Metal Earth Models - Monitor and Merrimack

 

I can practically hear the Civil War nerds griping that the ship on the left is actually the CSS Virginia, but I opted to go with the more widely known name because it’s the one Metal Earth used for the name of the two-boat kit.

Of the two, the Monitor was considerably easier to build. The parts in general fit better together, and it required four pages of instructions rather than its partner’s 12. Plus the Monitor was a childhood favorite of mine.

That said, both models had a lot of tiny parts, some of which inevitably hit the floor. So pretty typical Metal Earth experiences.

Leaf Ghost #248

For a ghost that was mostly intended as experimental, I ended up really liking the combination of colors and techniques.

The background is a wet-on-wet blend of Kuretake Gansai watercolor Cadmium Red and Cadmium Yellow. Usually when I do this particular trick, the combination is a color straight out of the pan for the dark squares and watered down for the light squares. The red proved to be somewhat temperamental, but the orange went on more smoothly.

The leaf is the most complex acrylic blend I’ve tried so far. The light squares are a combination of Chromium Oxide Green, Chromium Cerulean Blue, Titanium White and high flow medium. The dark squares are the same mix with three dabs of Bone Black added. I should probably have stopped at two. I’m finding that I get the best illusion of transparency from colors that are just different enough to tell them apart without changing shade or hue beyond that.

The leaf colors are also an experiment for another project, where they’ll probably show up a little lighter and with more medium. 

Leaf Ghost #247

The last thing I’d ever want to do is drag petty politics into the leaf ghost project. And yet given the current thread of the Poe series, I can’t help but note that Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is at this point either a.) hospitalized for a month after a minor fall, b.) already dead but being lied about due to some chicanery with the upcoming election, or c.) merely dead but not yet really most sincerely dead thanks to extraordinary medical intervention.

In any event, M. Valdemar has now passed away.

Or has he? 

Metal Earth Model – Orthanc

I started work on this model literally years ago. Inspired by the non-Metal-Earth kit I recently finished, I thought I’d give this one another try. Though I’m a bit out of practice, it came back to me fairly quickly. 

One thing I noted was that with work like this it actually helped to not listen to music while I was putting it together. Back when I first started, I tried playing soundtracks from the Lord of the Rings movies. I swiftly figured out that most of it was the same three or four themes adapted over and over again for hours on end. When I resumed, I tried some classical favorites. But honestly just quiet worked as well if not better.

Barad Dur probably won’t be the next model I build, but I hope to get to it sooner rather than later. I need it to balance out the space on my bookshelf across from where this one now resides. 

Leaf Ghost #246

Happy Independence Day to those who celebrate. I briefly considered increasing the ghost pace during the last week or so to make it to #250 for this one. But after the excitement of Ghost Week last month, I opted against.

This is the first time in awhile that I’ve done one with radically different background colors. That’s Cadmium Red Medium and Titanium White, both with a little Raw Sienna mixed in for a bit of an antique look. The leaf is Ultramarine Blue and Cerulean Blue Chromium right out of the tube.

I mixed in airbrush thinner to get the paint to distribute more evenly, and I also did two passes on all the squares (except the off white ones) to make the brush strokes harder to see. Still fairly visible on the light blue spots, though even those squares look more even if you’re looking at the actual thing rather than this photo.

The leaf looks a little like a flag and a face, giving a strong sense of pareidolia. 

Model - Plutonium Bomb Core

It’s been quite awhile (literally years) since I’ve built a model. But a friend bought kits of the central components (plutonium core and explosive lens sphere) of a nuclear bomb. 

I’m out of practice, and the glue we started working with was well past its prime. The result was a bit rough. Thankfully it’s a little easier to hide problems on a sphere that can be oriented so the gaps don’t show.

 

Leaf Ghost #245

I was down to two Kuretake colors I hadn’t swatched yet, and I knew I wanted to use at least one of them for today’s ghost. I’m in love with Cobalt Violet, though Imperial Violet also looks like it has a lot of potential.

The big experiment this time around was on the background. The lighter squares were a single application of watered-down Purple, and the darker squares were two passes with the same mix. I have a vague ambition to start doing more monochromatic watercolor work, and this technique will be crucial to making that work.