Painting the Modelu HO Scale Transitional Era Crew Bundle - Part 4 The Blues

Carol Highsmith photo from the Library of Congress

Sometimes you just come to a crossroads and you need to stop over thinking things and get some paint on the models. I picked Reaper Heather Blue (9231) for the base color on the shirt and Reaper Ezren Blue (89528).

I thinned them just a little bit and went to work. Pretty pleased with the result, the Ezren Blue dried a little darker than it was looking. Looks like a reasonable shade for newer denim. The Heather Blue isn't a bad start for a blue shirt color. I want to try a wash at this point, put haven't quite decided what color to use yet.

Painting the Modelu HO Scale Transitional Era Crew Bundle - Part 3

A study in blue. I'm trying to figure out the next set of colors for the transition era clue and without a doubt blue is the color to use. Between shirts, jeans and overalls it all just screams to be some shade of blue.

I grabbed a bunch of Reaper paints and decided that the easiest way to figure it was to do some swatches. Here is what I came up with.

After all that, I'm still not sure what I'm going to use. I guess I'll study it for a bit.

Cartoon Wednesday

 

Jigsaw Puzzles - Christmas Puzzles Next One Up

The parade of puzzles continues with "The Pine" this is a picture I took about 40 years ago when we hiked up to the 4th of July Mine above Eldora CO. The original is a slide that I had converted to a jpg file. I should have run it through some editing software first but I can do that with the next print I have made from this file.

I decided to do a more start to finish on this one.

This time around I opted to work my way around and do the entire edge first. I have been experimenting with the best way to start and puzzle and this seems to work the best for me.
Top Edge

Adding the left edge

Working across the bottom

And back up to the top.

And this is what's left after I have cut the edge away.

This one came in at 173 pieces (which is right in the range I was shooting for), it could have been a couple more but I decided to not cut any of the whimsies into multiple parts. I think this one is going to be a pretty hard to complete there isn't a whole lot to distinguish one tree from another.

Jigsaw Puzzles - Christmas Puzzles Started

I have finished off two Christmas puzzles. Not terribly happy with some of the cuts on the first one, so I may just hold that one back as a display puzzle. Here is the one I finished this week. This one came in at 216 pieces, which means I'm cutting some of the pieces to small. I'm shooting for 180 - 200 pieces for 8"x10" puzzles so I'm overthinking things a bit at the scroll saw. I use some templates I created for the "whimsies" other than that everything is cut freehand.

This is a Carol Highsmith photo from the Library of Congress. She donated her entire portfolio to the LOC.

After I finish a cutting there is a lot of sanding to be done on the back before I can wrap it up. Sometimes its easier to see the shapes from this side.