The Tray of Shame

Having now spent the best part of two weeks in imposed self-isolation, two things have become clear.

Firstly, until you have a surfeit of “free time” you don’t realise just how many jobs around the house you have put off until you had the time to do it. Luckily, your partner will kindly remind you of this, and handily write these all down on a list and pin this in a prominent place, as a daily reminder…

Secondly, until you have the time to assess you collection, you’re probably not quite aware of just how many unfinished miniatures &/or hobby projects you have.

Fortunately, I don’t have nuns following me about, ringing the Shame Bell. What I do have is… The Tray of Shame.

As I have no permanent hobby space, all my paints and the figures I am currently working on are all contained in a handy desk tray, which means that it can be carried to wherever I’ve set up my paint station. The space not taken up by paint has enough room for approximately 30 28mm miniatures – which is a reasonable amount and means that as one set of figures is drying, can work on something else or if you have a specific colour open, you can paint all the red bits (on the figures that have red bits) in one go.

The general idea is that you have all the figures for a particular project in the one place, so that you’re only painting the figures you need, rather than endless serried ranks of everything you own, stretching far away into the distance and making you cry…

And once the miniatures are finished, they are allowed to leave the Tray of Shame.

So, let’s take a look at some of the inmates of the Tray, all from the current Doctor Who project, and see how far they are progressing.

Firstly, the Ur-Ghuls, as mentioned in my previous post;

These plastic figures come in two parts – head and body – and two different poses. They have been assembled, the bases given a light covering of sand, then undercoated in White, followed by a base coat of GW Corax White, which is actually a pale grey, as you can see from the picture above. As I am currently contemplating their final colour scheme, this is as far as I’ve got with them.

Next, my Weeping Angels; 

The two on the left are the rubbery figures from the front of Doctor Who Adventures and the ones on the right are Reaper Bones Angels of Sorrow. Whilst different styles, both sets have been painted in exactly the same way, white undercoat, Corax White base coat, then a wash of a darker grey, which, whilst partially dry, was given a thorough brushing with a dry brush. This has a similar effect to dry-brushing, except rather than adding paint to the figure, you’re actually just taking paint off the raised parts, allowing the base colour to show through. This means that you won’t accidentally add too much paint to the figure, which can happen on the first pass.

I’ve seen these figures have additional green washes given to them, to suggest moss growing on the “statue”, but am undecided on whether I want to go this route, so may just paint the bases and be done with them.

Next, some Timelords:

The left-hand and middle figures are from Crooked Dice, and the right-hand one from North Star Military Figures, as detailed in this post. These are MY versions of – from left to right – the Rani, the 13th Doctor and the Master.

The Doctor is almost finished, with more work to be completed on both the Rani and the Master.

And the final figures that have escaped from the Tray of Shame and are now finished, a trio of… time travellers? Or supporting cast? You will have to wait until they are formally introduced to find out…

The left-hand figure is from Miniature Figurines and the middle and right-hand figure are from Crooked Dice. And yes, I know that the Miniature Figurines “Chrononaut Grandfather” was previously introduced as Dr. Wilton Hume, but this “actor” will be serving another purpose elsewhere.

As you can see, I’ve FINALLY managed to successfully paint the eyes of these figures. Took more than one attempt on all three figures – got one eye right and cocked the other one up, so had to repaint the eye and, in some case, the whole side of the face, but I’m now no longer as wary of doing this is the future, so that’s a good thing. Although I may have been a little heavy handed with the female figures eyebrows…

The final figure in the Tray of Shame is actually destined for Blackwell, as I’ve had this cheap plastic figure for a while and kept meaning to tidy up the mold lines, base and paint it, to represent the Black Pig of Sodor Gardens;

A toy wild boar from a ‘toob’ of wild animals, which is slightly over-sized to be in scale with my 28mm miniatures, but fine for representing a ‘Swine of Unusual Size’. I filed or scraped away the obvious mold lines on the figure, which left a slightly ragged appearance to the figure in certain areas. However, I felt that this looked a bit like fur, so decided to leave it as it was. 

I then cut out a section of expired plastic giftcard, big enough to hold the figure, ensuring that the ends were the same radius as my other based figures, by using a 2 pence piece as a template. This means that the base is approximately 25mm across and won’t look out of place with my other figures. This was then given a thin covering of Milliput, which was then textured and the figure pushed in, then left overnight to dry.

The figure and base then received an undercoat of white. The base got a coat of Chocolate Brown, and the pig had a base coat of Corax White, followed by a couple of coats of Elf Grey, just to build up some base colouring. There will be some black paint in this little piggie’s future, as you can’t have something known as the Black Pig not actually being black.

Right, that’s all for this post, as I’ve just received a delivery and need to construct a day bed/sun lounger before my wife gets home from work.

See you next…time.

Jez