When I was a kid, I coveted but could not afford metal toy soldiers like those many of us collect today, so I built and painted models to create my miniature army. However, I have not attempted to build or paint a model or figure in more than thirty years.
My son, Alec, however, now 6-1/2, has taken an interest in models (dinosaur and cartoon related, mostly), and asked me (I had originally planned to pay someone who knows what they're doing) to build and paint some Jonny Quest 1:8 scale cold cast models I was able to find him on the internet (he is a huge fan of the classic Jonny Quest cartoons from the mid-1960's - he saw them on Cartoon Network of Boomerang and he's hooked).
So, after a trip to Willis Hobbies (the hobby shop Andy and Gordon Neilson fell in love with at a NY Symposium a few years ago) I sat down with him and we got to work. I followed the instructions religiously, washing the parts, then sanding them before assembling them. I let my son prime the models, and then once he got bored and wandered off the watch the cartoon on DVD, I set to work painting them. Two full days (14 hours hunched over the table) of work later, I was pretty darn satisfied with the outcome. Remember, these are 1:8 scale, much much bigger than anything I had worked with as a kid, so my weaker eyes and less steady hands did not cause as much trouble as I feared.
I asked Brad to post some photos I took of the figures, Dr. Benton Quest, Hadji and Race Bannon. Once he does, let me know what you think.:smile2:
