Sunday, July 1, 2007

Celt, 2nd Century

I've finished my first, and hopefully not my last ancient, figure this weekend...
This is a 90mm Verlinden figure that instead of using the shield provided in the kit, I opted for a Roman Standard I had in my spare parts box. I chose to go with the standard over the shield because the entire left side of the figure was going to be covered by the shield.
The entire figure is painted in oils with the metal and mail being done in printers inks and pigments from Testors metallic range.
I asked for help from Phil Kessling and he worked with me on the stripes for the pants. The key is to do the base color of the pants, all the shading and highlighting first, then go back in and lay the pattern in. It's my first attempt, and I am anxious to try this technique out again.
The ruins are scratchbuilt using Balsa-Foam (http://www.dickblick.com/zz331/11/) and a plaster column. This Balsa-Foam stuff is awesome; it's simple to carve, it accepts acrylic and oil paints extremely well, but make sure you use a water based medium to seal it before you apply the undercoat. I used a white acrylic painting medium...this stuff is excellent!