Thursday, August 30, 2012

Family Time and D-Day Beaches

Family Time
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!!

Mumakil are big

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

Coming along

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!

Neanderthal Firestarters

Neanderthal Firestarters

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.

Testing D-Day paint job

Testing D-Day paint job

Testing D-Day paint job

5 comments:

  1. The cresting waves look great. You could also do an entire table like that to be used in Check Your 6! as a bunch of cirrus clouds.

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  2. Beaches look good and I like you getting the kids involved.

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  3. I assume you've already thought of this, but a slight undulation of the edges of your beach will give it a much more natural contour. Nature abhors a straight line almost as much as a vacuum.

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    1. I definitely have considered that, but didn't do it now. Rather than buying the full length of fabric and making a nicer setup, I bought a single yard of each and cut it into strips. So I kept it straight. Plus, I didn't think it would end up looking this nice, so I just didn't worry so much about it. Anyway, this should be good enough to get us going. I could always buy another yard of either and cut some curvier segments out it. I'll have to think about what I want to do long term.

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    2. The other thing I could do is try to color match my beach to my bases a little better...that might be a concern too far, though.

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