March Update

Stitching, Crafting & Writing - a busy March

Tapestry

The last few updates have concentrated on the Doctor Who Tapestry. I've been keeping a record of how long the work on the ancient one and the background area for him has taken based upon the playing time of the audio books I have been listening to whilst stitching. 

The previous post had the time at 43 hours 20 minutes. Additional work undertaken since then.

I completed most of the work on the Ancient One whilst listening to the first of the two new Target Novelisation Audio books: The TV Movie & Dalek a total of 9 ¾ hours. Then I moved on to the background. Backgrounds need to be simple, so I’m going for the green gas cloud that was used to kill the Ancient One at the end. This also includes binding the edge of the material. This takes some time. This was started listening to the other new novelisation audio books:  The Crimson Horror and the Witchfinders.

Doctor Who – The TV Movie by Gary Russell

Read by Dan Starkey, BBC Studios (5 hours)

 

Doctor Who – Dalek by Robert Shearman

Read by Nicholas Briggs, BBC Studios (4 ¾ hours)

 

Doctor Who – The Crimson Horror by Mark Gatiss

Read by Catrin Stewart & Dan Starkey, 

BBC Studios (4 ½ Hours)

 

Doctor Who - The Witchfinders by Jay Wilkinson

Read by Sophie Aldred, BBC Studios (4 hours, 10 mins)

 

So here I am, working with 20 shades of green to try and blend the smoke swirling up around the Ancient One. 

After another 8 ½ hours of the latest Big Finish Doctor Who releases.

Doctor Who – Stranded 2 

Doctor Who – The Lost Stories 6.1 Return of the Cybermen

Doctor Who – The Lost Stories 6.2 The Doomsday Contract

Bringing the time spent on this one character to over 61½ hours so far.

 

Next Tapestry Update

Building the Gateway

This has taken a backseat over the last couple of months again, but I have managed to make a little progress as the below photos will show. The left side now has basic wood and Daz clay coverage. I will get the basic coverage done before trying to clean up and add any details.

 Previous update

Writing.

As you will know, I seldom reveal too much about writing projects whilst they are still in development.

All I will say is that work on the new werewolf trilogy is going well, we are proofreading book two and I’m making final edits to the text for book three.

Book three has had some additional writing added to it, so I returned to the original notebooks, pulled out the pencils and got scribbling.

First draft is always handwritten in pencil. This filled the second skull book that was used for book three so I had to take up a new notebook, not having another of the skull books I found this nice little denim covered book in my collection of notebooks to use for the next 20K or so words.

Hopefully, I’ll be revealing more details of this project soon.

 

A few hours later

After several weeks of staring at computers screens all day, every day,  my brain finally went flip this week and refused to start up one morning, a deep thudding resonated throughout my skull resulting in me having to take a day off.

Surfacing late in the afternoon I avoid the monitor screens and took a couple of hours of just sticking wood onto to cardboard, smearing PVA glue everywhere and then followed that up with some DAS putty crafted to look like stonework.

In other words, a little more finally got done on the stone archway project. Photos below.

Of course this is going to be a location setting from either the Karl trilogy, or maybe from the new work that is currently in progress...

Next update on this project

Getting back to it

After bit of a break from the latest model, here is the current state, as it was left post #Lockdown900 (I've seriously lost count now, some say we're now on 3, I thought it was number 4, so I'm going with the arbitrary number 900, which The Doctor seems to use for their age now, irrespective of which regeneration it is).

As an aside I'm also over on Instagram now as djkettlety2

Update: Didn't get as much done as I had hoped, it seems it was too cold for the glue to set properly, everything just kept sliding off

#Lockdown modelling part one

It's been some time since I last posted, but I thought during this lockdown period I should make an effort to do so.

First though TOMORROW 2PM UK TIME - don't miss Fantom's THIRD, yes THIRD, online Doctor Who Convention event. The theme this time is Cybermen, and the crew will also be there discussing their favourite Cyberman design, you might even spot me in there. That's on their YouTube Channel tomorrow.

As I'm still working full time from home, I don't have a lot of crafting time, and most of my tools, materials and paint are down in storage. So anything I do will be limited.


I've got my hands on some PVA glue and a delivery today from The Works, bless them, has given me some Daz putty, brushes and paint to play with too.











So when the pollen count come down a bit I'll be tackling the garden, in the meantime I've started work on this, not quite sure what it's going to end up being yet, but a shape is already starting to form, all recycled materials that I've reusing instead of throwing them into the rubbish.


I was going to go for a deserted town look, but having got the tissue box as one of the key parts of the build this part at least will have to be an old world building I think.

I have a small stock of old coffee sticks still here which didn’t get moved to storage with the rest of the materials so old stone and wood will be the basis of this build. I have some firework sticks as well but no sandpaper to clean them up with or the small craft saw to cut them, so the old timber frame building might be a bit limited.

I’m also still working on the Doctor Who tapestry in the evenings, I’ll post some update to that soon and some writing projects also need my attention. Hopefully more on those soon as well.

