As I said in an earlier post, I am a linear sort of chap, so no work whatsoever has taken place on the Martha figure while I work on the Doctor. On that figure, however, work has continued apace.

I am now at the stage where the glue needs to dry before I add some filler around the coat collar and a couple of seams and then tidy up the base painting before working on fiddly detail such as aging the coat and trainers, deepening the shadows and highlighting the buttons. In due course, there will be a sonic screwdriver, too, but that will have to wait until the figure itself is complete.

Here is a picture of the figure at its current stage of completion posed against the TARDIS I finished a week or so ago. The final position of the figure will be more to the left, with Martha walking around the side, but this gives an idea of how it is developing.



More pictures behind the cut, for those as is interested: ( Read more... )
Still a fair amount of work to be done, but we're getting there!

The final few pictures to complete the TARDIS build.

Now I really have to get on with assembling and painting the Doctor and Martha. I guess that I shall bore you all rigid with those in due course, too.



The final model TARDIS. Assembly complete, dry brush highlights added, decals and weathering applied.
( the final stages below the cut )

Next weekend, when I have some more natural light, before I continue, I guess.

When I was a kid I never read the instructions that came with model kits. I would cheerfully glue them together in whatever fashion seemed most appropriate and generally that worked. I mean there’s only so many ways the pieces of a Spitfire will fit together, so who needs to look at diagrams (other than to get a cheap adolescent thrill from the instruction “insert male piece A into female piece B” –fnur, fnur)?

As I got older and the model kits got more complicated - HMS Victory, the Cutty Sark et al, I would deign to dip into the instructions for the more fiddly bits, but large chunks would still get slung together regardless.

These days I rarely make model kits, but when I do, I employ a combination of experienced arrogance and a meek thumbing through the instructions to work out what the next odd-shaped piece of plastic is supposed to be and where it’s supposed to go (I can still do an Airfix Spitfire without help, though). I have long since learned to keep the glue well away from transparent plastic, too.

I arrived home last night to finds that the “Welcome Aboard” TARDIS, Doctor and Martha Airfix kit I had won on eBay had arrived¹. You wouldn’t believe how complex a kit can be produced to assemble a geometric box and two figures. I’m not sure what the level of detail would have done to my 11 year old brain had it been available back then, but I know what it’s doing to my brain now.



Suffice it to say that I shall be using the instruction book, both for assembly and for the painting guide. Hopefully when I have finished the Doctor will not look like Heath Ledger’s take on The Joker.


¹Thank you, Parcel Farce for leaving it in the passageway, open to the elements and hidden behind the gate where it might have been crushed, rained on or stolen.