Terry Pratchett

It was with great sadness that I read yesterday that one of the brightest lights in literature had forever ceased to shine yesterday. At age 66 Terry Pratchett has lost his long struggle with Alzheimer’s disease.

I will forever remember and enjoy reading (again) his novels, for they brought me a lot of happiness over the past two decades. Rest in Peace, Terry! I hope Death was happy with the way you portrayed him and treated you like and old friend!

“It is often said that before you die your life passes before your eyes. It is in fact true. It’s called living.” 

 

“The presence of those seeking the truth is infinitely to be preferred to the presence of those who think they’ve found it.”

Terry Pratchett – Monstrous Regiment

 

Ankh-Morpork City Watch

Now the Comedic round on the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge was an instant decision for me. Back when I was in the German equivalent of high school, one of my majors was English. We had to read a lot of English literature (of course). There was some stuff that was absolutely awful in my humble opinion (like Aldous Huxley) and there was good stuff (like Shakespeare). But the best one was when we read Terry Pratchett. We read “Weird Sisters” right back to back with “Mac Beth” and I loved it! Not only was his style of writing great, but his sense of humour was right in line with mine. Seeing how much his work was actually inspired by classical literature made him an instant win with me. I was grateful for being exposed to his work this way, since I would probably have missed him without it. And for those who are wondering why minis based on his work are suitable for a Comedic Theme Round… well, read one of his books, for you clearly have not, otherwise you would not be asking! 😉

Ankh-Morpork City Watch

Now on to the minis. My better half gave these to me as a birthday gift a couple of years ago. I started painting them back then, but was really unhappy with the results. I wanted to keep close to Pratchetts description of the characters uniforms. But this meant lots of browns and too little contrast. So I never finished them, to the understandable distress of my better half. Now seeing the topics for this years Challenge, I decided to give them another try. So they spend a couple of weeks in Acetone. And aided by the much larger collection of brown paints I have these days, I am really happy with the results. So here we go, I present you CPT. Carrot Ironfoundersson, SGT. Fred Colon, SGT. Samuel Vines and Nobby Nobs of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch.

CPT. Carrot Ironfoundersson

SGT. Samuel Vines

SGT. Fred Colon

Nobby Nobs

For those of you who liked this… there will be more Discworld´lyness in the coming days!   No prices for these this time, but they ended up being a runner-up at fifth place and I am truly happy with that!

[Small Edit: Just realized, that this is the 300th post on this blog… WooHoo!]

 

Disc world´s Death

I am not sure if Curt even remembers, but when he announced the theme for this year Challenge, I was cursing like mad. I had no idea what to do actually. Even worse not only was this the theme for this year (which meant the mini I would send to Curt would have to follow this theme), but also the theme for the last theme round. So I decided, that I would only do one mini for both and simply send Curt my theme round entry. Well that was about three months ago and in all the weeks that followed I contemplated what to do, I actually had a couple of ideas. And I felt that two were actually so good, that I could not decided which one to do and which one to pass by. So in the end I chose them both and here is my entry fee, which will be on its way to the plains of Canada soonish.

Discworld´s Death

So what will Curt get? It is Death from Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels. I think he actually makes for a perfect Anti-Hero. Obviously when you think about Death the “Anti” part of “Anti-Hero” is obvious. Death is the inevitable end to everyone’s life, coming for you without remorse regardless of your wish to remain or not. But why is he a Hero? Well Discworld´s Death is a bit different. He is not unknown to show compassion for his customers, even trying to cheer them up at times. But in addition to that he is a loving and caring father and like any hero not without his faults. As such he looses his job at one time (only to get it back with vengeance). In addition to all that he is there to give a helping hand (although this can at times lead to people’s… err Death) or step in for someone else if needed. Like the time he takes over for the Hogfather (Discworld´s version of Father Christmas) to make sure the job gets done. 

Discworld´s Death

Discworld´s Death

Discworld´s Death

Discworld´s Death

One thing that I love about this mini is the little details, like the Death of Rats that are part of the actual mini.

Discworld´s Death of Rats

In the past years, I have always send my entries with completed base to Curt. This year I have left the base plain. The reason is simple. In the novels Death lives in a house on a plain of existence that is completely in grayscale. Now I thought, that it would be great to either have some furniture or plants painted in grayscale on the base to show this. Now I completely suck at painting grayscale, while Curt is one of the undisputed masters at it, so I thought “why ruin something, when you have someone who is great at it”. I hope Curt will forgive me this!