I've been building

Hey it's TheBeard (as I appear to have become named on here - and I can go with that :)..) again still in Belgium but very much on the slope towards home and pretty relieved about that I am too - less than four weeks to go as I sit typing this on a Sunday evening. Mostly this update is going to be about my modeling and painting and other creative stuff that I've been getting on with to prevent myself from going mad however there are a couple of other items to get out of the way that are probably more interesting to you guys so feel free to leave once you've read them..

Around Mechelen

So here are the non-creating incidents of the last couple of weeks. I've not just been camped in the front room of this apartment breathing in noxious varnish fumes and counting down the seconds until I can go home... Not just....

The whole team, just before it split up

Beers to say goodbye to the designers

Celebrating a successful final presentation

Convention cookie

The project I came here to do had its deadline over the past couple of weeks. It has been a really fun team to be part of and apparently we have triggered complaints from the rest of the office for laughing too loud and too often. My reaction when told this was "great, keep it up team!" because having fun is better than being dour and boring. We did lose a couple of team members when the two designers moved on to another project (they are kind-of contractors like me, but really consultants in that they go where their boss tells them to) which was a shame because they were nice and Joren is the first designer I've worked with who I liked a lot. A week or so later we were out having beers again after the final presentation of our product went really well and that was quite a drunken night. I cycled home at about 9pm (I know, dirty stop out) along the canal and in the morning, which started at 3.30am as I woke feeling like someone was stabbing me repeatedly in the head, I was quite amazed I'd not fallen in said canal. It was a fun night though. Last week Cis was at a convention in London and he brought home a box of amazing cookies, and a robot which almost brought the office to a complete work-halt as we drove it around the floor. We lose another member next week, sadly, and then it's into a hand over process before I go home and say goodbye to these new friends. It's been good.

Awesome early morning sky

Waiting at work

Suitcase strapped to my bike

I almost wore this little fella

The weather has been just outstanding while I've been here. We've had very little rain for what you'd expect in Belgium and it's stayed really warm up until last week. I had to actually wear my coat over my vest while cycling to work last week (though this was also down to me being a bit under the weather and not wanting to make myself feel worse). Having said that about good weather this weekend has been pretty rainy and there was a very heavy rain storm a couple of weeks ago that soothed me to sleep as it pounded on the flat roof made of glass. As an aside the cat for the person upstairs absolutely loves pouncing on said glass flat roof and making a racket that makes me jump every time. We've had some thunderstorms the last couple of days, though they were all over very quickly compared to Bulgarian storms. I've been getting to work very early and watching the sun come up while sat waiting for someone to open the office up which has been giving me a good opportunity to get lots of words learned on memrise. I've really been gasping to get home for the past two weeks - it's been so tough. It got so bad that I went and bought a suitcase from Carrefour (and yes I did cycle back with it like that) so I could start packing. Yeah, with over five weeks left here of a 14 week contract. Meh. There was one other not very pleasant episode where I picked my shorts up to put them on to go to work and a huge spider jumped out and scuttled across the room. It was very large indeed. Suffice to say I've not left my shorts in a pile on the floor ever since.

Creativity - painting

And so we get into the things I've been doing to keep myself from going sane. With mixed success, it has to be said. Anyway, onwards to the pictures and a few words.

Before I started - note how I protected the table top :D

The first colour goes on

Attempt number one, and not too bad

The second go is definitely better I think

Side by side comparison

When I was very much younger I used to have a bit of talent for drawing cartoons, but only if I was copying them from someone else. I was, of course, not THAT good but I wasn't terrible. Fast forward all these uncountable years and it is all those years since I last really tried to do anything really arty. What I was realising was that I needed to be able to paint at least clouds on a sky with some mountains if only for the backdrop for the model railway. After watching so many videos on YouTube and seeing it look so easy I went out and bought a load of water based acrylic paints and a cheap pad of paper and gave it a shot. It came out so much better than I was expecting that the quality of the paper ended up actually mattering. My second attempt was on proper paper and this was far easier to work with, though it still wasn't perfect by any means. Since these two I've started a third however it isn't finished yet so no picture for you this time.

Creativity - The Shed

After my success with the first painting I turned my attention to another design that has been bubbling in my head for a little while. This is also for the model railway and, if I can get it home safely, it will appear in the first layout element that I'm starting hopefully this winter.

The drawing, and some of the materials and tools

Matchsticks glued over the drawings

Carefully cutting the doorway out

A rusty old tin roof

Four walls and a floor

A purple shed floor - perfectly normal, right?

It's not that exciting though. It's a shed. I got some ideas of scale from a few websites and sat down and drew out a plan of parts on some squared paper. When I was happy with this I taped some greaseproof paper over the top and then began the process of gluing the walls together. I did this with cut up matchsticks and white glue, liberally smeared on the paper, matchsticks pressed into it, then glue applied over the top as well. This dried really well and I'm glad I've tried this technique out properly. Then it was just a case of assembling it, having cut the doorway out and also made a tin roof from cardboard and tin foil with a bolt having been run over it to create grooves. Yes I know they are grooves going in the wrong direction. I don't care right now. Of course I had to paint the floor of it purple for A and it looks great. It's carefully packed now waiting to be shipped home with Ken.

Creativity - River

I'm really trying to have a go at lots of techniques that I am going to need to use when I get into my "proper modeling" when I get home and one of the biggest things I've been reading and watching videos about is how to work with water. I was close to not bothering with this while in Mechelen as I figured I wouldn't be able to do it without materials and tools but eventually the need to do something that wasn't painting (I may have found I don't suck as much as I thought I did, but it isn't my favourite creative outlet) pushed me to give it a go. There's a fair few pictures, so sorry.

The edges of the banks roughed out

Starting to cut out further shapes

Superb weighting down with various items

Poor man's papier mache attempt

There are so many methods for making rivers and if you don't believe me do a quick search on YouTube for instruction videos. With the limited materials available to me I had to work out a method that would work for me and it is one that I haven't seen anyone else use. First of all I marked out the stream bed that I wanted to have and then, with these blanks, I cut about 10 or maybe 12 of each side out of cardboard from a rice crispies box. These blanks were all glued to each other and left to dry fully before they were mounted onto another sheet of cardboard, this time from a keyboard box that I saved from the recycling at work. With this fully glued together I began the process of applying watered down white glue and toilet paper to the whole of the model. I think my glue was a bit over-watered however it worked well enough and I was left with quite a nice effect on the river bed, and smooth banks.

Basic colours added to the river

Expertly weighed down with pasta sauce

A few touches of colour from the moss

River glistening in the sun

A small silicon dam

This was painted and then I added some rocks before using boat varnish to build up multiple layers of clear water type material. I'm not sure I'd use this again, certainly not with me having to put such a thick coat on to cover everything, and right now I'm on the fifth layer (plus one more of white glue half way through that) and it's drying waiting another coat before work in the morning. I've put some twigs on to represent trees and have begun to experiment with adding moss (gathered from the back garden) as river weeds. The banks are a very red colour which was the mud I was aiming for and I'm debating whether to use some of the scatter I have bought to do grass. I think I will, on reflection. You'll have to wait for the next blog update to see the results though. One of the biggest issues is that the base is just cardboard and I've had to weigh it down so many times to prevent it from curling into a bow shape. I've had to build little dams at each end out of silicon as the thickness of varnish I'm adding started to drip off the end.

And there you have it. I've started another little scene today to try another technique out but you'll have to wait for the next one to find out about that. Maybe that one will even be my last ever blog while in Mechelen. We'll  see.