Author: fetsmilner

As predicted, Cromwell is complete. The mace came out better than I’d expected – I’d originally aimed to just make something very simple, but it turned out to be a relatively straightforward process to add some extra detail, and I think it’s paid off nicely.

As usual, you can have a look at the full set of photos (and vote, if you like) over on Putty and Paint.

This, of course means that Jeremiah Crow has also progressed – he’s now done except for his base, which has been built and partially painted (just the dirt on the underside), as you can see:

My wife asked what the deal was with the floating chunk of earth, so I figured it’s probably a useful thing to explain. It’s actually a very straightforward idea:

I’ve seen a few people do it, and I’ve always thought it looked cool.

I mean, that’s really what 90% of the hobby boils down to, anyway. More seriously, it gives the scene an extra feeling of isolation, which is something I wanted to bring out, while also providing a more open canvas, if you will. By constructing my own surface that’s sort of divorced from the plinth, I’m much less bound by the usual square/rectangle/circle that plinths offer. It’s also a good way of breaking the square, simply because I don’t have to fight against it, which is what you often feel like you’re doing if you start by trying to build something to fit onto a plinth.

You may also be able to make out the word “CROW” on the monument. I’d bought a full set of metal letterpress type in Garamond a couple of years ago. I’d originally thought about using them to make the place settings for my wedding, but they were much too small (I ended up finding much larger rubber stamps – still in Garamond! This is important because Garamond is the best serif typeface). It turns out, however, they’re the perfect size for stamping things like this.

So, with Jeremiah almost complete, I set about getting my next project prepped: the French Knight, Albigensian Crusade, from FeR Miniatures. Here he is, based up and primed but sans arms:

You might be able to make out that he is awesome. It’s a seriously great sculpt and the casting was basically flawless – should be great fun to paint.

The cobbled base is meant to look like one of the streets in Carcassone, which was a major siege during the Crusade, and I made it by making some pebbles out of milliput, cutting them in half and gluing the bits that survived down. This sort of crude method was excellent for making a more natural surface: if I’d just put down a layer of milliput and sculpted the cobbles in, the whole surface would be prone to being level and even, whereas this way it has a more believably crude effect. I’ll also be adding some mosses and the like to keep it interesting.

So, on to the heretic.

The Albigensian Crusade is (perhaps?) more famously known for being the war in which the Cathars were systematically butchered. They were a sort of off-shoot of the standard Catholicism, and were the subject of something that almost certainly qualifies as a genocide. The city of Béziers, for instance, was pretty much wholly denuded of people when it was captured by the Catholics. The ruler of the city had expected the Jews in town to be slaughtered, so he’d already sent them away. He certainly did not expect the rest of the town to be put to the sword.

This battle was the source of the famous line, “Kill them all – God will know his own.”

So, for this piece – because I like the underdogs, you know – I’ll be painting him in the style of the heretics, which means he’ll be wearing red and yellow, and feature what’s called the ‘Occitan Cross‘. This is closely associated with the Cathars because it was the Occitan nobles who decided to protect their people, even if many of the rulers were not themselves Cathars. Not everyone, it seems, was a complete shit during the Crusade.

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…

With Cromwell basically done, the base is now also taking shape, as you can see:

As I’d feared, there’s a slight issue with the bench obstructing him from the front, but I’m hoping that will be at least slightly mitigated when I attach the plaque. Normally, I’d put that on the plinth, but in this instance the swath of black is a touch too distracting, so I’ll put the plaque there. This has the added benefit of keeping all of the narrative elements in roughly the same space: Cromwell’s face looking down at the mace, and then the eye can carry on down to the plaque. That’s the plan, anyway.

As you’ll also note, the mace isn’t in place yet, either. I’ve been looking at pictures of the Speaker’s Mace and comparing it to the mace in the painting, and it looks like it was a slightly more primitive (read: less embellished) mace during Cromwell’s time. That suits me fine, as I’m not particularly adept at building extremely fiddly things. I get a bit of a tremor as soon as I need to do anything too fine with glue, which usually doesn’t work out well.

Anyway, you’ll note the carpet under the bench is decorated with fleurs-de-lys, which I decided to do to both add some extra interest and to embed some extra narrative. Essentially, it’s another sign of Cromwell’s opposition: the fleur-de-lys is a symbol of both the English monarchy and the Catholic church, both things that Cromwell was not terribly keen on (hence the civil war, regicide, and atrocities in Ireland). This is similar to the sort of thing that portrait painters used to do (and still do in some senses), in that symbols are placed around the subject in order to express something about that person, regardless of whether the object acting as a symbol was actually there.

