Mud

While the English Civil War dragged on for a few years, this model isn’t terribly huge and is almost finished after about a month. If only all conflicts could be so simple.

The halberdier is himself basically done – just need to add some dirt and the like, but I’ll do that after the base is finished as that will really dictate what the mess looks like, how it spreads, etc. I’m thinking of quite a muddy base, so there’s the risk that it’ll spread too far, but I’ll try to keep it restrained. While it’s likely that a soldier in this particular war got horrendously muddy in the sort of conditions I’m thinking of, that wouldn’t make for much of a model. Well, maybe some models, but not this one.

Anyway, here’s the progress:

SONY DSC

He’s quite different from my usual stuff, mostly because he’s mostly colourful and not terribly weird. If you look over my works on Putty and Paint, you’ll see a constant return to blacks and greys, and muted tones. I do try to break out from that habit quite a lot, but I also find that I’m happiest with my works when that’s how they come out. The Preacher, for instance, is a piece I really like – it’s very simple and it tells a good story.

For the base, I’ll be trying out using talcum powder for bulking the mud. I’ve used lots of different materials for mud in the past – tea leaves, flock, resin dirt products, sand, actual dirt and even my own skin – but they’ve all had flaws. My friend Martin, meanwhile, went to a talk by Mike Blank at Euro last year, in which he talked about how he mixes talcum powder with paint and PVA to build up mud, and highlights and shades using the mud itself. This sounded pretty interesting, so I thought I’d give it a go. I’ll probably take pictures of the various experiments to show off here.

In other news, Frank is done and you can see him over on Putty and Paint.