More Charity work on the horizon

As many of you may have seen on TV or read in newspapers or online, the Australian state of Queensland has recently been inundated with vast amounts of rain. Almost biblical amounts. While Australia is a land of stark contrasts, with its hardy farmers suffering either drought or flooding, these recent events have killed almost twenty people, left thousands homeless, and seen sharks swimming in the streets of Brisbane.

Chris Slade, from the Deepstrike Radio podcast, is a native of Queensland and while he didn't lose anything during the floods, many of his friends and relatives did - some of them deeply tragic losses. Doing his part, Chris has started a relief fund linked to his podcast. The banner above is linked directly to the page on the Deepstrike Radio site. Please head there and donate what you can to the relief fund. Dan Abnett and Graham McNeill have committed signed books to be awarded to those who donate the most.

In addition, Chris and the Deepstrike team have been accepting donations of boxes of Space Marine models that they intend to auction off as one huge army (starting February 1st, I believe). Not only will the winner of the auction get a big army, all new in the box, but I've decided to pitch in and convert and paint a command model for the army. The winner gets to choose what HQ unit and the color scheme before I get to work on it.

As a human being, it's tough to watch that kind of devastation, the kind that rocks some corner of the world on a regular basis. As an Australian myself, it's this time that I can do something small to help out friends of mine who suffered during this catastrophe.

If you are able to help, please do. If you have already helped, thank you. If you aren't able to help out here, that's fine too, I just ask that you take a look around your area and see if there is something local you can help with in some way.

In 2009 I offered up a painted miniature for a charity auction at Mechanicon. I ended up painting a Vulkan He'staan. Last year I decided to offer up another painted miniature for the Mechanicon Charity Auction. The auction is in honor of Chris Bledsoe, a dear friend of the organizers who passed away. The money from the auction goes to The Luekemia and Lymphoma Society.

This past year's winner of my "lot" was Kevin, who asked me to paint up the model you see here, an Ulfhedner produced by ZN Games. As it turns out, Chris had a lot to do with the development of this model and it is important to Kevin to honor Chris' memory.

Kevin left the scheme and approach completely up to me, quite the burden, considering the importance of the model. After much deliberation I went for a kind of Weird War 2 approach for this crazy werewolf. I kept some "standard" flesh tones in the mix (using the colors I had for my Minotaurs last February), and opted for a dark brown fur to contrast with the skin. Although I could have gone with a German or Allied color scheme (harkening back to the Incursion work I did last October) for the Ulfhedner's armor, I decided to leave his allegiance in question by going for battered metal plates. I mounted him on a Trench base from Dragon Forge Design to enhance the WW2 feel. Some Scab Red mixed with Gloss Varnish for fresh blood was all that was needed to finish him off.

Thanks for listening to my philanthropic rambling, I hope it inspires you to go out and do what you can to be good to people : )

Take care everyone. Some more Napoleonic British next time I think, before jumping back into my Empire army and some more Tanith I think.

Cheers

Dave