3 eyed alien bust and a bridge

Got sick over the long weekend so didn't get up to much.  I spent most of my time making a costume shield for the wife.  Maybe more on that later when it's done.

54mm horse with a whole lot of putty

The first block of time was on the 54mm horse I'm thinking about using for the knight.  This horse needed a lot of work.  Putty and filing on the joins (the 2 halves and a head).  Also there were mould failures on the head and leg (ie areas where there was a large step) which needed to be filled.  Finally there was no tail provided so that had to be done from scratch.  Very much an old school figure.

For the tail first I glued in a paperclip and made up the rough bulk with milliput.  Then I used used a milliput/green stuff mix for the tail but after an hour the end result was terrible so I just scraped it all off.  The second attempt with just green stuff worked a lot better.

Bridge from Corsec Engineering

I found a $7 28mm bridge at my LGS from Corsec Engineering.  It's a mdf flat pack with two acrylic rods for the rails of the bridge.  Due to the curvature of the bridge I used my heat gun to soften the plastic rods and form it into the curve of the bridge.  Then I glued it together and used some wood filer on the gaps.  The bridge planks are made out of a single piece of thin plastic card which is quiet a good solution.

Finally I did some painting on the 3 eyed alien I purchased from eBay recently.  Seem to be suffering from painters block currently.  Want to do some pieces, but just can't get the brain into order.  Luckily things came together over the weekend and I got this piece going.

Paints used

As per the picture I had a pretty limited palette due to the limited number of features on the figure (skin, scars, eyes and some odd strap thing).  I really wanted to try yellow in a large piece.  After about an hour I was pretty close to dipping the figure in paint stripper.  The Cadmium Mid Yellow is very intense and was making it very hard to redo areas as they would end up too yellow compared to other areas already painted.  Everything was getting very patchy.  However I just kept painting and hoped to come out the other side.

Original colour scheme

Once I did the eyes the figure suddenly came together.  I found compared to my original paint trial I used a lot more purple in the shading.  Also I used some of the blue in the shading (to take things into a more green shade) later on to add some other colours.  I tried again to do more contrast with the light source from the top left.  The scars I did in a very dark brown/purple.

3 eyed alien

I'm not sure what the strap is.  It looks like a strap but just ends at the collar bone.  I used Armour Brown as the base for this.  The sculpt has the strap very cracked so I went with that.

I want to have another go on the right eye socket area as it doesn't quite match the left.  Also the back probably needs some more work.  Throughout I kept fighting the yellow as it was so intense.  I usually added some warm white and hexed lichen to tone it down and then in some cases used some yellow ink in a glaze to get the yellow back.  Yellow isn't something I paint with as a base usually :)  However I am happy with the result so far.

Bridge over the river resin - a 28mm wooden bridge

I already have a number of bridges in my collection.  A home made one which was a bit wonky, a smaller resin wooden plank foot bridge and a large stone bridge.  The stone bridge was in a WW2 style so looked a bit modern in the dark ages.  Looking around for a new bridge I came across one at Eureka Miniatures (part no. 100WAL04).  It was a nice looking wooden bridge with a flat resin base and white metal side rails.  Since the rails would be the point that the bridge would be picked up by I pinned them (using cut down bits of paper clips) to the bridge in three places on each side for extra strength and epoxy glued everything together.

The base is dead flat - great for my terrain boards

Using this as an excuse to try some more airbrushing I base coated the bridge in a mid brown (using a cheap $3 craft paint).  Then it was onto the usual dry brushing up the colours of light brown to tan to near ivory/off white.  The end result was a nice looking bridge wide enough for two foot figures (on 25mm bases) to be side by side.

Five layers of dry brushing later...

I could have made my own as I have done previously but I doubt I would have gotten the side rails looking as good or as strong.  The open sides of the bridge have the advantage of making it much more appealing to look at on the game table.  Perhaps I'll have a go later and make my own to replace that WW2 stone bridge...