his rocky outcropping. You can see the nubs of his base, which will be blended into the terrain with sand and kitty-litter.
I increased the angle of his neck more sharply, and bent it forward as far as the cut allowed. I also pushed the legs as far back as I felt the metal would allow - I wanted him clearly in a position to watch out over his little group! (Off to the left, you can see Kendra/Josie in the sculpting stand I made - very handy design.)
Here's Papa, all sculpted and ready to get attached to the base.
The family group, attached to their terrain base and primed flat black. I layered kitty litter onto the base with watered-down PVA, experiencing some difficulty because all I had was the "clumping" litter. When it gets wet, it sticks to anything nearby, especially the paint-brush I was using to convey the glue-solution. Aagh! Before I attached the llamas themselves to the base, I thickly painted the foam with Ceramacoat acrylic craft paint (Raw Umber) to provide a base coat as well as to protect the foam from the spray primer. I've made that mistake once.
And here is the group after some paint attention. I'm sorry I didn't get any WIP shots leading up to this point, but I got swept up in the process. The rocky ground got worked over with thin washes of gray and darker gray, some Payne's Gray (a mix of black & ultramarine blue) and thin washes of terra verde to suggest lichen and such. I use mostly Ceramacoat craft paints, with a few colors by Golden, which produces artist's acrylic paints. I did the llamas themselves without my reference photos, so I'll be redoing them shortly. The diorama has been hot-glued to the lid of a jam-jar, for ease of handling.
Another “beauty shot” of the family. The backdrop is the wonderfully textural (IE, “flaking and nacreous”) brick wall of my basement…
You’re probably wondering what happened to the 2 llamas who didn’t get included in the diorama. Well, one of them took a wrong turn on the way to the zoological park, and is pictured here surrounded by zombies. Lucky for her, they’re only interested in human brains…

Work on the diorama will continue as time permits – before Christmas, I still need to finish painting The Bride’s yoga room, and sewing a stocking for myself. Hopefully, it will be filled with wonderful things. (I’ve asked Josie for an Optivisor, since my eyes are not what they used to be…)

So why "The Cellar Dweller"?

My workbench is tucked into a corner of our basement. When I have spare time (not that often, given that we're revamping and maintaining a house that's turning 100 years old next year), I descend into the cellar, duck under the heating ducts that threaten my crown, and ease my way past the thicket of adjustable support columns that keep the floor above actually above me. I flick on three or four separate lamps, turn on the heater (vital at this latitude and time of year) and put in a CD. Then I can sit down at my cluttered bench and decide which projects I have to move to unearth the one I want to work on.

On the list of house projects - after the bathroom and kitchen renovations and the wife's yoga room (which needs new plaster, mouldings, trim, floors and paint)- is a revised and expanded workbench, to incorporate my woodworking tools as well as my hobby gear...

It will happen. I swear it will.