Category: Art

The Year In Postcards

December 23, 2016

I started the year in Australia, where I had all sorts of fun times. You can go back if you like and read all about it on the blog. I sent loads and loads of cards, at about US$2.50 each, and I’m sure you got some. On this trip I started drawing full-colour illustrations on the cards (mostly portraits), most of which were remarkable. I wonder who got this Stonehenge card (that I had purchased in an antique shop) and what I had written on it?

In March we went to Funspot in NH and played video games and it was great. Again, I sent postcards while I was there, but this photo was taken on the way back. I had decided to send cards from every state we passed through and I can now exclusively reveal that finding the cards in Vermont was much easier than finding a post box! I believe we eventually saw one in the carpark of a library as we were running out of state.

In May we went to RI to visit Lovecraft’s grave and I was moved enough to create this masterpiece. I hope I sent it to myself because I love it, but maybe it’s yours? If so, please treasure it…

Then came Vegas and California, and a bevy of funny and – dare I say – notable cards. I think this one (sent to KLS) sums up my feelings about Santa Barbara well. The sticker (of a band member from Slipknot) came free with a Metal Hammer magazine I had purchased just for the Baby Metal lenticular cover 🙂

And then came England, in which my postcarding reached – I think – a new peak. In particularly I am proud of the ‘postcard magic’ series that I sent Bernard. It’s a crime he hasn’t shared them on his blog yet…

In three days I’m off again, for 24 days in the sun, sea and sand. I’m filled with postcarding spirit, so watch your mailboxes keenly and look forward to the occasional masterpiece or two from distant shores!

Kit Bashing?

September 13, 2016

This is a Chaos Terminator Lord model kit by Games Workshop:

I bought this a few months ago. I’d always wanted to assemble and paint a Warhammer model, and this guy was inexpensive and looked good. Here’s what I found inside the box:

And here’s a close-up of the parts still on the runners:

As someone with a decent amount of experience assembling model kits from Bandai or Kotobukiya I was a bit taken aback by what I saw. For starters this is not a glueless kit. For seconders few – if any – of the connections have tabs or slots to strengthen them. For thirds the pieces are strongly attached to the runners and would need quite a bit of cleaning up after removal.

In short, it looked like a pain.

And that was before I saw the instructions:

These are the instructions to make a ‘Chaos Terminator Sorceror‘. If you want to assemble it as a (melee style) ‘Lord’, you’d use the other sheet of instructions. Both ways have multiple possibilities, and you can see that during assembly you can mix-and-match parts as you see fit. Unlike a Gundam (where the weapons and sometimes even armor is removable and replaceable) this kit is final once made due to the gluing.

Assembly took a while and was a fiddly as I had feared/expected. To be honest it wasn’t really much fun at all! But I think my final version looks fairly nice:

If you’re going to make a kit like this I strongly recommend using a low viscosity glue that can be applied with a brush since you’ll want to put tiny amounts in very specific locations.

Building the kit is only half the fun though, since it must be painted! Master painters can make these tiny kits absolutely come alive with their skilled paint jobs. For instance here’s an example of what someone did with this very model (remember it’s about 2 inches tall):

Looks great doesn’t it?

Here’s where I ran into a bit of trouble. In short: Warhammer paints are bloody expensive! The basic Warhammer 40k space marine paint set of only five colours is about $20, which was more than this kit. If I wanted to buy all the recommended colours for this particular guy, it would have cost about $65! That’s probably ok if you’re building an army to play with (since Warhammer is a miniatures wargame), but crazy just for one tiny kit. I needed another solution.

One option was to take it to a Warhammer store and paint it for free since they encourage that. This would be great were there any Warhammer stores around here. I went into one in England and was tempted to spent an hour painting one of their free miniatures just for fun but didn’t have the time.

But it was during our very same trip to England that the solution appeared in the form of a freebie attached to a very inexpensive Doctor Who kids magazine:

Most people will look at that and think “Oh free magnets!”. I looked at it and thought “Oh free paints!” And in vaguely Space Mariney colours as well! This was my salvation, and months after assembly I finally had the means to complete my Chaos Terminator Sorceror.

Here he is:

I think I’ve done him justice wouldn’t you agree?

We Are Providence

May 13, 2016

We drove to Providence today, on day one of our little getaway. I’d been considering such a trip for years, but after recently reading the newly reprinted Ramsey Campbell book ‘The Thing In The Lake’ the trigger had been pulled.

It was finally time to pay my respects to Lovecraft.

The first stop was a wonderful store downtown that promotes the memory and legacy of H.P. Lovecraft, an author (mostly) obscure in his life but now recognized as one of the most influential American authors to have ever lived. His contribution to the genres of fantasy and horror can hardly be underestimated, and I’ve been a fan for about 30 years.

The store had some remarkable items, and the lovely proprietress gave us a map of providence with all the Lovecraft sights on it. Afterwards we walked a few minutes to a local library to see this bust (which had been partially funded by Guillermo del Toro):

And then we headed to our primary destination, the Swan Point Cemetary. Specifically this small and somewhat unassuming tombstone:

Lovecraft was poor in his time, and upon his death didn’t even get his own gravestone (the above was erected over 50 years later). Initially he was only on the Phillips tombstone, behind me when I took the above shot. (Yes, I placed the tiny Cthulhu on top, but you can see offerings left by others – including foreign coins.)

Ironically he wrote about this very cemetary in his stories, as he did about many other sights in Ptovidence. He was a somber man, very poor and (as he believed) unsuccessful. If only he could have known how famous he would one day be, and how in a cemetary packed with incredible edifices the one that most people would come to visit was the tiny stone with his name on it.

Mr Lovecraft: your imagination was boundless, your stories timeless and I’ll always be a fan.

It was late in the day when we finally got to our B&B and we’re gobsmacked by how beautiful it is!

That’s the dining room we’ll eat breakfast in tomorrow! Everything in here is beautiful, and it’s probably much fancier than I deserve 🙂

Tomorrow we’re off to the zoo, only a hop and skip from here. Expect photos of animals!

Robot Claw