The CatBus has arrived!

 

What colour is a CatBus? 

On stage, it's bright orange, but in the films, there is a bit more subtlety, so I've plumped for more AK Off-white (must get another one of those) and the same company's Brown. Even though the parts were primed in white, it took at least three coats to build a depth of colour I was happy with. Blasting things with a hair dryer is very effective. The paint seems to take quite a while, admittedly in cold conditions, to harden so one coat doesn't lift the previous one otherwise. 

Painting the brown is tricky as those pens really don't offer as sharp a point as I'd like. Again, at least three coats were required. 

Not all the paints are the same. Both the red nose and purple flying mice wings cover in one go. I used two flavours of purple in quick succession to blend the colours as I could see from a film still.  

The finishing touch was the route - 1 South Farm, my local bus service. Well, I'd like to travel by CatBus, although I'm not sure that it would be great at following the correct route if my cat is any guide!

All done, and I'm very happy. This was a fun project that I wanted to put some time into for several evenings. It's not serious, but that's what keeps me interested. 

 

Paint pen effects

I'll admit, I don't really know what I'm doing with paint pens. Obviously there are many hours of YouTube out there, but I don't have time to dig through it all, so I've read a couple of articles (sooooo much quicker than video) and dived in. 

First, we have the garden around the house. 

One challenge is to match the colours to the stills from the film of My Neighbour Totoro, which seem to change quite a bit. Then to remember that I've only seen the stage show (still looking for a DVD), and so I want a nice-looking model. It's not about authenticity. 

AK's Off White seems a reasonable base colour for the tree trunk and ground. Arguably, they should both be brown, but we are in a fantasy land. The plants are picked out in cheap pen Dark Olive, which looks really nice, but cried out for some highlights. With paint, I'd dry-brush, but that's not an option with the pens (I wonder if I could drag colour from the pen onto a brush? One to try), so I simply picked up high areas on the ground cover using the pointed end, and streaked the leaves of the tree. 

Working on a plastic base that has been primed with white, this seems to allow the colours to merge very slightly, and the effect is quite attractive, not unlike the hyperreal painting military modellers are so fond of. 

You'll notice some pen testing in the area that will be hidden under the house. These paints change colour as they dry, and I wasn't sure what they would look like in real life. 

Moving on to the house itself, the pure white walls look a bit stark, so I base-coated with AK off-white, left it to dry, then top-coated with cheap pen white. The paint is slightly translucent, so we get a nice aged effect. 

Green windows are painted first, and then many coats of white tidy up the frames. Working with a brush would be easier here and the pen points aren't nearly as sharp as I'd like. 

The roof is red, but pure cheap pen red is a bit bright. I left it to dry while pondering, then coated the tiles with AK Dunkelgelb, and wiped it down the roof immediately with my finger. Result - a nicely aged effect. Even where the paint has worn away from the edges in a couple of places looks good. Not that anyone will be looking at the roof much anyway. 
 

Cheap paint pens

I'm thinking that the CatBus would be a good project to paint entirely with acrylic paint pens. Recently, I've found them really useful - no messing around mixing paint and then cleaning up the brush. Perfect for the time-poor modeller who can see a deadline approaching. The speed the paint dries is another help here. 

To date, my tools have been from Ammo and MiG, proper modellers products, but at my club, the chaps working on the modular layout pointed me at this pack on Amazon.  They are getting on well with them, and for the price, an experiment wasn't going to hurt. 

A benefit is that this provides a lot of different colours, which may be helpful for figure painting where I need a tiny bit of colour, but am too stingy to splash out £4+ on a tinlet of Humbrol. I might love purple, but I doubt it would have gone off by the second time I opened the pot. 

The pens are normal pen size, and have a brush end, and a "pointed" one. Oddly, the brush is the more pointed of the two. Another moan (this is the internet) is that the pen doesn't say what colour it is, you are left to compare it to the back of the box and guess. 

The CatBus

 

Remember when I went to see "My Neighbour Totoro"? I quickly became obsessed with the CatBus, but not so much I'd pay £40 for a plush version that didn't look that great to me. 

Instead, I dug around the internet for a garage production model, and found this one from (appropriately enough for me) Nom Nom Figures. At just over 10cm tall, it's a nice size. There isn't room in my cabinet for anything much bigger, and this is going on display!

A few days after ordering, a modest cardboard box arrived, full of 3D printed parts, all nicely enclosed in bubblewrap. 

The printing is nice and smooth. The part fit is amazing, considering the cat curls around the roof of the house. I can't fault it. 

Time to start painting! 

GETS haul

 

Not a lot of stuff for me from GETS. There were a few purchases for work projects, but I'm still being restrained as I have so much stuff in the stash, and not enough time to build it all!

Of course, as regular readers will know, I'll buy pretty much anything Groudle Glen Railway-related, so when I saw that Saddletank Books had some bookmarks and a badge featuring "Polar Bear", they were obviously coming home with me. I don't need three bookmarks of course; a couple will be Christmas presents in a few months, an idea I like so much, I may need more. 

Better still, Pauline has promised to add "Sea Lion" to the range in the future, knowing this guarantees even more sales. 

The Warley 21st wagon turned up in a rummage box for three quid, a big drop from its original price, I seem to recall.  

And more paint pens. My stocks of these are growing, which is handy, as you'll find out later this week.