Great stuff Paul - glad to see you kicking off the new year in good style and starting this one. The Grenadiers look excellent so far, with so much character and individuality in the poses and faces.
What I love about you beginning this is I know that you have both the skill and dedication to pull it off and put in so much quality modelling time that we will all get to see the splendid results in the future.
Cheers
Mat
Ps - the dragoon is rather nice too - just did that in some spare moments heh? I don't know, how do you do it!?!
Mat you are very kind I welcome your support.
the dragoon sapper is a sort of cheat. The horsw and saddlery was from a cuirassier that had an accident. I binned the figure and kept the horse and repainted it pretty quickly to freshen it up. The figure was tacked together from Historex spare parts.
body head and legs first. Arms were Airfix lifegard on the ledt and ECW Airfix Pikeman for rhe right.
I began the conversion with a skin of duro/ kneadatite over an existing bearskin from spare parts and simply textured it with scalpel point.
the beard was added to the chin then shaped up under the bearskin each side.
The moustache was blended into the beard, and then textured by scalpel edge from bottom to top.
the upper part of the left shoulder was cut away and glued on so that the forearm is in line with the horses mouth using superglue. The wedge shaped spae is then filled with a blob of putty and then rough shaped. Then sanded once dry.
The rolled apron was shaped in three sections.
A lump of pre- rolled putty was liad across the rider's lap and blendef under his waist belt. Then a lump placed on the sternum and rolled outwards and down to the waist belt and up toward the top of the lapels and trimmed at the sides so dome of the facings will show.
last of all thin strings of putty were laid over the shoulders draping down onto the lapels each side blended in and trimmed back for the epaulettes to fit on top.
The last job was to fit the pipe into his hand.
the plastic hand was moulded to hold a pikeshaft.
So taking the hot needle ( pyrogravure) I heated the crease at the back of the fingers across the inner palm and pressed against the outside.
then across the next set of knuckles, again on the inside and the hand closed enough to grip the pipe bowl.
if you look closely the outer knuckles cracked open and needs a smidge of putty when he is worked on at Sunday's show.
the reins will be fitted to the horse and the left fist and only glued to the left wrist after the rider is securely glued into his saddle seat.
His sabre will be painted off the figure and the swordslungs glued under the coat tails to secure.
job done.
Hope that helps
Paul.
it has taken me 7 months to convert and paint three MM figures and that has been testing , your project here could take ten years 
