Sunday 19 June 2011

Ex Royal Court Dwarf Jester with assistant



Why?– just a whim really, something I might like to paint, I have always been a succor for miniatures that alluded to some kind of story and interact well with each other for that purpose. Not always easy to find in straight gaming figures, not without converting anyway!




When I started this piece some time ago it really was just a practice piece to see how far I could go with Magic Sculp alone, as I do enjoy to carve and scrape away with a scalpel blade, the harder more clay like epoxies being ideal for this. As the Dwarf progressed to the final stages of fine detailing, I did find the Magic Sculp appeared slightly translucent, making it slightly more difficult to see the details especially when using Vaseline as the smoothing medium. So I decided to add Procreate in different quantities to the mix ensuring slightly firmer working putty with good detailing and more opaque qualities. The second companion piece was then used to experiment on different mixing ratios of the two putties all of which were successful and gave a good degree of variation in uses and properties.




I have plenty more ideas to work through, most of which are probably totally not viable commercially :-)



Don't be afraid to let me know what you think!........it can only help on the next ones...





Saturday 11 June 2011

Lead Rot Roulette




  

Upon delving to the near deepest recesses of the lead mountain for the first time in a few years, not something I recommend that often!  I stumbled across a small box of early Citadel stuff from the period where the description ‘cast in white metal’ was almost holey inaccurate due to some of the miniatures invariably being very dark grey to almost black, I suspect due to impurities in the alloys. Anyway to my horror albeit without surprise I found they were exhibiting the first signs of Lead Rot.  Some may say I should have let them rot, but rightly or wrongly I have decided to intervene in what could have been a grizzly end for the poor C 13’s and others. Anyway after a day or two soaking in bleach and then a good wire wool clean (whilst wet to ensure no breathing of nasty dusts etc.) they are now primed in Tamiya metal primer and hopefully safe from any further harm! I might even paint a few now.





The good thing about all this is that the night goblins gave me some inspiration for sculpting a companion piece for my recently finished Dwarf Jester both of which I should be ready to unleash upon an unsuspecting world in about a week ;-) !!...........until then au revoir