The Outrider

The Outrider is a craft I really love, designed by Doug Chiang for the Shadows of the Empire project. It was a ship I chose as one of my first attempts at scratchbuilding. I made it out of cardboard and kit parts so it became a little flimsy quite fast but I enjoyed the experience and the learning curve it provided.
The first image is a primitive period render and the second a pretend magazine article based on how it might have been presented in something akin to Starlog in days of yore.

Wanting to improve and build a better model, the last montage is a current work in progress of a new scratchbuild of the ship utilizing standard styrene. I have to say I am a very slow builder and taking my time on this but I hope to continue it sometime soon.

Revell Snowspeeder

This is the Revell Snowspeeder, smaller than the MPC edition and a snap kit. I enjoyed it a lot and wanted to try something a little different for the markings and had a go at a white scheme rather then the known red and gray type.

Baseball

Old Paper

Boxcar

Theoden

Citadel's mounted Theoden figure. I got this to add to the Warriors of Rohan figures. You can maybe make out the Aragorn figure in the background.

Annatar

Following on with the Sauron build, I came across this Citadel kit of Sigvald the Magnificent for their Warhammer line. I thought it might make an interesting stand in for Annatar, a guise of Sauron.

Outpost

Sauron

Another Citadel kit. This time a work in progress of their Sauron figure which captures the climax of the Last Alliance of Men and Elves and comes with figures of Isildur and Elendil.

Warg

This piece is a Citadel Miniatures Warg Riders kit for their War of the Ring line of Gaming miniatures. Wargs are essentially Wolves. I wanted very much to expand on its look by trying to add fur to the body. At first I merely added some over its shoulder areas, but I decided to pursue it further into a full body coating. It's going to require some trimming and finessing, but overall I'm really happy with the results on this prototype. It's a six mounted figure set and I intend to harness the technique on the other five.

Aragorn

Another WIP, this time of Aragorn.

Treebeard

A work in progress of Citadel Miniatures Treebeard kit which comes with a Merry and Pippin figure.

HMS Iron Duke

Airfix 1:600 Iron Duke kit

Theotokos

These pictures are a copy of an icon known as the Theotokos of Vladimir. Though I neither knew this or its history. I come to it fresh and took these quick pictures as I was quite enamored by the piece and struck by the artists style of depicting expression and emotion. I love the sorrow and narrowness of style and particularly the geometry the artist used to communicate the foresight of the mother figure, with the richness, roundness and comforting response of the child. It is almost as if the child figure also has foresight, but in looking away from us and only towards his mother, it gives me the impression that he is seeing further into the future and giving her a personal communication to remain strong and faithful to the mysteries and expressing a personal comfort that it will be alright to her, while her eyes, towards us, keep us in the present.
A lot of icons generally depict an almost mature looking child, almost a miniaturized adult in these types of paintings, but I feel the artist here accomplishes a successfully more childlike face that still has a maturity about it.
Even the decay does nothing to diminish the power of the artists work to me.
The other thing that drew me to it is the anamorphic distortion synonymous with this type of art. Even though the area is missing, the child is out of proportion (I suspect he has an elongated neck) and he is almost fish like in the elongations of his arms and torso. But even so, I think it adds to the overall mysticism, as if, from our perspective, we are seeing into a different world and in adjusting to it visually, creates the natural distortion to do so, much like trying to see thru the lens of water.

Legend has it that the portrait of the mother was painted from life by St. Luke. But I think you get a sense of why that legend exists to so many people based on the power and style of the portrait and its wonderfully expressive faces and the contours and depths of the use of light and shadow. Such beautiful ideas and faces looking from, as far as I can find out, the 12th century.

Cartoons of War

I was building a model of a Messerschmitt Bf1009D which, for the kit edition I found, was marked as one of the craft affiliated with the Spanish Civil War.
While applying the decals, I was most struck by this marking, a seemingly innocuous cartoon of a Mickey Mouse type figure. I have absolutely no knowledge of its meaning or what it represented to the forces that used it beyond being just a mascot of choice for the pilot. But it really got me thinking about how such a cartoon form of painting struck a chord with me to the approach Picasso would later use to depict the atrocities in his painting of Guernica.

The Blue Drape

Goldfish

Frank Frazetta

February 9, 1928 – May 10, 2010

nytimes news feed

Juvinalia III

Steam Tank

Citadels Steam Tank from their Warhammer range. I built it without it's Empire affiliations and crests because I love the design and concept so much in this base form.

Frames