“Let’s have a Big hand for Jitsu!”

Final stages of the sculpting of Jitsu were completed this week (well the start of it), so just a quick update to show where I’m up to as of now…

Sunday, Well I thought it was about time Jitsu got some hair so I began this by mixing two tiny balls of putty and added a couple of ears to the sides of his head, yes for some reason the dollies from “Bronze Age Miniatures” come without ears! Why I don’t know it would be so much easier to file these away if you were going to add a helmet than having to add them, but anyway “rant” over. Once these were on I then mixed up a small sausage of putty and attached this under his nose, then teased this around to his chin and added hair with my small knife, it is a bit bushier than the original but I can live with it. Next his hair was added using a blob of putty on top of his head and pushed into shape, being careful not to damage his new ears. Lastly today I added a bit more putty to the top of his right arm and increased the size of his bicep there, I’ll add his trademark “golden Hand” next.

Monday, and I started work on Jitsu’s right hand (the big one), before I started adding putty to it though I began by slicing off his thumb and then taking the pliers to the hand itself flattened out the fingers that were curled ready to take a weapon of your choice. This left the hand in a bit of a mess, but this of course didn’t matter as I was going to cover the whole thing in greenstuff anyway. That’s what I did next, mixing up a small amount I added a blob first to the back of his hand and then more again to the front, these were then smoothed together, and then after much “faffing” with various tools and knives I eventually worked it into a hand shape, sorry this description isn’t more specific but I really just messed about with it till I was reasonably happy with the shape. I then added some ridges across both sides of the fingers on the joints and after adding some dimples across the knuckles popped in some small balls of putty that were then flattened slightly on the top for a bit of detail. I’ll add the flared wrist piece tomorrow. Also today I took the samurai sword that I had cut off of the “Copplestone Babe” who became my “Harley Quin” last “Zomtober” and carefully drilling the back end of the blade inserted a tiny piece of florists wire ready to glue and putty into his left hand.

Tuesday and end was definitely in sight now, so I began by running a couple of blobs of putty down the front and back of Jitsu’s wrist and then smoothed these out and around his wrist, I then took my flat ended colour shaper and carefully pushed a ridge around the bottom of this “cuff” just above his elbow, this was then tidied up using the edge of my small knife as a straight edge. Next I added a small amount of putty to the “wire” handle of the sword and then carefully rolled this on the edge of my board trimming off any excess until I was happy with the size and shape. This was then pushed and glued into his left hand. Now comments had been made about the thinness of his legs, but I decided that I liked the smallness of them as they referenced back to the toys of the eighties as they too had legs that were a little small in comparison this the arms of the figures. So with that decision made Jitsu was also just about done.

Well that just leaves Jitsu’s base to be done and then I can get underway with the painting, on the home straight now, I’ll post up the finished figures once they are complete.

So till them Excelsior, and cheers Roger.