September 15th, 2011 modeling club meeting

Where: Styrene Cave, Porto Alere, Brazil. When: September 15, 2011 Who: Southern Modelers Express Machine Why: Booze, new kits, new jokes and modeling...

  
I finally managed to attend another of our club meetings. After several misses in a row, it was good to see the folks again. The winter is weakening, but I guess many fellows prefer to stay at home during this time of the year.

When I arrived, Nestor was already there with very interesting news. He arranged a private interview with Luftwaffe night fighter ace Martin Drewes (Major Drewes was a highlight of GPPSD modeling convention last year). He bought copies of interesting documents, signed books, photos, and some of the most fascinating combat tales, told by Drewes himself! Despite his age, Major Drewes is very lucid and active, and remembers details about several missions, aircrafts and people.

Of course Nestor grabbed an old Revell Me-110 from our club display and took it to São Paulo, guess why:


Now that's a valuable model, eh?


Good job, Nestor. Now back to modeling, Luiz brought his own death row, this time formed by a German, a British, and a Japanese battleship. All in 1/700 scale, it is amazing to see the amount of detail you can pump in these little marvels:

Luis used PE for rails and a few other details, and also replaced the anchor chains in two of them. Even OOB, these models are impressive in spite of their small size...


...so much so that even our skeptical André spend a good time admiring Luiz' work:


Bradley made the honors of the crawlers, with this Tamiya 1/35 Cromwell (well, I think it is a Cromwell):


Bradley told us he used four different color (or should I say colour, given the subject?) tones for the main cammo. The effect is very subtle, and fortunately, he is not fond of those super-weathered-looking-like-shit-armor style:

Here is a proud modeler:


Moving on, Fabricio didn't disappoint us with his newest work. This time a fantasy dinosaur or something. If I recall correctly, it is a Andrea item. As you can see, the man has some talent for paleontology-like stuff too:

Fabricio told us that he is trying to paint highlights and lowlights using only his Infinity airbrush, as much as possible. I guess we should got used with his painting skills by now, but he always find a way to surprise us - amazing work:


And Sandro was back with a... well, what did you expect?... another Spitfire. This is a Tamiya 1/48 Spit painted with Sandro's own mixes:

Sandro told us that this one was recovered from his shelf of doom. It is nice to see a model saved with style:

And as always, Blanco actually worked on a model during the meeting. His Tamiya P-47 was wonderfully painted, but he was struggling with the kit's decals. I don't understand how he can eat snacks while handling models without any hint of concern... I simply don't get it:


I made a presentation entitled "Modeling Conventions - Personal impressions about pros & cons, judging, and the Brazilian context". We discussed how conventions are run in other countries, the differences to our own conventions, and several aspects related to judging, as well as modeling industry and how conventions impact on our hobby. It was food for thinking...


We finished off the night talking about what ifs in WWII... Now the official photo. Left to right, standing: Bruno, Jarbas, Sandro, Nestor, Blanco, Rodrigo, Bradley, Luiz and your truly. Seated, left to right: André, Jerônimo and Fabricio (yes, we've hidden the beer):
Rato Marczak © 2011