Hi all,
ahh, it's good to be back!
Tony, thanks, the Monk is a bit of whimsy, and acts as a informal balance piece to the Old Fiddler on my figure shelf.
And the Old Fiddler does have the hallmarks of Norman Rockwell.
Marc, thanks, appreciate the praise from a craftsman such as yourself.
Andrew, yes, it's good to be settled now, moving isn't conducive to focused efforts!
Arxo, well, I do remember how you gave me a heads up on some issues you found, so your advice was out to good use - I'll expand on answers to your "ands"
as an afterword.
Mark, well, it's not a decent NYE party unless some one ends up wearing a lampshade (or a tea cosy)
. Monks ground work was fun to do, and came together pretty much as I thought it. The Autumn leaves were the most I could add to the Old Fiddler, anything else I did wouldn't have added to the atmosphere of the piece.
Colin, if you have come to interpret that snapshot in miniature in 3d, then you also pay me a compliment! For me, if I can have a figure be comprehended at a glance, capture the attention for a 2nd look, and tell a story with longer observation, then perhaps I have taken a step towards becoming a competent painter.
Now for Arxo's questions (and truthfully, if Arxo hadn't shared his experience with his version, I'd not have as much success)
- The wine label bottle is a piece of aluminium foil, cut to size and painted. I glued it on with gloss varnish, over-coated it with matt(ish) varnish. Label colour is buff, and writing is fine squiggles done in brown ink. I did add a thin film of a reddish ink as a water mark, there is just a hint of this a wine level, however the label does mask it some. I did have to clip the guide plug off the back off the bottle before it would come close to fitting (ahh, the fit issues.....
)
- Ankles, yep, your'e first one to notice the flesh tone. It just struck me that if you are really down on your luck, socks are almost a luxury compared to getting enough coin for a meal for yourself and four legged friend.
- patch on left leg; that was a bit of inspired desperation - a small fleck of paint had flaked off that spot. So rather then go for the entire colour matching process, I opted to do some fine brush strokes in a coarse cross hatch pattern, in a grey green shade. Looks like he sewed up a rent in his trousers, poor old bloke.
- The hankie marking, not the best angle - I did this ass more stitching to cover a fairly poor putty job over the a gap. Again, similar to the patch on the left leg.
- leaves are there to add a time of year to the figure. With his jacket, scarf and so on, the autumn leaves do add a nice touch, texture and seasonally.
- dog, lots of fine brush work to hint at fur texture (studied my own dog to get an idea of how the fur should lay.) and even gave Fido a light coat of pink on the belly, although it's virtually invisible behind the hat. And going by the sculpt, Fido is a girl doggy.....
I'll post an overhead image, so the cobblestones can be seen too.
Currently both of these figures are entered in the South Australian Scale Model Expo, competing in different classes.
So I'll give an update Sunday evening.
cheers Gentlemen!
