Family Time and D-Day Beaches

Family Time, a photo by The Gonk on Flickr.

It's been quite the family hobby time lately. Number One Son has taken some real interest in things since getting his Spinosaurus at Historicon, and I've had the gaming table covered up with his stuff lately as much as mine. And to keep Number Two Son, four, involved as well, I picked up some chubby plaster statues for kids for him to paint right alongside us. It has frankly been a blast, as they both have their own little projects to work on, and I can even work on my own stuff a bit. A little bit. The Mumak is now in, and our last two evening have been spent gluing that behemoth together. It's a pretty sweet kit, simple for its size, and pretty accessible to an eleven year old.

The Mumak is about 5.5" at the back, topping the Spinosaurus by about 3/4". The howdah looks like it will add another 4" or so!!

This thing is ridiculously large. Tonight, we finished up the body and the head, other than the ears.

Number One Son also completed painting my converted firestarters for Tusk. I went back and added the smoke/fire, which is a dark grey blend of wool roving. Pretty cool stuff, although nothing will stick to it. I wound up using the red "fire" paint to adhere to the branches!

After the kids went to bed, I cleaned up a bit and worked on my D-Day terrain. I took excess cloth and painted it up as I have been thinking about. Frankly, it was more effective than I thought, so I think I will have a go at the real cloth in the same scheme. I simply used a wadded up kleenex to paint on two successively narrower shades of light blue, followed by a big hog bristle brush of white. The beach was just kleenex of two light tans.