Scythian King

[Edorta]

Great work with that horse, I follow.

Military miniatures painted by Eduardo Garcia

 

[DaddyO]

Thank you both

This week I've mainly been making little tiny decorations for the horse harness (as well as finishing off the saddle which I'll get a photo of later)

First up were the crescents. For these I rolled out a very thin layer of Duro/Magic Sculpt onto a piece of Perspex (glass would also work, but I've got offcuts of Perspex handy so that's what I used) To stop it sticking I use talc and as a improvised rolling pin I use a pieces of brass tube. Once I thought it was thin enough I used different sharpened brass tubes (approx between 3 and 1.5mm diameter) to cut out the crescents whilst this was still soft. The trick I found was to wet the tube before cutting otherwise on the second cut the b@**% comes away from the Perspex inside the tube Needless to say I had several attempts before I found a technique which worked for me.

For the bells I first made a crude bell shape carved into a cocktail stick (I was going to say bell end, but thought I'd better not because it would give the wrong idea)
I made two different bell sizes - and with these I pushed them into a piece f soft putty (Duro in this case) multiple times to create a basic mould. When dry I dusted this with talc and pushed a lump of Duro into the mould before carefully peeling it out and repeating several times. Carefully laying the soft Duro onto the bench I then used the same sharpened tubes to push down slightly around the pimples creating a basic bell shape. Once it was dry I could slice these off the lump of putty

All that was left was to create the braided rope/wire for attaching them using a pin vice, clamp and some stripped electrical cable, drill holes in everything with the tiniest drill I could find and add the lengths of twisted wire into the decorations with superglue ready to be fixed onto the harness

Off to give my eyes a bit of a rest

Cheers for now
Paul

ps - if anyone needs some tiny bells for a miniature Christmas tree I know where there are some going cheap

 

[Nap]

Hi Leggy

Good grief , thats super detailing ...do hope you you will be drilling out the the bells and inserting a donger or dinger in place .........

Very impressive modelling look forward to seeing these on the horse

Happy benchtime

Nap

Pink cutting mat ....how avant Garde ......LOL

 

[amarok1969]

OMG ¡¡¡¡
Following with great interest ....

 

[Airkid]

Skillful work Paul. I've never got on with Duro but only ever used it "neat". I will try the Magic Sculp/Duro mix on a sculpting project I have in mind.

I'm on this one!

Phil

 

[DaddyO]

Hi Leggy

Good grief , thats super detailing ...do hope you you will be drilling out the the bells and inserting a donger or dinger in place .........

Very impressive modelling look forward to seeing these on the horse

Happy benchtime

Nap

Pink cutting mat ....how avant Garde ......LOL

Glad you approve of the cutting mat Busty Sadly no 'dingers or dongers' or whatever they are called in the bells (My good lady said exactly the same thing!)

OMG ¡¡¡¡
Following with great interest ....

Cheers amorok - hopefully the painting will do this justice

Skillful work Paul. I've never got on with Duro but only ever used it "neat". I will try the Magic Sculp/Duro mix on a sculpting project I have in mind.

I'm on this one!

Phil

I'll admit Duro used to leave me cold. - I could never get it to blend properly, although it's slightly flexible nature meant it was handy for certain jobs that might be more easily damaged such as flags.
I tried mixing it with Miliput (which was my 'standard' putty and found it worked much better being easier to smooth and less brittle that straight Miliput (Used it on a Tcumcari vignette posted here somewhere) I did find that the mix of the two tended to grain when blended with too much water so I'm now using Magic Sculpt/Duro which works well. I like to blend with a dampened brush initially and then when the putty has dried a bit I use talc on a soft brush to 'polish' it which cuts down on the sanding later. Give it a go I'm sure you'll like it

Cheers for now
Paul

 

[Ferris]

Impressive and imaginative work Paul!

Adrian

 

[DaddyO]

Realized that I forgot to post the progress on Atheas made over the last few days. Anyway when I positioned the kit figure next to his lovely new steed I realised that they didn't link together quite as well as I would have liked so I decided a simple modification of the kit was in order . .
I first removed the helmet by cutting off the hand holding it and carefully detaching it from the arm. Since the arm looked a little odd sticking out I cut below the armpit with a coping saw and then pushed the elbow in (got to love white metal kits for this sort of mod) All that remained was to fill and make good the sleeve/armpit areas and replace the hand with something suitable. I chose one of the new hands from FiguinItaly to use for holding the reins although when it arrived it looked too large (The figure appears to be about 1`/32 and the hand is 1/30 nominally) both 54mm, but clearly different. Some careful scraping and re-shaping bought it down in size enough so that it matched his other one and it was pinned in place.

