Tuesday 1 February 2011

A Madman with a Box

First off, apologies for my silence over the last week. To make up for it, here is the greatest space ship in all the galaxy!


Yes! The Doctor has his TARDIS at last. [See parts one and two for my other Dr Who themed models.] This is of course not a model of the TARDIS but rather the "Glaswegian Police Box" from Hasslefree which just so happens to resemble a TARDIS...


The model is a beautiful sculpt, cast in resin and cut at the lower edge of the roof to allow all that lovely cutout detailing in the roof sections to exist. The model had precious little flash, no voids and no casting blocks, quite a stark - but pleasant! - contrast for someone who has mostly bought Forgeworld resin. The quality of the casting is such that the POLICE markings are engraved in the resin:


And yes, I know that the TARDIS is supposed to have Police Call Box and all sorts but this is good enough damnit! Painting in this sort of detail is simplicity itself, just black out the section with the thinnest coat of black you can manage and then allow capillary action to pull thinned white paint from the brush into the detail. A couple of layers like this builds up the colour and the results are very nice. Another favourite outcome are the windows:


I debated whether to paint the windows glowing white as though the TARDIS was active. In the end though I decided that the simplicity of the model would work better with the inactive glass effect. This is really simple for those who haven't tried it: The trick is to avoid blue entirely and start with a basecoat of Fenris Grey, shade down the appropriate areas (i.e. top and side of a lens or low and side of windows like this). Once dry you can add a little Space Wolves Grey to the Fenris and add highlights, a little catchlight of white and a gloss varnish seals the deal nicely.

And that is that really, this last fortnight has been a bad one for the good people of chez pirate viking. In between deaths of family members-in-law and my car failing to save vs. immobalisation and getting scrapped there hasn't been a lot of room for painting. Once I am back from visiting folks I shall get with the mojo again and crank out some more exciting things for you all. Till then:

TTFN

1 comment:

  1. I have some nice Dr Who figures I think they were old Citadel/GW, I painted them (did not paint the policemen or brigadier) but they never did really find a use.
    Your Police Box is excellent Mr Pirate V

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