The final installment of my O gauge bits'n'bobs is a pile of sacks, again from Skytrex.
Each is a whitemetal casting and they are very nice indeed. The modelling is superb with every single sack "slumped" as those it has been plopped down on the ground. Other sacks have been dumped horizontally on top of each other.
Painting the sacks raised an interesting problem. While I could have just gone for a plain beige/brown colour and left it at that, but real sacks are printed to identify them. Trouble is, what was printed on them?
Perusing photos in books didn't help a whole lot. Where you can see sacks they are often piled horizontally, hiding the print. When they are vertical, old photos don't show the detail because the colour is blown out.
I did manage to spot a few examples. The diamond pattern, some circles and lettering running down the bag are all prototypical.
What I wasn't willing to do was go the whole hog. Some sacks are covered in lettering and I'm not spending days lettering each one to that level. It might be possible to do something with a John Bull printing set but I'm not sure. More likely, some sort of transfer to be applied to the surface would work. Maybe you can already buy these but I've not seen them for sale.
A business opportunity perhaps?
1 comment:
These are really superb, and your painting is totally convincing. Kudos to you for not going with one of the many obvious puns that come to mind (my sick, troubled mind) concerning sacks!
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