Like every kid I made my first model kits when I was around the age of 10, but it didn't really got my interest. Right until a few years later Games Workshop started their Lord of the Rings series. I must admit, I'm not a wargamer, but I love Lord of the Rings and the world of Warhammer. It began with a few boxes of Goblins but soon I had the complete army of Isengard and Mordor in my tabletop, I just wanted to create the scenes I saw in the movies and make small diorama's out of it.
Most of my friends called me a fool, 'what's so cool about painting miniatures' people often asked me. After a while I wanted to paint and build other things, so I moved on the 1/72 scale WW2 era models. A local store in my home town sold some Airfix models and I had a great time building them. But I wanted a bigger scale, so I bought a Leopard 2 A5 from Italeri, the 1/35 scale was just perfect, it didn't took all the space in the world but still a proper size to add some nice details.
World War II still had my interest, and once I finished the Italeri kit I started buying more 1/35 scale kits. I got my hands on some Tamiya and Trumpeter kits and started building. Trumpeter really got my attention, the price/quality is absolutely outstanding, it's not the best but it certainly high on my list. I started building diorama's, whenever I saw a picture on the internet or in a book that looked interesting I wanted to create that in my diorama's with my models. The first looked aweful (I believe I was at the age of 16 at this point), but after a while it got better and better.
But ofcourse, after a few years, I ran into the problem of space. Where do I store all those diorama's?! Some found their home in the trash, sometimes with pain in my heart ;-).
After a couple of years I got a bit bored of WW2 to be honest, it's a really interesting conflict and there a tonnes of kits on the market from many different makes. And then there is the information available.. I really like to make my diorama's a accurate as possible, for example: When I'm building a Sd.kfz. 251/22, I want to know where these machines fought, what camouflage schemes they used, tactical numbers, etc, etc. But anyway, like I said, I lost my interest for WW2. Time to move on.
The 17th and 18th century ship got my attention. It's totally different from the armoured vehicles I used to make, but these wooden ships looked just stunning. I bought a small wooden kit and I went to visit The Batavia, a full size replica of a 17th century trading ship. I didn't finish that first wooden kit though, it was more of a learning project for myself how to work with wooden scale models.
Then, one year ago, I stumbled upon the Napoleonic era. I suddenly fell in love with everything from this period of military history. The idea that men, while wearing no form of protection at all, charged forward while being shot at by musketry and artillery fire sometimes from just ten paces away.
I bought a couple of books about the Napoleonic wars and the Battle of Leipzig soon got my attention. It's a scale modelling project I am working on at the moment and I'll post more about this project in the near future.
'Keep movin' forward!'
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