Now that I’ve got the paints out for the D-Day GIs , I'm also going to break out of my comfort zone, both in scale and material.
This is my first ever 90mm figure,and not just for painting. This is a white metal casting of the first master figure I ever made for the late Michael Hearn of Hussar Military Miniatures back in(I think) 1989. This was the first of more than thirty masters I made for Hussar over the next 7 or 8 years, and they provided me with a legitimate excuse for military modelling in my spare time when I had a growing family..... I should say also that I really liked working for Michael, he was always very happy with my sculpts and he always paid me right away.
They were advertised regularly in Military Modelling at the time, and occasionally reviewed (always favourably, but then so was everything in those days. I found those reviews very frustrating because there was never any real critique). Hussar’s market was predominantly to collectors, ready-painted (by Michael’s wife Vera), and although they were available as kits I never ever saw one in a competition or anything . There were a lot of knights in armour with colourful heraldry in the range and I think they were in the Tower of London gift shop for a while , but they never really hit the hobby mainstream as I would have liked. But it wasn’t my business and I was glad of the cash - and the alibi!
I have copies of most of the figures I made ,but there are a few gaps. I keep my eye on Fleabay but they very rarely come up, and then usually they’re only ones I already have or those I didn’t make.
I’m quite excited about painting this guy because I have kept all of the castings in primer all these years, to keep the focus on the sculpting. At the time, and up until only a few years ago, I avoided painting anything, but now I have found a bit of confidence I'm going to have a bash. Also, I’ve recently been allowed to have a display cabinet in the house (rather than my hobby room),so I thought it would be good to inject a bit of colour- yellow, in this case.
My reference for this guy at the time was just what I was given (I can’t remember what, possibly an Osprey book), although I did go to the National Army Museum to check out the back view. Of course in those days there was no internet, no pinterest, and no digital cameras, never mind phones with a built-in camera, so my memory of the museum exhibit was reliant on what scrappy drawings I made. I’ve been back recently and taken a nice set of pics to refer to - and discovered some inaccuracies in the sculpt...
I’m not going to correct any of them or tweak the figure in any way (apart from removing mould lines, and I might just improve the spurs) as it’s a kind of historical document for me, of a point in time. He is moulded in white metal by the vulcanised rubber process, which puts the mould lines in some interesting places. Although the sculpt could be better, I’m happy with the feel of it, and it was certainly as good as much of the rest of the Hussar range; I never knew who any of the other sculptors were. Of course at the time the gold standard was Poste Militaire and Almond Sculptures, amongst others, and I was always striving for that. With this chap I wanted to capture the arrogance of the archetypical Indian Army types and I think I managed that. I really ought to have tried painting him at the time, though, because for instance this guy has no actual eyeballs, but I’m going to live with that. Since I’ve painted some of my own sculpts lately I have found that it shows up the inadequacies right away, and I could really have improved my sculpting much earlier on. Oh well.
What I will say at the outset, however, is that I never saw any other Skinners Horse figures at the time, and yet in searching for reference on the internet I have found several that are similar in pose, although I don’t know what scale they are. So I guess we all bought into the cliché...
And yet, sadly, I’ve not found a single picture of my own figure. Ho Hum.
So here goes with a nice change from olive drab, and, thanks to a friend on the Planet Figure forum, an experiment in undercoating yellow with pink!
This is my first ever 90mm figure,and not just for painting. This is a white metal casting of the first master figure I ever made for the late Michael Hearn of Hussar Military Miniatures back in(I think) 1989. This was the first of more than thirty masters I made for Hussar over the next 7 or 8 years, and they provided me with a legitimate excuse for military modelling in my spare time when I had a growing family..... I should say also that I really liked working for Michael, he was always very happy with my sculpts and he always paid me right away.
They were advertised regularly in Military Modelling at the time, and occasionally reviewed (always favourably, but then so was everything in those days. I found those reviews very frustrating because there was never any real critique). Hussar’s market was predominantly to collectors, ready-painted (by Michael’s wife Vera), and although they were available as kits I never ever saw one in a competition or anything . There were a lot of knights in armour with colourful heraldry in the range and I think they were in the Tower of London gift shop for a while , but they never really hit the hobby mainstream as I would have liked. But it wasn’t my business and I was glad of the cash - and the alibi!
I have copies of most of the figures I made ,but there are a few gaps. I keep my eye on Fleabay but they very rarely come up, and then usually they’re only ones I already have or those I didn’t make.
I’m quite excited about painting this guy because I have kept all of the castings in primer all these years, to keep the focus on the sculpting. At the time, and up until only a few years ago, I avoided painting anything, but now I have found a bit of confidence I'm going to have a bash. Also, I’ve recently been allowed to have a display cabinet in the house (rather than my hobby room),so I thought it would be good to inject a bit of colour- yellow, in this case.
My reference for this guy at the time was just what I was given (I can’t remember what, possibly an Osprey book), although I did go to the National Army Museum to check out the back view. Of course in those days there was no internet, no pinterest, and no digital cameras, never mind phones with a built-in camera, so my memory of the museum exhibit was reliant on what scrappy drawings I made. I’ve been back recently and taken a nice set of pics to refer to - and discovered some inaccuracies in the sculpt...
I’m not going to correct any of them or tweak the figure in any way (apart from removing mould lines, and I might just improve the spurs) as it’s a kind of historical document for me, of a point in time. He is moulded in white metal by the vulcanised rubber process, which puts the mould lines in some interesting places. Although the sculpt could be better, I’m happy with the feel of it, and it was certainly as good as much of the rest of the Hussar range; I never knew who any of the other sculptors were. Of course at the time the gold standard was Poste Militaire and Almond Sculptures, amongst others, and I was always striving for that. With this chap I wanted to capture the arrogance of the archetypical Indian Army types and I think I managed that. I really ought to have tried painting him at the time, though, because for instance this guy has no actual eyeballs, but I’m going to live with that. Since I’ve painted some of my own sculpts lately I have found that it shows up the inadequacies right away, and I could really have improved my sculpting much earlier on. Oh well.
What I will say at the outset, however, is that I never saw any other Skinners Horse figures at the time, and yet in searching for reference on the internet I have found several that are similar in pose, although I don’t know what scale they are. So I guess we all bought into the cliché...
And yet, sadly, I’ve not found a single picture of my own figure. Ho Hum.
So here goes with a nice change from olive drab, and, thanks to a friend on the Planet Figure forum, an experiment in undercoating yellow with pink!
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