Thank you for taking an interest in my model making and I hope you find something for you within these pages. I am an architectural model maker and scenery builder with over 30 years of experience (and trial & error!). As with most, I started at an early age with plastic kits and figures and progressed through most periods and scales. I discoverd that I enjoyed constructing buildings, terrain and scenery much more than actually playing with the figures. I have at various times, been a member of local wargame clubs and have entered figure painting competitions at local and national shows.
I started building scenery and terrain many years ago with my father. Back in the early 1970's we used to build with matchbox wood - balsa being expensive or hard to get - and used shoe polish to stain the wood! Also, cigarette packet plastic was used to represent glass and painted sawdust provided the groundwork. Things have changed a lot since then in the availability of items for the model maker!
My early influences include the late Ian Weekley and the range of fantastic scratchbuilt buildings he produced - I still have all the articles he wrote for Miniature Wargames magazine from the early eighties onwards. Also Basil Fletcher of Fortress Models produced some great articles showing differing styles of walls, doors, windows etc - basically anything architectural that would be useful for the model maker.
I believe passionately that we have such fantastically sculpted and painted figures availablef or wargaming nowadays that it is such a waste not to therefore have the most highly detailed and (more importantly) realistic scenery and terrain to fight over. I despair at seeing beautifully painted figures being let down by a plain green base for example. Or buildings badly painted or lacking detail. Remember, the majority of space on a wargames table is not taken up by the figures.
I have to say that when it comes down to scenery our cousins in the railway modelling world regularly turn out beautifully built and detailed terrain - I aim to produce the same standard for wargamers.
Nowadays I would say that my biggest influences are companies like WETA workshop in New Zealand who created the models for the Lord Of The Rings films, Industrial Light & Magic who have created many models for films including Star Wars etc and also Pinewood Studios in the UK who have been creating fantastic scenery for productions like Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet etc since the 1960's. I hope you like my models as much as I like making them!
Paul