June Update

Thought I would share a quick update on some of the models that have been gathering on the workbench.

The four larger additions to the coffee stick ghost town have all now been undercoated and have received their first round of brown shading, the burnt umber & black mix. Next stage for these will be the burnt umber layer.

The other smaller buildings are beginning to start taking shape. These have all been given roofs which have been tiled with tiny pieces of cut cardboard. Chimneys cut from foam board off-cuts which will be covered in putty and the rest wooden exterior walls.

And finally this one, with cardboard shuttered windows – still not quite sure about them, but we’ll see. The wooden overlapped roof has now been finished.

And so it begins

Now that I have finally succeeded in the annual rediscovery of the back garden, hacking through the undergrowth that looks like a scene from the 'Lift After Humans' DVDs, I can venture forth and start sanding down and painting some of the models built during the cold dark days of winter.

This is not this year's photo, but the scene before and after from a couple of years ago, however it was very much the same.

Hopefully from now on I will not be delayed posting as the problems with syncing the photos from the phone to the laptop have mysteriously gone away (after trying many online resolutions regarding turning settings off and on, deleting profiles and sacrificing chickens - none of which worked) it just started to work without any prompting, just as I was about to resort to manually transferring them.

The first three buildings have been rubbed down and had final fixes made to them, and two of them have now received their base coat, when this is dry I'll check for gaps where crevices need to be touched up before starting the first round of varying shades of brown.

Little Houses Part One

Getting too large

One thing I've noticed recently is that the models are getting larger. There are not many basic homes coming out of the coffee stick ghost town production run. Aside from using random boxes used as the basic structure, I think I'm getting larger in order to get through the stockpile of sticks that are threatening to take over the kitchen.

It also means that to do any modelling starts to become a larger undertaking, shifting boxes and large models around before I can begin. I started, a few weeks ago, to prepare small boxes whilst waiting for the microwave or kettle to do their thing.

I've decided to keep the models from these boxes small, and to tile the roofs with small card squares like on some other models rather than use the wood. I should be able to work on these quicker, see results faster which might encourage me to work on them in odd moments rather than put off the modelling until I have a longer free period.

This small collection of buildings will be more basic and homely, and I have a game project in mind for them.
But that's for later. In the meantime, let's get started sticking the boxes together and getting the roofs on.

To be continued...

Little House on the Pile

A quick photo update this time of another of the coffee stick and box buildings for the Ghost Town collection. This is one I started towards the end of last year, which has finally reached the stage where it is ready to be sanded down. Like the other three that reached this stage over the winter months it will be boxed up until the warmer weather allows me to do this outside in comfort. Once that is done it will be painted up. Looks like there will be a lot of brown paint used as soon as the warmer weather arrives.

I like to try experimenting with each model in some way. 

This time instead of the vertical planks I usually use for the roofs of the buildings I took smaller random sized planks and applied them horizontally.  Maybe they should have been slightly layered. Although I think the effect has been achieved.

Happy New Year

More boxes from America

Before the sun sets on 2015 and the year is shoved off into the archives of history, I thought I’d give a quick update on progress for the latest models in the coffee stick ghost town. 

To avoid making this post too picture heavy I have set up another page with some more photos which can be accessed here.

Just before I finished work for the Christmas holiday a couple more boxes were added to my collection by work colleagues, you’ll notice alongside the Twinkies are now Ho Hos and Ding Dongs. 

Christmas boxes added

Christmas itself gave a couple of interesting boxes which I’ll be using in the New Year on new models.

This pate box will be used for a roof piece of some kind.

I got a little time to work on the three models in progress, these have now reached a finished state as far as the shape and applying the sticks are concerned. 

WIP: boxes being turned inside out

They need to be rubbed down with sandpaper then painted; I think I’ll save this for the spring when it will be more comfortable working outside to sand the models. In the meantime I’ll add a couple more to the collection.

WIP: adding tube supports
before closing up

I would also like to thank everyone who downloaded a copy of 

Karl – Birth of Mystery during the period we set the book free on Amazon’s Kindle bookshop. I hope you enjoy it and if so please leave a review to help others find the adventure.

That only leaves me to wish all readers of the blog a Happy New Year.

Extra Photos

And some early shots of the basic boxes joined for the next couple of models. 

Still need to add extra shaping to the roof areas.

Rubbish Re-used Part Three

Another photo update showing further progress on the new Ghost Town models built only from recycled boxes, card and coffee sticks. The first model is now awaiting a quick rub down with sand paper before undercoating. I’ll tackle this job once a couple more models are ready and do them together.

Model two is this cycle is progressing well, this looks a bit like a church now it has started to take shape.

Model three has been put together from more boxes and the roof, as before, created from Amazon package card. I find these quite good to work with.

I now have a whole box of boxes awaiting treatment, so I think it’s time to allow some to head back to the recycle bin for now; otherwise I won’t be able to move in the kitchen. However, in honour of the many readers of this blog in the US, imported at great expense I hope you notice the Twinkies boxes in this collection ;-)

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