A Little History:

Figures & dioramas are a most wonderful & personal expression of the modeling world, and what started the hobby centuries ago is all the rage today, and I'm sure will be forever.

Architects and military leaders use them as tools of their trade, I get this image of the royal carpenter presenting a detailed model of the palace refit to Cleopatra, complete with miniature marble looking columns and intense blue tiles painted in, some miniature palace guards finish the scene, maybe even a tiny Cleopatra herself, with her ladies of course!

Model railroading is as much about the scene as it is about the trains themselves. Some of my ships & airplanes & armor kits come with pilots & crew included. My 2005 & 2006 Tony Stewart Nascar kits from Revell are 'driver figure included', a couple of Tamiya F1 kits have drivers, and there are Formula 1 & Rally kits in 1/20 & 1/24 scale of mechanic figures for pit lane dioramas.

For me, 3D miniatures are a happy medium of modeling and old masters style painting, and I think most of us like to get pretty detailed about it, so there is a lot of 3 hair brush work, as the late Bob Ross said many times while working a canvas- "Three hairs and some air."

I don't know you yet, but at the time of this writing I'm…. not 20 something, so let me get my 'close-up glasses' and let's get to modeling. Today, I have all the kits shown here in stock. As time goes by, some may go out of production, but new and exciting things are being offered to us modelers every month.

I've lifted the pix for this page from 2 Andrea Press books I keep here, and from 2 art instruction books by a true master of canvas- my sincere thank you to Joseph Sheppard, his books are no longer in print.

The Kits:

3D miniatures are made in plastic, polyurathane, pvc, resin, and white metal- some even have photo-etched brass or stainless steel details, for example the Storm Raider girl by Andrea Miniatures has a pair of PE eyeglasses. So I'll start with a box open view of some kits, and I want to show the wide range in types of figures available, so many pix-

The Black Prince by Verlinden is a 120mm (1/16 scale) resin kit. He finishes at about 4 3/4" tall plus the 1/2" base thickness:
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Modeling & Painting 3D Miniatures: Prelude
The top level hasn't been used for just a guess 70 years except for a couple of small offices in the front quarter, closed in the early 60's.

Looks pretty much like the Titanic up there, after she sank! But there is the remnants of a music room complete with a player piano and a cashier booth, and a couple of huge steel doors that would have given a five minute excuse to be fumbling for keys while people went down the back stairs.

It's a bit of a reach maybe, but we could have been a bordello..... and just maybe Butch & Sundance spent a pleasant evening or three here- Okay, it's my fantasy and I'm sticking to it.

Andrea makes a fine set of the boys in 54mm, so gotta have 'em!

Dance Hall Girls by Streets of Laredo is a resin kit- 54mm (1/32 scale):

Vedette by Andrea Miniatures is a metal kit in 80mm (1/22 scale).
She finishes at about 3 7/8" tall plus a 3/8" step on the platform:
And who doesn't love a rogue? Buccaneer by Andrea Miniatures is a 54mm (1/32 scale) metal kit:
The same size as the Dance Hall Girls, I think the artist who painted this one did an incredible job, as he is not a large figure to work with. I just had to add a close detail of the Buccaneer- great weathering, he looks a little scuffed like he's been at sea for a while.
And since our showroom is only
a few miles froWinterset Iowa, birthplace of the Duke :-), and there happens to be an Andrea Miniature kit of him.....




Now while I'm being nostalgic, our showroom was built in 1870, and Creston is a railroad town- we haven't made the time to research yet, but our building is the right size for and built the way a hotel & saloon would have been, we do know there was a hatmaker shop in the basement with a stairway in the front going up to street level.
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