The Geisha House

Well it has been a cold week in the City of Sails this week, the coldest of the winter so far with 3 consecutive days of heavy frosts - dropping as low as -6 on the thermometer by my back door in Thursday morning (even though the Met Service reported as only -2.5), but days have been the glorious sunny. That is not cold by a long shot for many readers, but in our sub-tropical environment that is cold, and since the cold settles in around 3:00PM, it is a perfect excuse to get down to some painting and scratch building.

The one item completed in the latter half of the week is painting of the Geisha House in the Japanese building set I am painting for a friend. If is a beautiful print, but I embarked on this task with some trepidation because the model is printed in only six parts: the base, the main level of the house (with three rooms), the roof and three internal sliding doors. The limited number of parts had an advantage in that there is minimal assembly, but it was ohhhhh sooooo difficult to get a brush into those narrow interior spaces - especially those shoji panels

An example of that difficulty is shown below. That Buddha statue is part of the main level - a one piece print.   It sits within a boxed area 12mm square by 18mm deep. There are shoji panels on walls on three sides that need to be painted...what an exercise in frustration! But I got through it. 

All up I tallied up 12 hours work on this piece.

There is a minor design flaw with this model. The sliding doors - the front door and the two internal doors -  are over size by about 1.5mm which prevents the roof from sitting properly on the location lugs. Its a simple enough fix, but I wish I had known about it before I painted them.

And here is that Buddha statue again with its surrounding panels painted.

The final (and next) piece in this series is the castle - I will need to draw on all the skills used painting other items in this range to complete it.