Model Citizen

Had a great time at Memro on the weekend. What is Memro? It's a science fiction/fantasy convention that takes place a few times every year at the NEC in Birmingham. Website: Here

Waiting at the gates

Right from the word go it's fun. There are two types of tickets. The main ticket let's you in when the gates open at 11, but you can also buy an early bird ticket that get's you access at 9, 2 hours before the horde decends. The advantages of this are you get to see the opening procession, as Darth Vader along with about 20 Stormtroopers, Boba Fett, Tusken raiders, Alien Marines, Super Heroes, Matrix characters arrive to take up position at the barriers. It's these guys who make sure you got your ticket!

Also, getting in early means you miss the clamour to get autographs. There's a wide variety of stars every time, I usually look beforehand at who I'd like to see and then get the autographs first. this time round I wanted to meet Lou Ferringo, I was a great fan of The Hulk when I was a kid, and Lou still has that crazy Hulk look!!!!
This is Lou with my son Nathan.



I also wanted to see little Kenny Baker. Meeting anyone from the original Star Wars trilogy is like brushing up against a genuine slice of history. He was great fun, but took a real shine to my sister....it was hard seperating them, the more they talked the more squiggles and beep-beep's he was drawing on my autograph LOL.
This is Kenny with my daughter Elionwy.



My sister Alison got all excited when she saw Kiran Shah, she'd seen something recently with him in which had scared her husband, so of course she got an autograph for him.



Also spotted there was Flash Gordon, pictured seated alongside Dale and Prince Vultan. Some of these guys look nothing like how they used too. So, when you've collected all your autographs, it's time to do some serious shopping!



Here are the kids in front of a typical stall, you can pretty much find anything here, but a plan before helps as there is so much gear here you could easily spend all your cash in the first 5 mins.



Also, as you walk around, you'll find familiar faces (and masks) walking around with you. it's great to stop them and have a picture with them. Here's Spiderman, I also saw Trinity, Batman, a Dalek and various bad Jedi.



These guys were making a lot of noise, Red Dwarf still has a huge following. There was also a big Bond presence with 3 Miss Moneypenny's amongst others.



An absolutely great day out, I should have taken more pictures, but it's all a bit overwhelming and I forgot LOL. But there were some great modelling stalls I should have photographed as well as more of the stars. Still, there's always next time, which for me will probably be next year when my wallets recovered.

This is a real blast from the past. My sister was over last Friday and she bought with her all my folks old photo albums (we're working on a 50th Wedding Anniversary suprise for them). Anyway, as we're hunting through the albums I saw this:



This was taken back in the 70's on my bed. It's an Eagle transporter from Space 1999 obviously doing some work with an Apollo moon landing vehicle and some Airfix 1/72 astronauts.
Those were the golden years of modelling. In those days I would get my pocket money, save up then nip into the "Make A Model" shop in Newport South Wales. You'd get a ticket on the bus showing a little man saying "Go by bus" and it would cost 5p.
I always chose sci-fi kits, I remember I had these kits above as well as the old MPC R2 D2, C3PO and Darth Vader with his glow in the dark lightsaber. I also had some Captain Scarlet kits, basically anything that looked spacey.
Then, I would rush home, go up to my box bedroom, get on the bed, put the kit together with some airfix cement. Paint it after borrowing my dads Humbrol enamels and have it all finished in time for Basil Brush and Dr. Who.
When I finally left home in 89 my Dad with (with my acceptance) boxed up all my old models (except for a few which by then were starting to look quite good and I gave away to some friends) and gave the lot to a young boy down the road.
The bedspread did'nt last long either as I later spilt red gloss all over it!

it's made me come over all remeniscent seeing this old picture. I even remember the camera. A Kodak 110 that I got for Xmas. Ah, those golden carefree days :)

How do you mix paint for airbrushing, and what do you use?

I keep seeing this same question over and over on different modelling forums. It's a recurring theme, and though I'm no expert I'll tell you what I do.

The paint I use for all my modelling is MP Paints, from Gamecraft (I could'nt find a website for them but they are based in Liverpool and there address can be easily found on the net), I buy mine from D9 Models in Newport, South Wales.
I know others who swear by other brands like Tamiya, Vallerjo or Mr Colour, but I'm going to tell you what I do with MP, though I expect the formula would be the same for the rest too.

The actual paints come in nice screw top bottles with a huge variety which means I hardly do much mixing and use a lot of the paint straight from the bottle, they also have a range of inks. The bottles are great for reuseing to store your mixed colours in, though I find they last so long it's easy to run out of jars. Now I've spent hours looking for small inexpensive jars for keeping my mixes in, they do sell spare jars in hobby stores, but I found they are either the same cost as the paint or more expensive! This seems ridiculous to me, why would you pay the same price for a small jar empty as one full of paint? Incidentally, MP Paints are £1 a pot.
So after much searching the result I came up with was Sample Bottles, yes that's right, for doing samples in LOL, you can buy them in 10's, 20's and 30's on eBay for around £6-7. I think I got 30 for £12. This worked out at the cheapest bottle I could find (pictured at the top on the left).

Incidentally I keep one of those sample Bottles full of washing up liquid, when I've finished painting and cleaned my brush I dip the end in the liquid and it helps keep a nice tip to the brush as well as look after it.

OK, so for mixing for my airbrush it's pretty simple. I have a bottle of water that has boiled water (now cooled) in it, this I use for the mixing rather than straight from the tap. It's the equivalent of distilled water with impurities boiled out of it. I roughly mix 50-50 paint and water, though sometimes a little less water. You should get a pretty runny consistency, too this I add a couple of small drops of the washing up liquid to help break up surface tension. Some people sieve there mixes but I've never bothered.
What your aiming for in spraying is a nice fine spray, not watery that leaves droplets on the surface, but not too dry that your airbrush clogs up every few minutes. Also remember that your not going to get a clean finish in one spray, especially if it's a darker colour (lighter are more forgiving).
One tip is to have a bit of card next to you and before you spray the model, just put your finger down on the trigger whilst aimed at the card, but not back, any droplets on the tip will fly off onto the card rather than your model.
I keep a hairdryer next to my spraying area and when I've given it a light coat, I give it a blast of heat (you can usually see the paint drying very quickly) then re-coat. I might do this 3-7 times to get a nice flat finish.
I have put inks neat through the airbrush, but found this can be a bit hit and miss, with glossy finishes where you dont want them and sometimes the ink will not dry very well. I've also tried mixing ink and paint and water together, but again this can be hit and miss, so I "go for what I know" and now just use paint.

Well, I hope that helps some. As usual because this is'nt a definitive tutorial, and things may be different for your paints and airbrush, my advice is to head on over to The Clubhouse where you are almost gauranteed someone has the same set-up as you.
Good luck spraying!