Look closely and you can see parts of various cars, armored vehicles, 1/35 scale firearms, even a flashlight and 
part of a toilet!

 

 

Here it is.

Here’s an outdoor pic of the painting that – because it didn’t require a flash – allows for more detail in the pic.  Click on the image at left, you’ll get a larger one that you should – if you click on it – be able to really zoom in on.  You can see all the brush strokes and etc.  The coloring is pretty good, but not 100% what it is in real life…

Here’s my first attempt at doing a landscape (well sea scape).  In the interest of full disclosure, I referenced an example from a Walter Foster instructional book my Grandmother left me called ‘The Sea in Action’.  I picked it because it reminds me of some coastline we visited in Portugal.

I added the gulls and, of course, a small fighter plane!  It’s either an F-22 or a Mustang…

It’s a present for my wife.  Her birthday’s not until Feb 1, but I was so excited I couldn’t stand it and gave it to her the next morning after I painted it.  She loved it.

Lots of fun – I forced myself to knock it out in a few hours one evening, which is a big step for me since I usually like to be so meticulous and detailed about everything.  ‘Loose’ is not a word often used to describe my style!

This model was done in the late 1990s.  The photo shows a temporary base (final base was made from one of those plastic banana holders).  I installed motors behind the props, navigation lights, instrument lights, fully detailed interior with pilots, and a sound module in the base that (still, after all these years) plays various aircraft diving and firing sounds.  Markings are my own design.  Weathering was really fun on this big kit.  The model was originally a night fighter variant, but I didn’t want to have the hassle of dealing with those delicate antennae on the nose, so I left them off.  When I moved from Florida back to North Carolina the model got overheated on it’s base and the wings drooped a bit – going from being slightly up-angled to being horizontal.  Bit of a disappointment for sure, but I figure when a plastic model’s nearly 15  years old and ‘mildly drooping wings’ are the biggest problem, you’re doing OK.

Here’s a trio of snow speeders I painted around 15 years ago in 1995.  I believe these came with some AMT/MPC Imperial AT-AT kits I had.

That diorama unveiled a couple of days ago has night lighting too thanks to light emitting diodes and fiber optic strands.  Yes, that is the Big and Little Dippers in the sky (bright star is Polaris).  Now I know that in the Southern Hemisphere, you’d be seeing the Southern Cross – but I wanted a constellation in my miniature sky that the kids could look outside and see for real (Sometimes I have to relax the ‘authenticity rules’ on personal projects).  Apologies for the blurry/grainy effect on the shots – hard to take good pics with such low light…

Smaug destroys Lake Town.  From the Hobbit.  From an 8th grade English project.  I think I was 13.  Somehow I managed to work an illustration into a writing assignment.  Can’t remember if it helped improve my grade or not.

Here’s that diorama I gave the preview of a while ago.  A tropical island scene built into a bookshelf.  The ship was my first wooden model, after 31 years of building and scratch building plastic kits, and it was the hardest one to date!  So, I wanted to make a worthwhile case for it.  Details abound, look for gulls on the shore, bird poop on the rocks in the background and palm trees with trunks of wire and glue-soaked tissue paper, painted brown and topped with some kit-supplied’ leaves.  The rocks are from sample collected over the years during trips to the beach with the kids…  Speaking of kids, I put a dog, cat and bunny in there that I reposition occasionally to constantly keep them on the ‘search’.

Here’s a couple of shots of an X-Wing model I did way back in the 1980s.  What a great kit back then.  Used paint instead of decals, put the weathering on with a series of washes…