It’ll probably annoy absolute historical purists, because I have little doubt that there was no carpet there at the time, and I suspect there wouldn’t have been fleurs-de-lys on it even if it had been there. Doing a piece like this has more in common with traditional portraiture than war photography, though, so I’m really not too concerned if elements like this are inaccurate when they (I hope) add to the narrative. Feel free to accuse me of playing fast and loose with history, of course – I’m sure the floor of the houses of parliament will appreciate the defence.

Cromwell is now almost done, and really just needs his sword, spurs and base to be finished. He’s a really simple figure without any cluttering of details or too many parts, so he’s a really good piece if you want something you can either knock out quickly or spend a lot of time perfecting. I’d thought about embroidering his jacket, but I’m not sure how well that would work as it could break up the shape of his torso, which is part of what makes the model appeal.

As you can see, I went with a burnt orange for the sash, in line with what the Parliamentarians typically wore during the Civil War. I was initially uncertain about this, as orange could have quite easily overwhelmed the composition and drawn too much attention. In the end, however, I decided that it should work as his coat is rather blue to balance it out.

As the title suggests, the latest painting session was marked by a lot of texture. The coat is intended to have a sort of velvety finish – hence the softer highlights – while the sash should have a silky finish and the gloves and belt are different types of leather. These all needed different approaches, which had the added benefit of keeping me interested and thinking about how to apply the paint.

For some elements, this extended to varying the thickness of the paint itself. His gloves, for instance, were painted with barely thinned Scale Colour and Jo Sonja paints to make the most of the pigment grains and break up the light as it hits the surface, which makes the material look softer.

I tried looking for an image to illustrate this, but it basically boils down to a couple of points:

1. Light that hits a smooth surface will reflect exactly as you expect of light: angle of incidence = angle of reflection. This means the light remains coherent and the surface looks shinier.
2. Light that hits an uneven surface will reflect in a number of directions, breaking it up and making the surface look softer.

While painters generally try to achieve soft/shiny effects by painting them (broader, smoother blends for soft surfaces; sharp highlights and reflective spots for shiny surfaces), you can also manipulate the way that the light interacts with the surface to help this along. This is also why varnishes exist: gloss varnish effectively gives the light a smooth surface to reflect off, matte varnish provides a coarse layer to break it up. I tend not to use varnishes because I’ve found they can reduce the contrast I’ve painted in, but they have their place, and I’ve been enjoying using satin varnish on some spots to add an extra element of realism.

With today my last painting day before the holidays, I was keen to get started on Cromwell, and he’s proving an enjoyable model. I was also excited to try out the new Jo Sonja paints my wife gave me (we’re travelling for Christmas, so we gave each other gifts a couple of days early). So, after today’s session, the arch-anti-monarchist is at this stage:

The coat will be black – he was a puritan after all, and I couldn’t find a colour that would work with the trousers and fuck-me boots as well as black will. Also, I enjoy painting black.

The last picture shows how the table will be placed. I decided to go with the bench rather than table legs because:

a) The art shows a bench. I hadn’t paid all that much attention when thinking about it previously; and
b) With the space between the figure and the bench, it doesn’t actually obscure him all that much, especially for the viewer, who will normally be above the model’s eye height.

Still a bit of work to do on that, but it’ll be a bit nicer than trying to make a table leg look like it deserves to be there.

Anyway, Jo Sonja paints. I’ve seen a few people try them out over the last few years and generally heard good things about them. Interestingly, the most positive comments have come from people who are relatively new to acrylics or have normally favoured oils or enamels. I figured this meant the paints would behave more like those, or perhaps would have some other property that makes them fun to work with. I’ve only done a small amount with them, but I have a few observations:

1. The pigment is pretty incredible – in some ways, the paints feel a little chalky when you’re working them on the palette, but that’s the pigment itself. There’s no real loss of intensity when you dilute them, and they don’t separate at all (not that I’ve seen, anyway).
2. You can work with them impasto, which is to say straight from the pot and quite thick. I had difficulty getting a smooth coat on Cromwell’s forehead, so I just slapped it on and it dried nicely, without lumpiness, and left a good key for further layers to adhere to. I also used this property to speed up some of the shading: just slapped it onto the shadow, then licked my brush and feathered to blend.
3. If you get them in bottles as I did, you may need to shake them for quite a while to mix the medium in thoroughly. One of the paints was extremely glossy, which I suspect is down to this as the others are a really nice matte (and not the ultra-matte chalkiness you see from some paints).

All things considered, I’m very pleased with them.