The lack of helmet and mace (weapon of choice for the higher Scythian classes) feed into my idea for the vignette of the King casting his ey over some of his realm.(I may have already mentioned that Atheas lived to be somewhere around 90-93 years of age which I find quite startling given the period in which he lived)

Anyway a few little gaps and a bit of sanding needed when the horse and figure were given a quick coat of primer which I'm currently addressing and then it's out with the paint brushes

Stay safe everyone
Paul

 

[Nap]

Hi Leggy

Oh the shame if it ...no updates before ! ........goodness mate .....drastic surgery but I see where your coming from here

Clever chappy you are with putty ..nice result

Will you use the helmet on the base perhaps

Happy benchtime

Stay safe

Busty

 

[Airkid]

Nice work Paul. It's not always a given that a foot figure will blend nicely with a horse. This project is well worth the effort though.

Phil

 

[DaddyO]

Thanks both

Quite enjoyed the work so far and as Phil mentions these small tweaks are sometimes required
The question is now whether I can remember which end of the brush to hold. It seems a long time since I did any painting . . . .
Cheers for now
Paul

 

[DaddyO]

Okay here are a couple of pictures of the two figures together on one of Richard's (Oakwood) bases. The groundwork will be is usual DAS.

Final pics show the first bits of paint going on (Hooray!) and the paints used.
Cheers
Paul

 

[Nap]

Hi Paul

Looks good together on the base ...you painting direct with no printer ?

Nice to see a colour going on as well

Following with interest

Happy benchtime

Nap

 

[Airkid]

They look good together Paul. The horse certainly looks right for shape and size. Nice work.

Phil

 

[DaddyO]

Thanks Chaps

Pleased with how they look together. I did prime the figure Kev, but I was a bit heavy on the face so I needed to wire brush it a bit to clear the detail again I sprayed the horse today and spotted a few bits that need attention before I can get stuck into that (I'm using Tamiya extra fine light grey which looks very close to bare metal in tone)

Toodlepip
Paul

 

[DaddyO]

Managed to get a few painting sessions in over the last few days and here's where we are
I've been playing about on this one with a sort of halfway NMM effect by using a touch of metallic paint mixed into the first couple of colours and then much less in the next few shades and finishing with a thin glaze of metallic to bring it back - early days, but I'll continue and se where we end up. One definite advantage is the lack of metallic paint everywhere which is a bugger to cover up . . .

Lots of gold still to do - it seems every bit of cloth has a raft of gold dodads on it

Toodlepip
Paul

 

[Oda]

Thrilling,spectacular work from the very first steps down to this one.As I have remarked before this is historical modelling at its best and a fine source of inspiration for the rest of us.Now I am even more eager to see this gem completed.

Oda.

 

[Nap]

Looking good Paul , nice highs on the clothing

Look forward to more including your gold dodads

Happy benchtime

Nap

 

[DaddyO]

Thrilling,spectacular work from the very first steps down to this one.As I have remarked before this is historical modelling at its best and a fine source of inspiration for the rest of us.Now I am even more eager to see this gem completed.

Oda.

Many thanks for the praise Oda.
Really glad that you are enjoying the work so far - hopefully you'll enjoy the rest of it too. (I find that painting under artificial light is tricky as usual; what looks fine ends up having too much contrast in the daylight usually so I confine any night time painting to bits which are easily adjusted or get on with prepping/base making)

Looking good Paul , nice highs on the clothing

Look forward to more including your gold dodads

Happy benchtime

Nap

Cheers Busty I used to dislike red as a colour to paint, but am enjoying the new Scale 75 tubes which were used for base colours here. If you like red and gold this is definitely a figure to try out

Cheers for now
Paul

 

[arj]

That's really coming along nicely Paul.
Like you, I find white metal limb adjustment so much more forgiving than in resin.

Cheers,
Andrew