We drove up Friday evening arriving about 11:30pm. The show had actually begun Friday morning. Not being able to resist, Rusty and I headed up to the hospitality suite and chatted with a couple of guys still hanging around up there.
Saturday morning we headed down to get our models registered. Rusty was there as a Grex airbrush rep for the HobbyTown USA in Dallas. He spent most of his day convincing people to buy brushes… which they did!... a LOT of them.
The vendor area was small but still plenty to browse and buy. What they lacked in number of vendors they made up for in quality.
The model room was well laid out and of course every table was on risers so there was no need to stoop. One could examine all the models up close while standing up right. There were about 275 entries with a good mix of historic and fantasy subjects. The ordnance category, which is anything without legs pretty much, was also well represented with cars, tanks, aircraft and Warhammer subjects.
The quality of work was, for the most part, very high. Modelers from all over the country had come to enter. There was also a sizable group that traveled with the Andrea crew from Spain.
They made the awards they gave out. Anders Heintz sculpted the masters and resin copies were cast and painted gold, silver or bronze. The specialty awards were also made.
In the end all three of us that entered garnered awards:
Rusty got a Gold in fantasy painters category for his Bat Creature.
Brent received a Bronze in fantasy painters for his recent Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
I was fortunate enough to get Silver for my Welcome to India diorama in the fantasy open category.
Saturday night we all had dinner at a rather shady Mexican restaurant then spent many hours talking with other modelers in the hospitality suite. I think we shut it down about 230 am Sunday morning.
I want to give a special thanks to my wife Brianna who spent a lot of time talking to vendors and contestants inviting them to our show in Sept. I spoke to many of them later and a lot of folks were genuinely eager to visit the SprooDoo contest.
I very much look forward to going back to the Lone Star figure show next year!