Tuesday, April 2, 2013

Is That All?


Is that IT?  Is that all I have to show for myself?  I'm afraid so.  One cycad from a Tamiya "Tyrannosaurus Diorama Set" is about all I've managed to do, modeling-wise, in a while.  I'm afraid I've painted myself into the "too many long projects all at the same time" corner.  An AMT 1/25th scale Ford stake truck that seems to absorb as many hours as I can put into it, and STILL be nowhere near completion.  The aforementioned Tyrannosaurus diorama, which keeps running into difficulty because I keep painting the dinosaur in various color schemes other than grey, and I never like them, so I strip the model and reprime it and start over...

I'm not even finished with the cycad, shown above, which consists of about four plastic parts, some paper-wrapped wire, and crinkly green crepe paper that you have to cut out of a sheet.  It all comes in the kit, and the paper leaves actually look pretty good, but it took a week for my eyes to uncross afterwards.  Alas, however, the paper is two-toned, light green on one side and dark green on the other, and guess who glued the leaves to the wire armatures upside-down?  DOH!  Maybe mine is a rare pale-green cycad...

I've been going pretty strong in the areas of buying new kits and looking at the parts and leafing through the instructions, but not so efficient at actually finishing anything.  It didn't help that we had a very cold and wet winter (by Arizona standards) and I've been spending most of my time lately trying to get ahead of the colossal growth of weeds.

But I wrote a stern letter to myself demanding more output, and I'm confident that it'll work.