Kevin Dallimore's Master Class

I first read about this new Kevin Dallimore book on The Miniatures Page (TMP) on Wednesday morning, within minutes I had ordered the book and I received the huge tome, lunchtime Friday, superb service!

I already have both the Foundry Miniatures and Painting Guide and The Foundry Compendium so when I read of this book I had no hesitation in ordering this new book.

Foundry are offering free P&P and for a limited period the books will be signed by Kevin, see this link

The first thing that struck me about this book is its size, it's huge. Over 300 pages and its heavy, so the free P&P is well worth taking advantage of. It is also very well packed coming in a folded card outer, so there should be no worries about damage during shipping.

As far as content is concerned, my fist impression was WOW, my second was WOW and my third was WOW, it is just full of beautiful pictures of painted and work-in-progress shots of miniatures and models. I have still to read it from cover to cover which will take some time, for now I have been delving in and picking selected subjects and browsing, but I just know I'm going to enjoy ALL of this book.

The different section are 'colour coded' for example; Doing the basics is blue-grey, Finishing Touches is green and Painting is purple, a nice touch as the sections are continually interspersed with Modelling Interludes, red. I like this layout, I admit that it might not be to everyone's taste but it works for me.

I will add that there are a number of sections that are copies of earlier Kevin Dallimore painting and modelling guides (that have at some time appeared on the Internet), for example the sections on painting vehicles. This does not detract from the overall content of the book as I have still enjoyed reading the how-to articles and the quality is superb. In fact I should note that the whole book just 'screams' quality, beautifully produced, illustrated and finished with a full-colour hard-back cover, non-reflective pages and solid binding. There may be some that are wondering about the cover price of £30.00, especially as I have read that there are already offers on Amazon. I am lucky to have a Paypal account that I use specifically for funding my hobby and to me this is money very well spent - a book I will get a huge amount of enjoyment from, in fact from my initial browse, I am not able to write a negative comment, not one.

Anyone familiar with earlier Kevin Dallimore or Foundry publications will recognise the style and quality immediately, loads of full colour illustrations and clear precise text. there are sections that start with The Foundry tri-colour painting technique, techniques for more experienced painters and of interest comments from renowned miniature painters detailing their own thoughts on the system. Other sections cover washes, painting metal, painting Non-Metallic Metal (NMM) and basing, but the sections that have really appealed to me are the Diorama articles which are really quite beautifully done, again fully illustrated and including numbered text showing how these dioramas were built and painted. As I have said earlier truly a fantastic book and one that I have no hesitation in recommending - 10 out of 10, possibly the No1 modelling book in my (rather large) collection.

I am sure that this book will give hours of enjoyment to figure or miniature painters (and might help me improve my own figure painting skills, we can but hope).

For more details see the link (above). I look forward to thoroughly reading it (and no doubt - re-reading it).

Tony

PS.

I've been asked if this new book is worth getting if you own the original Kevin Dallimore Painting and Modelling Guide? I would say definitely yes as the articles are much more in-depth and targeted at a more experienced painter/modeller - the contents are of a much wider and more detailed subject matter.

In addition there are many 'guest' modellers and painters, for example Tom Mainprize, Tom Weiss and Sacsha Herm.

Where as the first book is targeted as the beginner to experienced, this book is more experienced to master modeller/painter and the knowledge included in this book should help to improve your skills.