Somewhere in France

Not a huge amount of progress to report, but that’s what happens when you decide to repaint a fairly large section of a model. I’m much happier with how the jacket has come out, but it may need a few more glazes to bring the colour in (as much as that seems wrong when painting a really bland uniform).

I’ve also put in a start on a few other parts – the pouches, straps and gaiters. The pouches are mostly there; they just need some refining to make them work. Perhaps some stronger oranges in the midtones – the highlights are washing out the colour at the moment. The gaiters have the light in place, but they’re a bit glossy and could do with some attention. I’m not too bothered about making them flawless or interesting to look at, of course: they’re gaiters, not some fascinating piece of fashion.

Anyway, pictures:

I’ve also made a start on his base. As I mentioned previously, I want to put him in a street scene, which means making a paved street, at the very least. Several years ago, I conveniently bought a set of plaster cobblestones made by Plus Model, so I thought I’d crack them out to make my life easier. I was mistaken.

The cobbles I bought were basically cubes, which would mean having a fairly deep layer of plaster on the base. As we all should know, plaster isn’t very durable (and this plaster is especially crumbly) and having a pin or two going through it just means that the plaster will break and the model will wobble, eventually smashing much of the rest of the plaster around the pin and eventually coming loose. To mitigate this, I decided to trim the cobblestones down to a more reasonable depth, which means there’s now plaster dust and fragments everywhere, and it took much, much longer than it should have.

The other problem is that the cobblestones weren’t equally sized, so I had to do a little trimming now and then to make it work. A little inconsistency is a good thing – it makes it look more authentic – but it doesn’t help when you’re trying to make something that’s approximately ordered. Anyway, the footpath is now done with the exception of some more weathering to the surface – the act of levelling the stones has left it too uniform now.

The empty space will be taken up with a shopfront. I have a plan to have a little window display behind glass and perhaps some shutters, and it will obviously need to be quite tall. I may have to limit that ambition, however, as I’ll need to actually transport him. I’ve ordered a lot of plaster bricks for the walls themselves, and I’m hoping they’re a little more consistent than the cobblestones…