Doing some fleshing out. I have to be careful not to add too much to raised shoulders knowing that all will have armor and will have some restriction in movement.

Working on final composition. I may have to tackle sculpting the fallen horse and rider as one sculpture...Fingers crossed.

Fehrbellin Vignette -Composing Scene

The composing is pretty straight forward. Since it's a close copy of the illustration, there will be however, some minor tweaks here and there.

Fehrbellin vignette -Cleaning castings

After cleaning up the flashing I will be cutting off limbs of one of the horses for reposition. Two of the three horses will get new necks.

New project: Fehrbellin 1675

MFCA Pics #5 Mike Blank's "Wings of Darkness"

Mike Blank does it again! Another superb vignette created by the miniature artist. Wonderfully composed, painted, etc. If a figure modeler wants to find inspiration, look no further. I need to build a mounted piece...Soon!

"Fallen Timbers" 1794 Part 2

The figures have taken shape. I wanted to keep the composition tight, in which there was a lot of re-working of armatures to get the right fit. Next to modeling mounted figures, "action" vignettes are the toughest part of figure modeling. You will notice, I made the background slightly higher to help give the sense of momentum.

"Fallen Timbers" 1794 Part 1

I've been working on this piece for the better part of a year. Please forgive me for "spoon feeding" the following installments.

Lutzen 1632

Here's the mock-up of my Lutzen dio/vignette.

More pics to follow.

English Civil War Vignette-Painted

Here's the vignette painted. Most was painted with acrylics with oils here and there. The grass is unravelled jute twine painted in various colors.

The helmet shell casting on the "Ironside" was sculpted or modeled by either John Long or Anders Heintz. Sorry guys. The sword is scratch-built and was copied from a few examples.

Thanks for looking.

English Civil War Vignette

Here's one of several projects I had going over the winter. Sorry for not posting in "real" time, I've just been plain lazy.

The scene is taken from an illustration I saw in a book on the history of cavalry. It depicts a Parliamentarian "Ironside" riding down on two Royalist officers. As you can see, there's some artistic license in the composition.

This project, I will have to say, was the toughest to compose of any project of mine to date (yes, even the Guilford project). To get the pieces to gell together took many hours of manipulating and much observation.

I'll post the painted version in the next day or so.

"Like a Mountain Avalanche"

"Seeing in the flight of the 2nd Maryland a chance to surprise and inflict severe damage upon the enemy, Washington ordered his trumpeter to sound the charge. Like a mountain avalanche, the dragoons rolled down the hillside and smashed squarely into the rear of the Guards." Quote from "Another Such Victory" by Thomas E. Baker

Here's the finished piece. I should note that the first figures to be glued to the base were the officer and drummer. Since the two were to be attached, I need "room" to sculpt (and paint) the hand of the officer onto the arm of the drummer.

Guilford project with some paint...

Here's the project with some paint. As you can see, I'm working left to right, front to back. Even though I've composed to my liking, there's still some "tweaking" to do when I place the mounted figures. Note, the figures are not glued to the base yet.

The paint is all acrylic, but I will use oil paint when staining/weathering. More on that later.

Guilford Courthouse Project- Composition

In the next few days I'll be posting some of the better pics I have of the Guilford Courthouse project.

I started it just after getting back from MFCA. The horses I used are from Michael Roberts with some conversion work. Since two horses were the same, I re-sculpted the neck on one and changed the position of some of the legs.

Thanks for looking.

Berlin Wall "vignette" finished!

Here's the finished piece. As you can see I've made some changes. The JFK portrait was originally inspired by photo-realist painter Kent Twitchell's painting, and it was decided to stay close to this particular image of it. I may do some touch-ups here and there.

I may also take some better pics of the East side of the Wall, as there is much more contrast than shown.

Why the wreath? A failed "escape" attempt? I did add some pock marks on the wall to let the viewer's mind wonder.

This isn't a "documented" incident, because nobody on this side was allowed this close to the Wall. But it does give a feel of forbiding, isolation and sadness.

Like the "Storm Child" piece I did a couple years ago, this piece makes you think and invoke emotion into it. To be honest, these are the only pieces so far where I felt I was creating something that may be called "art".

Hope you like it and thanks for following.

JFK painted and Wall construction complete

Here's the finished JFK/ West side segment of the Berlin Wall. Not a great likeness of the man but I'm pretty happy with it. It's more or less graffiti art anyway.

Yesturday, I cut about 3/4 of an inch off the base. After some consideration and suggestion, the tighter the subject behind the Wall would be the more intimate the scene. I also added a 54mm scale chart to show the aproximate height of the Wall.

Up next is painting the figure and tying the scene together.

Berlin Wall- Rough outline

I've begun constructing the wall. Not too complicated yet. Going by images and drawings, with people standing next to it for scale, is making the task much easier.

There is a slight taper when looking from a profile with it narrowing at the top. The top of the wall was made of sewer pipe to make to make it difficult to get a good grip. And how I'm going to make that, with the materials I have at hand, is beyond be at the moment.

The wall is made of sheet styrene with balsa wood sandwiched between. I put a couple shims at one end to help with the taper. I then textured the surface with Liquitex modeling paste, let dry then sanded down to give it a rough surface like a cheaply formed concrete slab.

The image of JFK was inspired by one made by an artist from California (more on him later). What I'm showing is the begining stages of the "graffito" portrait. I used an image from the internet and printed out a "wallet" size picture. Then, I used carbon paper to trace an outline of his features and the rest was painted in. Note, as of this posting, I have re-done the one being shown and will explain later why.

Oh, I've put composition of the scene aside and leave the decision to the person who has interest in the piece.