“Mistress by the Dork”

Well nobody even got close to guessing what my greenstuff head from last week was destined to become, though to be honest I would have been shocked if they had (though the guesses didn’t exactly infuse me with confidence when it came to the next stages!)

Women are difficult, I mean sculpting wise not in general (though they are!), well they are for me anyway, you see if you sculpt a man, and he’s no “looker” then he’s just an ugly man, monsters are even better as they are by definition “monstrous!”, women on the other hand we tend to see as attractive in general, so you have to get the eyes straight, chin level, nose not to big etc.. or it’s more noticeable. To use a rather non PC saying…”You can put a pig in a dress, but it’s still a pig!” This is why I tend to avoid sculpting women from scratch, and why I decided to have a go at making one now as a bit of a challenge. Now a while back during my conversation with Luke (IRO) he mentioned that he’d heard it was easier to sculpt things that were bigger, to which I tentatively agreed, and a couple of weeks back he commented on my “D’Mona figure that I should paint up “Elvira”, sooo…I thought I’d combine both of these and sculpt a slightly “Chibi’ish*” version of the “Mistress of the Dark”, so to this end I created the “Alien” looking head (right).

So next day I started to add the facial details, women’s “chibi” faces generally have large almond eyes so eyelids were built up around these, then the cheekbones were added and a small nose running up into a high forehead, the chin is small and pointed and wide lips were added between this and the nose, almost like a “baby’s” face (albeit an alien baby!), much smoothing later and it was as good as I was going to get it (left).

Next day’s job was to block out the body, this as you can see was only done very roughly just to give me an idea of where her shoulders, waist, bottom and legs would go and their relative sizes (right).

I added her leg next, you will only see the one as the other will be covered by her dress. So a couple of small sausages of putty were rolled out (the lower one tapered to a point where her ankle would be) and then applied to the right hand lower area about where the leg would be. These were then blended together and smoothed to shape, before I added another small triangular piece to the bottom of this and shaped it into her foot and shoe, another one of these was added on the left as you should be able to see the toe of her left foot poking out from under her dress later on (left).

Now there were still and couple of things missing (I meant her arms and dress, you filthy lot!), but next I thought I’d add her somewhat “ample assets”, so a couple of small balls of putty were mixed up and stuck on her chest area, I thought that perhaps I’d gone to large, but in the end decided that it is a “caricature” version so I left them as was. More blending ensued mainly on the inner edges as the outer ones will be covered by her drees again. At this point she looks like a “fevered adolescent’s wet dream” (which I suppose in a way she is!), (right).  

Next I thought I’d better get some clothes on the poor girl, so all of her dress (apart from the arms) was added in “one fell swoop”, this meant it was easier to blend all of the different areas together. So starting with two small sausages of putty these were draped over her chest and down to her navel. Then thinned and pushed back and around her torso, adding slight creases as I went (nothing too major as it’s supposed to be quite tight here). Then longer rectangles of putty were added around the leg area and after smoothing and blending with the upper part thin “strings” of putty were added running up the skirt and again blended in to form the waves in this, again as it is a “pencil” style garment these were only small. Then taking some more putty I rolled out another thin sausage which was tapered to a point at each end, these pointed ends were then cut off to about 3mm lengths, then the process war repeated until I had seven of these and then they were added at the bottom of each “pleat” running out and away from the base of the dress in a pointed “S” shape. Lastly today I added a couple of “blob’s” on her shoulders and pushed a “divot” into each as a guide for drilling into her shoulders to add the wire for her arms (left).  

This was the next job, so small holes were drilled in her shoulders and another pair were drilled into her waist. Then two small lengths of florist wire with a right angle in the middle were pushed and glued into these holes (right).

Once dry I mixed up a small amount of putty and the upper sleeves were added, this just consisted of pushing a small blob around the wire, blending the join and adding some slight waves to the fabric, again it’s quite tight so only small ripples were needed. Then turning to her hands, these are on her hips so I had a good solid base to work on (remember if you are doing a hand held out away from the body try to add a thin flat base to work on first and let this dry!). Anyway I began by adding two small balls of putty just in front of the where the wire ran into her hips, then secured these around the wire by dragging the putty around the wire, next I flattened out the balls into ovals (for those of you of a certain age, and British, think of the hands the characters had in “Trumpton”). Once I was happy with the size of these I gently pushed the gaps between the fingers in with the blade of a small scalpel, starting with the middle one, then the two outer ones (don’t worry about the thumb yet), then taking a sharp “probe” I gently widened these gaps and shaped the fingers and hand. Next two tiny (and I do mean tiny!) sausages of putty were rolled out (gently under one finger) and these were added on top of the hands to form the thumbs. These were then blended in to the rest of the hands. With the rest of the putty I had left I began adding her “fringe”, these were just more small points of putty stuck across her forehead and then the hair was “tapped” in with a knife (left).

Finally this week I added the “strands hanging from her sleeves, this was done by once again rolling out some tapered sausages and cutting the points off of the ends and then attaching them to the undersides of her forearms, I will build the cuffs of her dress up over these next. I also added a roll of putty across the top of her head that her hair will built over. I had hoped to get her finished, but she’s taken longer than I expected, typical woman they always take forever to get ready!

As well as all that I have also finished a three more bases (or Warbands) for my “Hott” army, I gave a couple of them checked trousers to be different, like the others they still need basing and “Quickshading”, but I hope to do all that at the end if there’s time. I won’t go into details as this post has been long enough as it is!

So till next time, stay safe.

Cheers Roger.

• For those of you not in the know, a “Chibi” is a comic style figure usually with an oversized head, a bit like a “Pop Vinyl” figure.