All in all a tiring yet very enjoyable time away in London with Peter Bell and Tracy White, great laugh were had, great food was eaten and Salute was once again brilliant, this was my third visit, but the first time of travelling up the day before and staying the night, made the experience all the more relaxing, travelling up and back on the day leaves you drained.
I managed to waste....errrm strategically allocate my money on plenty more resin as usual but the highlight for me was meeting a lot of people I only know via internet forums such as Platoon Britannica.
The agreement/bet I had with James at Infamy was that I would enter The Toad into the painting competition at Salute or give him my reaver titan......I was determined not to do that. Of course there was no need for motivation to paint the Toad as Infamy models are lovely sculpts, it was merely a driving force for me to enter the competition as it acts as a bit of free advertising for James and if you ever meet the guy he is wonderful and equally as mental as me, my own personal opinion of competitions are neither here nor there, being a buddhist I shy away from the overly competitive nature of them and they tend to breed ego.
peek-a-boo Tracy I photobombed joooo!
Upon arrivial I took the Toad for James to have a look at as he had been itching to see it for ages, David Soper and John Keys were also there with Chee-Chee and The Toad respectively. James gave the big thumbs up so from that point on I was happy no matter what happened in the day, bringing happiness to others is what makes this life worth living. Then off to enter models along with John Keys. Had a quick look in the cabinets at some of the entries, there was some not so great stuff but there was also some very impressive stuff, didn't hold out much chance of placing and told Pete I reckoned I would be happy with a first round win......Some hours of that previously mentioned reallocation of wealth occured and much meeting of people both old and new.......
Time flew by, suddenly got a text saying they were annoucing the winners of the painting and I needed to be there....thought nothing of it and wandered over, by that time it was heaving around the stage and found myself over to one side totally unable to hear the PA system and who had won what, thought bugger this and wandered around the other side of the competition area to pick up my model where I bumped into Tommie Soule and Scott Hockley had a bit of a chinwag with them, then said better pick up my model.....Scott looked at me confused and said
"you have won"
my response
"are you having a laugh?"
had totally missed my name, missed a tonne of texts and phone calls from friends and felt a prized ass.....
So I am still unaware of what I had won but apparently 1st place in Sci-Fi single, however when I went to pick up the trophy one of the guys working the competition had given my 1st place trophy to the guy in 2nd place. Everything was a little surreal, did I win? didn't I? do I exist? is this the matrix? all that kind of crap :) But the guy in charge Lawrence Widdecombe said to leave it to him and he would sort it out which I am sure he will, although it would be nice to have the trophy to go with the model it is fairly unimportant, I just feel sadness that I helped to mess up the award ceremony (I am sure there will be some people that thought I did it on purpose but i am just blessed with divvy-itus), but immense joy that it worked out so well for James and Infamy Miniatures.
I was really taken back by how well the paint job was received by my fellow painters, some of which I hold in the highest regard.
I have two regrets about the day, 1 the award ceremony balls up and 2 my mate Pete's stunning russian gangster bust not getting anything and I truely beleive that it deserved something.
If I was to paint the model again there wouldn't be much I would change, other than the colour of the engine, I would have preferred it to be green. I would have also like to have added some more contrast colours to the base but all in all I am pleased with the final result (not the winning, but the model) it ended up looking true to the picture of the Peaky Blinders and the feeling of a Docklands gangster came over well in my mind. I might be talking crap but anyway.....
I GET TO PAINT MY REAVER TITAN AND OMFG IT IS BIG
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