“Our friends…..”

Week two of “He-month 2” began… well a little late to be honest, as I didn’t actually get anything done on Saturday at all, I have spent a couple of hours beating myself with birch twigs as recompense for this, so we’re all good now. I did however have a bit of a go on Sunday morning and was feeling pretty good with my results and work rate until Jez my co “He-month’er” posted his results on Sunday afternoon. He was at virtually the same stage with his Orko and his other two figures (Beast-man and the unfortunately named “Fisto”) were basically ready for the paintbrush, this is what you get for trying to be clever and work up from dollies! To make matters worse not only was his Orko easily comparable with mine but he was saying how disappointed he was in it and has started again. But anyway enough rambling you want to know where I’m up to with my tortoise paced efforts.

As stated above Sunday morning saw me digging out the “Greenstuff” and tools, and Orko was my first focus of attention. I began by adding tapered sausages of putty down the wires that were his arms before shaping them and adding the various folds to his “flared” (sorry Jez) sleeves, then using the tip if one of my rubber shaping tools I teased in the openings under his wrists. So pleased was I with the result that I went straight on and mixed a small pea of putty that was then popped between two sheets of the sticker backing paper I use to create flat smooth pieces, and was pressed into a flat disk about 10mm across. This was then draped over his head and smoothed to shape with a small “corner” forming a peak above his eyes. Next another tapered cone of putty was added to form the crown of his hat, and after it was roughly blended into the brim the point was teased over backwards, that just leaves me his ears to add tomorrow. Duncan (Man-at-arms to the uninitiated) needed his triangular neck guard adding to his breastplate so another small ball of putty was firstly stuck into position and then worked into shape, I was able to push in the raised detail “ridge” that runs along the front edge and I had a tool (I picked up from somewhere) that I could use to push the vent slots into the sides with (now there should be four vents but I could only fit three into the space). Below this he has a small cylinder on his breastplate (what it does I don’t know, but it there on the original, so it’s there on mine), this was just a tiny sausage of putty pushed into place and then tidied up, sadly this had to go lower down that on the original as the “neck plate” went so far down. Lastly I only had a little bit of mixed putty left so added the right hand side of the Sorceress’s outer “wing” foundation (you might think I’m putting off doing the details on these… and you’re probably right!!).

Monday, and Orko is finished, well I say finished he still needs basing up (but at least the figure himself is done), I did have a bit of a twitch yesterday when Jez ditched his Orko for having flared sleeves, as mine are also a bit “flarey” but I think it looks OK, all I had left to do was add his ears, so I drilled two diagonal holes in the side of his hat and popped two small sausages of putty into them and shaped them into rough pointy ear shapes, they are not as pointy at the top as the cartoon version but are a lot closer than the horrible toy version! So will do me. A little later I pulled him out of his “bottle top” base and bending the wire round at the bottom used a little greenstuff to stick him onto a “tuppence”. Duncan next and it was time to add his helmet, so a blob of putty was plopped onto his head and was smoothed to what I thought was the right shape, however looking at it again now it looks a bit more “Darth Vader” that Man-at-arms, I might add more putty to the sides tomorrow and try and flare it up and out a bit at the sides. The Sorceress is still giving me nightmares I added another edge to her cape on the left hand side, but I’ve decided I really don’t have a clue as to what I doing with her and if you’ll pardon the pun’ “I’m just winging it” at the moment, I’ll have to start adding her “plumage” tomorrow, so I’m desperately hoping this will start to pull her together or that some other inspiration will strike me.

Tuesday was “D” day, time to bite the bullet and add some plumage to the Sorceresses wings, so I mixed up so “Greenstuff” and… started by enlarging Duncan’s helmet out to the sides working away from the ridge I’d added down the centre, I’m reasonably happy with the result, it looks big, but at least it’s now the right shape. Then it was onto the Sorceress, for real this time, I rolled out some very small sausages and then roll one end to a point. These were then placed one at a time along the inner edge of her capes right hand side, pointing outward the inner bits were then smoothed out into the cape. Now what to do with the backside? I decided to do the same but with the points in-between the ones on the front, the tips of these I then teased down slightly (not sure if this was a good idea or not). And then the inner bits I’d smoothed out I attacked with the tip of a cocktail stick to give it a “downy” appearance. I don’t know about “inspiration” but I think it looks alright, just the rest of it to do now, hooray!! (not).

Wednesday was a “no show” as far as the figures went, so moving swiftly on to Thursday I set about adding the armour down the left arm of Duncan , this was basically three small balls of putty, and three tiny sausages to form the plates and straps, these were added individually and shaped. I also added some more “feathers” along the outside left of the Sorceresses cape.

Well Friday has come and gone without me again having time to put sculpting tool to putty, so it’s with a heavy heart that this week comes to a close, I haven’t got anywhere near what I’d hoped to achieve, I can only apologize and say I really will try harder this week.

Please keep checking back and you can keep up with Jez’s progress over at his blog, https://carrioncrowsbuffet.wordpress.com/

Till next week, cheers Roger.