Memories of yesteryear's models
I was happily painting away at one of the control consoles on the interior of my Landraider last night (undercoating a squad of Grey Knight daemonhunters on the side), when I stopped to reflect exactly how happy I was in my work. I paused to reflect as to why that might be and then remembered my model building days from my childhood.*
I cut my teeth, so to speak, on making model aeroplanes. Specifically modern combat jets and my bedroom ceiling was adorned (via the wonders of fishing wire and pins) with a veritable airforce (albeit an electic one) of 1/72 scale war machines of that era. There was a Tornado IDS, SPECAT Jaguar, an F-15E Eagle, FA-18 Interceptor, F-14 Tomcat, F4 Phantom and the obligator SR-71 Blackbird. There were more, I'm sure, but what these were I don't recall. Looking back, I'm pretty sure my efforts improved with time and I think the very last model I did (the F-16) was a considerably more accomplished piece of work than my very first (my much loved Tornado, with actual working swing wings!). Heady days filled with liquid poly and enamel paints, the fumes of which could make things very heady indeed if I was working in a confined space.
Each of the various models had its intracacies which made for varying degrees of heartache in assembly, but the one part I always enjoyed was painting the cockpit interiors. These were festivals of detail and I loved, hugely, painting all the detail onto the pilots control panel and getting colour on all the illuminated dials. The more detailed the cockpit the happier I was and any aircraft whose cockpit sat two pilots (the Tornado, the Tomcat) would have me ecstatic with the amount of extra detail I could paint. I would've dearly loved an F111 with its side by side cockpit arrangement, but never got round to buying one.
The cockpits were, accepting that this is through somewhat rose tinted recollection, hugely detailed works of art. With the many different coloured lights on the consoles and different buttons painted onto the controls, the detail on the ejector seats, yaw pedals, etc etc etc. Even though I never really saw that detail again once it was up hanging near the ceiling, I knew it was there.
The delight of the cockpit interior was equally matched by my horror of the process of gluing the canopy in place (as all the aircraft were in flight, there was never a "cockpit open" option for me). Actual painting of the canopy was not a problem. I never wound up with paint anywhere other than where it should've been, so the precious details were not obscured by paint. No the horror was attached to the gluing process and this had to be done just right. Stick the cockpit on too soon and the fumes from the liquid poly would fog up the interior, rendering the canopy opaque and the precious details obscured forever. Leave the glue too long before applying and you'd have no fumes, but no adhesion. I never really finessed this part of the process, never really had a set time at which I could reliably stick the plastic together. So this was always something of a lottery. A horrible soul destroying lottery for a young man.
After 5 years I knocked model aircraft on the head and indeed for a short time, did no model paninting at all until I drifted into WH40K. The thing that killed aicraft for me was the 1/33 scale Tornado ADV I got as a Birthday present. This was a combination of "too much work" to be actual fun, poor instrcutions, and the fact that the colour scheme didn't actually correspond with any of my humbrol enamel paints. I had to buy more, then mix them, to get the colours right. This got wearisome, especially as enamel paints are waaaay less forgiving than acrylics, and my enthusiasm never really recovered.
But apparently I still love painting really detailed control panels.
Which is nice.
*I was going to write "my childhood modelling days" but decided this would give the wrong impression.
I cut my teeth, so to speak, on making model aeroplanes. Specifically modern combat jets and my bedroom ceiling was adorned (via the wonders of fishing wire and pins) with a veritable airforce (albeit an electic one) of 1/72 scale war machines of that era. There was a Tornado IDS, SPECAT Jaguar, an F-15E Eagle, FA-18 Interceptor, F-14 Tomcat, F4 Phantom and the obligator SR-71 Blackbird. There were more, I'm sure, but what these were I don't recall. Looking back, I'm pretty sure my efforts improved with time and I think the very last model I did (the F-16) was a considerably more accomplished piece of work than my very first (my much loved Tornado, with actual working swing wings!). Heady days filled with liquid poly and enamel paints, the fumes of which could make things very heady indeed if I was working in a confined space.
Each of the various models had its intracacies which made for varying degrees of heartache in assembly, but the one part I always enjoyed was painting the cockpit interiors. These were festivals of detail and I loved, hugely, painting all the detail onto the pilots control panel and getting colour on all the illuminated dials. The more detailed the cockpit the happier I was and any aircraft whose cockpit sat two pilots (the Tornado, the Tomcat) would have me ecstatic with the amount of extra detail I could paint. I would've dearly loved an F111 with its side by side cockpit arrangement, but never got round to buying one.
The cockpits were, accepting that this is through somewhat rose tinted recollection, hugely detailed works of art. With the many different coloured lights on the consoles and different buttons painted onto the controls, the detail on the ejector seats, yaw pedals, etc etc etc. Even though I never really saw that detail again once it was up hanging near the ceiling, I knew it was there.
The delight of the cockpit interior was equally matched by my horror of the process of gluing the canopy in place (as all the aircraft were in flight, there was never a "cockpit open" option for me). Actual painting of the canopy was not a problem. I never wound up with paint anywhere other than where it should've been, so the precious details were not obscured by paint. No the horror was attached to the gluing process and this had to be done just right. Stick the cockpit on too soon and the fumes from the liquid poly would fog up the interior, rendering the canopy opaque and the precious details obscured forever. Leave the glue too long before applying and you'd have no fumes, but no adhesion. I never really finessed this part of the process, never really had a set time at which I could reliably stick the plastic together. So this was always something of a lottery. A horrible soul destroying lottery for a young man.
After 5 years I knocked model aircraft on the head and indeed for a short time, did no model paninting at all until I drifted into WH40K. The thing that killed aicraft for me was the 1/33 scale Tornado ADV I got as a Birthday present. This was a combination of "too much work" to be actual fun, poor instrcutions, and the fact that the colour scheme didn't actually correspond with any of my humbrol enamel paints. I had to buy more, then mix them, to get the colours right. This got wearisome, especially as enamel paints are waaaay less forgiving than acrylics, and my enthusiasm never really recovered.
But apparently I still love painting really detailed control panels.
Which is nice.
*I was going to write "my childhood modelling days" but decided this would give the wrong impression.