Nerdy Mcnerdface.

Explaining that odd picture.

A few posts back I suggested that this blog was going in a different direction and at the same time I was going even further my own way by starting on a writing project in a completely different genre, at the end of that piece I included a photograph of a small miniature figurine that was also inspired by the original artwork, which I think came from an artist name of Mike Francina. Here it as again as a reminder – for size and scale I believe the piece is in 32mm scale.

The immediate story here is that I have a Pinterest feed and several weeks ago I received a notification with a piece of artwork from the aforementioned Mike Francina – the genre seemed to be somewhere in the mix of Gothic sci-fi meets dystopian ‘Grimdark’ future wargaming as what followed the original artwork was a series of miniature sculpts that have made it into model form and now, as I understand it, have been the subject of a successful crowdfunding campaign to make them commercially available.

The longer story (historical in my case) is that more than 50 years ago I was a complete nerd of a model maker and historical wargamer. For my era I was ‘quite good’ but that’s by the standard of the times and things have really moved on, I think as a direct influence of the internet and hobbyists who take the time to video and explain the more modern techniques. I haven’t built a model or painted a miniature in 50 years plus small change but that all changed this winter when I gathered together some scrap in my workshop and started to build a scrap model building – so far mostly scrap plywood from my boat build, wooden stirring sticks acquired from the cafe and some thicker aluminium foil taken from a food tray : I won’t include a photograph because even it’s unfinished state it’s not as competent a build as I was capable of back in the day.

The intermediate story is that I enjoy the product of other art/modelmaking genres and one of those is model architecture and I note that I am drawn to the slightly odd and weird that might come with strange back stories – if they were ever written or imagined…..thus

I quite fancy building this one and I already have an imagined backstory that explains it

The side story to all of this is that about 5 years ago I became mentally taken up with Canadian psychologist Dr Peterson’s work on personality based on the Big 5 traits model and around that time I completed his online traits test – I honestly think that it is’ ‘straight’ science and not some of psychobabble. Whatever you make of it I found it extremely useful but only slightly surprising because I already guessed at extreme introversion, fairly high compassion and so on : what I didn’t know, but should have guessed, was that I had high trait open-ness which basically translates best as high creative drive and interest. High openness doesn’t specifically refer to a particular interest, in fact it can point to having many but it can mean needing some creative outlet. As a kid mine was modelmaking and later in life it has meant both boatbuilding and then writing about it and of course my written blog.

Blog time (late today).

Iv’e just come in from my hour of walking, up through the woods, past the old mines and then home via a couple of miles of Cornish lanes, I was hoping to find some natural materials to use in my current modelmaking project but came back instead with having worked out how to build the upside down tower in model form -a good friend of mine once said that’s a good result because the creative part is the working out, the rest is just twirling spanners (he used to build custom motorcycles for a living).

I came back in the house saying ’52’ because that was the number of today’s walk – 52nd walk out of 100 planned. That represents the necessary discipline of needing to lose weight and gain fitness. While I may have been a lot more enthusiastic in the deep past about going to the gym and pumping weights that was only because fitness and strength came a lot easier when I was younger but the ‘reason why’ comes easily again as I get used to riding the trike – I had my longest excursion so far and finished by hurtling down ‘heart attack hill’ at greater than the signed speed limit – in fact a less that committed car went to overtake me and realised that he either couldn’t or shouldn’t, whatever, it made my week with the trike.

I should add that my life is obviously changing once again just as it did more than fifty years ago when I abruptly gave up modelmaking quite literally overnight – my excuse was that I was no longer in the awful place that my school had become ( the violence went ballistic) and instead had my first proper job and discovered the combination of women, beer, motorcycles and rock climbing that would carry me through the next decade. Now, I need a highly disciplined side to help me with the sugar habit that has plagued my life, I already have a functionally useful hobby with building the boat and now setting up the trike but I feel as though I could let my mind ‘off the leash’ a bit and not stick to the same genre of blogging where basically I write about which part I have marked out, cut and shaped and then glued to another bit. Instead I am writing short sections of my speculative story and in time they may go together in sections and create a whole new page in the blog.

This is how much the whole hobby has moved along….ok, so it’s 50 years since I put brush to plastic but the new technique seems to remove more than it is to add layers of paint.