The title of this weeks blog says it all! Progress has indeed been slow and I am stretching my ‘sculpting’ ability and patience to their limit. The Hanoverians are the problem. I’m trying to match the conversions that I have done to the original Victrix models that I had painted. The first task was to make some blanket rolls to go on their backs in the place of packs. I have actually cheated with a couple of the models and despite saying that I would cut the british packs off of the ones that I had put on in error, I decided to leave a few on. May be those guys had picked a few spare packs up from Quatre Bras! Anyway, modelling the blanket rolls was not too difficult, although a bit time consuming, as I am not used to working with green stuff. You can see the result in the picture above – I think that once they are painted they will be fine.
The real problems came when I tried to modify the shako’s. The first thing that I changed was the plumes which are a bit long and thin. I simply trimmed these down and then used a tiny amount of green stuff to thicken them up. Well, that took forever, partly because I managed to get the green stuff to stick to my scalpel more effectively than the model! Again, if you look carefully at the picture above, you can see the difference it makes. The model to the left has the original plume, the centre model has the the modified one and the right hand model the thin tall plume that I want to replace. After a while of fiddling around I thought that I might just either cut the plumes from some other Shakos & replace them or perhaps just try some filler.
While I had the green stuff mixed though, I thought that I might try and make the cords for the shakos. To do this, I carefully rolled out a very fine ‘sausage’ of green stuff, cut it to the correct length and then attached it to the first shako. Or rather I tried and tried and tried and failed!!! I just could not get it to stick to the model. It stuck to my scalpel, it stuck to my needle. I tried using water to dampen the tools but it still would not stick to the model. After 20 minutes of this I gave up and I think it is back to plan B – using cotton. It may be that the green stuff that I am using has gone off a bit – it has been kicking around in my model box for sometime now. So I may have another go with a fresh batch. At this rate though, it will take me a fortnight to get to the priming stage with these models!
As if that wasn’t frustrating enough, the other project on my work bench hasn’t gone too well either. Having painted Lucid Eye’s Ke-Zhor, I thought that I would paint his mate, Harranah. I think that this was a case of trying too hard as I just could not get the finish and flesh tones that I wanted. Nevermind, I guess you learn more from your mistakes and maybe I’ll give the model another go later. In the meantime, She’s done and going in the cabinet once the basing is finished! Checkout Facebook later for some more scenic pictures of her in perhaps a more sympathetic setting!
