Swoose

Woolite Dewrinkler bottle, Bic barbecue lighter, toilet float valve and gasket, hairdryer impeller, disposable wooden utensils,  PVC pipe, bamboo skewers, popsicle sticks, earplugs. 24"w x 26"l.

Поликарпов И-16

Polikarpov I-16, 1/32 scale Soviet WW2 fighter. Love the baby-mammal proportions. I usually do at least a 2-color camouflage on warplanes, but I liked the simple contrast of green against red. As usual, the engine exhausts that came with the kit looked too puny. I replaced them with some bigger plastic tubing that gives me a more persuasive, if less accurate, fire-belching monster-motor vibe. Handpainted with craftstore acrylics, finished with finger-applied dry pastels.

Slogans often painted on Russian tanks and planes by factory workers as follows: 

Бей фашистскую гадину! Bey fashistskuyu gadinu! Strike the fascist viper!

За Родину! Za Rodinu! For [the] Motherland!

J-to-GLI

I recently noticed a pattern between Spanish and Italian. If a Spanish word contains a J following a vowel, it may have an Italian counterpart which has GLI instead. I've found only a few such couplets so far but still, a nice little tool.

paja > paglia, straw

mejor > meglio, better

conejo > coniglio, rabbit

bagaje >bagaglio, baggage

West Germany, 1980s

 1/48 Italeri kit presented as a sorta F-4G Phantom in my own version of the TAC Euro 1 camo scheme. Colors based on the palette shown in the Milspec decal package for this plane, I thought the tones were a bit more lively than what I'd seen elsewhere. Colors hand-mixed using craftstore acrylics, then hand-painted over hardware store primer. Uneven final colors due to applying assorted shades of dry pastels. I have never liked the look of the Phantom's 20mm nose cannon, so I left it off. Good riddance.

West Germany, late '70s

 Usual finish of handpainted craftstore acrylics and dry pastels. Moss groundcover from the roof gutter. I bought these kits about 50 years ago, took me this long to think of a diorama for them.