Contrary to the promise, Cromwell isn’t quite done yet. He’s exceedingly close, but I haven’t finished making the mace yet because my super glue decided to glue itself shut, which is a trial I’m sure everyone who’s ever used super glue will be familiar with. I’ve now procured a fresh bottle, though, so I’ll hopefully be able to put that together this week. In the meantime, here he is with everything else finished up:
The plaque was made using David Soper’s method, which I hadn’t used before, but I’ve seen quite a few other people have some success with, so I thought it was worth a go. Next time, I’ll probably use a slightly thinner plasticard and a thinner typeface, but it’s otherwise really effective and surprisingly easy.
Placing the plaque, however, gave me a bit of a conundrum: centre it on the bench or centre it against the plinth? Obviously, I went with the plinth, but there was a pretty good argument in favour of the bench. In the end, I figured marking it against the bench would look better in photographs, but it’s a physical object that I intend to take to a few competitions, so marking it against the plinth made more sense. If I need to, I can always take a full-length picture so that it makes a little more sense in photographs.
Anyway, my next project (which is already most of the way there) is an old Smart Max piece I picked up from Salute when Smart Max launched. People who were at that show will remember the impact that the range had – it was a really exciting reveal, with a whole host of interesting new models and incredible detail. One of the defining features of the range was the fragility of the pieces, though, which has obviously put a lot of people off painting them. I have quite a few of their pieces, and I’ve only painted two before (including Konrad von Kardsten, who is considerably sturdier than many of the other Smart Max pieces), but I was interested to see what I could do with one now.
So, with that basic intro, here’s Jeremiah Crow (head obviously completely unpainted):
I’ve elected to do him under moonlight, so there’s a blue tint to one side, which will carry across to the base, hopefully selling the illusion. I didn’t want to make it too strong – just enough to add to the story. If it was too strong, I’d end up pretty much fudging half the model and painting the other half blue, which I’ve never thought was a particularly convincing illusion.
Anyway, it’s been a fun experiment, although trying to figure out how the light would interact with the leather coat was a bit of a bother, and I’ve had to sort of fake the effect it would have (soft brown leather is more likely to just turn black under moonlight, but that wouldn’t sell the illusion). I pretty much just need to paint his head and pistol, and create a base, so now it’s time to start thinking about my next piece…
Fet Paints 