Little Tanks & Tiny People

I have been neglecting this blog for a little bit. Because I didnt't stop painting I now have a bit of a backlog. To start the new year with a clean slate I’ll quickly summarise what I’ve been up to the past months. Firstly, I’ve finished my Cyberpunk-themed Sisters of Battle army (pics of the full army to follow). I also made this silly F-16 Egg plane by Hasegawa. The kit happens to come with Dutch markings, but I thought the roundel was a bit too big and didn’t look right. I happened to have a set of RNLAF roundels in varying sizes, so I used those instead. I also scratchbuilt three wooden buildings for a Rohan-themed gaming board. They would also fit pretty well with an Early Medieval/Viking board. The walls of the buildings are made of packaging foam, covered in strips of card and coffee stirrers. I made the roofs out of some scrap bits of plywood and covered them in strips of towel to look like thatching. I’ve also been painting up an Athenian hoplite army. I’ve worked my wa...

Quick update: I bought and built another Sarissa Precision kit, a Dutch house to go with my Dutch farm . I also scratch-built some road sections: 9 straight sections and 1 t-junction. I kept it simple for now, but I can always add corners and other shapes later. I used 6 mm thick polystyrene, which should prevent the sections from warping. I bevelled the edges slightly and added banks using a full packet of Milliput. I then  gave the pieces a quick sanding and applied two coats of brown paint mixed with sand and coffee grounds. After letting that dry overnight, I gave the pieces a quick drybrush and then added flocking and some tufts.

I haven’t had much time for painting the last few weeks, but I did manage to build these cars for Gaslands. Gaslands is a set of rules published by Osprey Games for Mad Max/Death Race style vehicular combat.  Gaslands is completely miniature agnostic. You can use whatever cars you have lying around the house or that you can find in a dollar store, making the game very accessible. Most people tend to use Hot Wheels cars or similar, but I picked out some slightly larger vehicles. That way, I can also use them with 28 mm minis, for example my Street Violence figures.

So, I made some more terrain to go with my coastal fort and ship . I’m particularly pleased with how the rocks came out. I made them out of a sheet of white polystyrene foam. It’s the exact same material used in packaging, only sold in sheets for crafting. Compared to pink or blue foam, white polystyrene is a lot more difficult to work with. It’s also insanely messy! It takes a bit of practice to cut the foam in a way that you can’t see that the polystyrene consists of thousands of individual balls. Painting on a heavy coat of wall filler/spackle also helps to hide these. After cutting and applying the filler I then brushed on a coat of grey primer. I then heavily drybrushed everything with a broken white/light beige. I then gave the rocks a black wash, followed by a dark brown wash. Finally, I gave everything a light drybrush of white and added flock. For the plants I used some cheap palm trees bought on Ebay and various fake plants from the Dutch equivalent of a dollar store. Th...

  First stratchbuild of the year! I made a simple coastal fort to go with my ship the  Halve Maen . I forgot to take work-in-progress pictures, but construction was very straightforward. I started by making a rectangular box out of two 15x15 cm MDF picture frames for the top and bottom and four 18x15 cm sheets of polystyrene for the walls. The 18 cm height of the walls meant that I could divide the tower into three 6 cm tall levels. I simply hotglued these together to form the basic shape and then added a parapet using some left over blue foam. I made the parapet 3 cm high - giving the tower a total height of 21 cm - with the cut-outs being 1.5 cm high.   For the external staircase I used strips of cork that I cut from a coaster. As the coaster was 1 cm thick, six steps gave me the exact height to reach the first floor. I wish I could say that this was clever planning on my part, but I’m afraid it was completely down to luck!   After this, I added details like ...

This is a little project that I had started some time ago, but had not gotten around to finishing yet. A completely scratchbuilt windmill! Most models that you can find online are of timber windmills. I, however, wanted mine to look like it was made of plastered brick. Additionally, I wanted it to look quintessentially/stereotypically Dutch.   One characteristic of most Dutch windmills is that the main body tends to taper slightly towards the top. So how did I accomplish this? Well, by making the body out of a cheap metal cocktail shaker. Before starting I gave the shaker a light sanding, so the glue and paint would stick better. I then cut out a small base for the windmill out of a sheet of polystyrene.   The cocktail shaker is very thin-walled and provides almost no surface for gluing it to the base. I therefore cut out a circular plug out of some cork, which I hotglued into the opening of the shaker. This gave me a nice large gluing area.   With the body of the w...

Back in May, I saw Topgun: Maverick in the cinema and it got me really inspired to make something aviation-related. Rather than building a model kit, I figured it would be fun to scratch build something. After a bit of thinking I decided that that something had to be an ejection seat. I particularly liked the look of the Aces II seat, which is used in many aircraft including the F-15 Eagle, F-16 Viper, F-22 Raptor and A-10 Warthog. I found some really nice technical drawings of the Aces II seat online, which came in very handy for getting the basic shape and placement of the detailing right. T his is by no means a perfect recreation of the schematics, though. I was more concerned with getting the overall ‘feel’ right. I also didn’t build the seat to any particular scale. Instead, I scaled the image so that the side view was exactly the height of a sheet of A4. In other words, this thing was going to be pretty bloody massive!   The basic structure was made out of polystyrene she...

Click here for part 1 Click here for part 2   With my new battle mat from Pwork having arrived, I now have everything to take proper pictures of the Halve Maen. All that remained to be done since my previous post was to add the masts, sails and flags. I made the masts using wooden dowels in three diameters: 8 mm for the lower masts, 6 mm for the upper masts and 4 mm for the yards. I bought them online and had to buy order them in bulk, so I have plenty left for at least another ten ships... But I’m sure they’ll come in handy for future projects.   The flags were made of aluminium tape sandwiched between two layers of regular printer paper. The aluminium tape can be manipulated to create the illusion of wind and will hold its shape, while the paper provides for a nice surface for painting. As I have no sewing skills whatsoever, my wife kindly helped me with the sails. And I think she did an amazing job! The fabric was scavenged from an old pair of linnen trousers and I th...

Click here for part 1 ,  Click here for part 3 Continuing on with building my take on the Gary Chalk ship, I have now finished painting the hull. I purposely have not attached the upper masts yet, as I thought this would make painting a lot easier and would reduce the risk of poking an eye out. Painting was pretty easy and fun, apart from the yellow bits. Yellow paint is notorious for not wanting to cover and even after five coats there are still areas that are not fully opaque! Just simple phone images for now. I'll take proper photos once she's all done.   I have christened her the Halve Maen (Half moon), after a Dutch East India Company ship that sailed to New York in 1609. The model bears little resemblance to the actual vessel, but I like the name and fancy old spelling of Maen (rather than the modern Maan).