12 Day Modelling Challenge: Day #12

Day 12 and I feel it’s time to bring this modelling challenge to an end by writing about an overlooked part of my hobby, reading and research.

For me I rarely build a model or paint a miniature without some sort of reading, or search for inspiration, or in some cases, in-depth research into the subject area. This takes up hobby time, but currently has no obvious direct physical result. A completed model is a completed model, and the depth of research, and the time taken, is not obvious at first glance. I have estimated that with my models I spent an equal amount of time researching a topic as I actually do working on the model itself.

I’m very much a person who likes reading and then, due to my creative, hands-on nature, I explore those topics via my modelling. It’s important to take this journey, it helps build connection between the concepts and information I read and the, physical, real world object I create in my hands. There’s also the issue of accuracy. I get a sense of achievement by producing an accurate model. Again this is personal to me, as I’m not the kind of person who would take time to comment on the inaccuracies of the work of others, only my own work.


It’s slightly different when it comes to the miniatures I paint. In this case I’m trying to create a physical representation that fits a theme. An example of this is when I paint models for Warhammer and I’m trying to aim for miniatures which fit a certain era of the Warhammer world, both the fictional world and a point in time of the real world, something I have written about before.

This reading and research gives me time to engage with my hobby when I’m not sat at my desk working on the models themselves. Usually this is time during the week as I tend to only have time for actual modelling at the weekends. But until now it’s not really been reflected on this blog. When I’m not modelling it appears that I’m just inactive, which is far from the case. And so that’s why I’ve decided, going forward, to share my research here, as I get as much enjoyment from writing about models, history, my inspirations and interpretations as I do from actually building them.

In the coming weeks and months you will see two types of new posts, they will be called, History in Detail and Inspiration in Detail (and will be labelled as such to assist searching). History will typically focus on the real life historical aspects of a model I’m building. This might be a look at the type of aircraft I’m building, the pilot who flew the aircraft or broader themes such as the campaigns in which an aircraft or vehicle took part in. Inspiration will be more geared (but not exclusively) towards my miniatures projects. In this case it will look towards the literature, games etc. which influence the miniature that I’m creating or helped shape my interest in that topic in the first place.