“Moore Figures”

Time has been very tight the last week or so around here, so I’ll start with an apology, as I haven’t been around the blogs much of late, this is not to say I haven’t looked at what you’ve all been up to, more a case of I haven’t been in a position to comment, I have discovered how to reply to comments on here using my new phone (hence the “Dick Garrison”, moniker rather than “Rantingsfromunder”, but it doesn’t always allow me to do the same elsewhere!). But anyway enough with the excuses, I’m hoping in a couple of weeks I’ll have more time (or possibly a lot less, but we’ll see as and when).

So last time I said I’d be painting figures from the movies and something about a namesake of mine? Well the film in question, is the seminal James Bond movie “The Spy Who Loved Me” (the best one in my humble opinion), and the namesake, well my mum was a big Roger Moore fan, I was in fact named after him (honestly!), so it seems appropriate to have him here on “Mother’s Day”😊, the other figure is of course the wonderful “henchman” as portrayed by Richard Kiel, Jaws. Both figures are by “Killer B” miniatures and come from the “Geezers Royale” range.

Once both figures were based on “tuppences” and given a coat of matt black I set to work with the painting proper….

“James”, was begun by giving his dinner jacket a coat of coffee, followed by highlights of cream, and while I had the cream out I undercoated his shirt in this and gave that highlights of white, so that they were tonally slightly different, now before some “clever clogs” out there points out that ”Mr Moore” doesn’t actually wear a white jacket in this film, and his dress suit is in fact very dark blue/black, I know this, but I always picture him in his near trademark white jacket in my mind’s eye, so that’s the way I’ve gone here. His trousers, shoes, Walther PPK and bow tie I left black but highlighted his gun and shoes in dark grey, then added a touch of black to deepen it further before I did the same to his tie and trousers. Flesh came next European flesh with highlights of the same mixed with a little pale flesh taking care of this and after studying his hair in the film (it was on last week as chance would have it!) I ended up mixing some chocolate brown and Eurasian flesh for form the base and more Eurasian flesh was mixed with some saddle for form the highlights here.

“Jaws” was also begun with coffee and cream this time on his shirt (though on re-watching the film it does sometimes look like very pale blue, so I could have gone that way instead). Anyway next I mixed Eurasian flesh and chocolate brown and base coated his trousers in this before adding a little coffee to the mix and highlighting them with the lighter result. His flesh was done the same as “James” above but with a smidge more pale flesh added to the highlights. His boots and the back joint on his braces were then added in more chocolate brown with leather highlights, whereas his belt was left black highlighted with just a touch of dark grey (he doesn’t actually have a belt in the film relying on the braces alone). His trademark “metal gnashers”, along with his belt buckle and the buckles on his braces were then added in chainmail and the straps on said braces were first base coated in a mix of light blue and ocean blue followed by highlights of blue grey. Lastly yet more chocolate brown was used on his hair, this time with saddle forming the highlights.

A coat of light tone Quickshade followed by basing and matt varnishing in my usual manner completed the pair. I dug out my “James Bond car collection” version of the famous Lotus Espirit for the photos, I’m quite enjoying building up my little stable of spies, the astute among you will have no doubt noticed that there is one star (or should that be “Starr” 😉) of this movie missing, “Crooked Dice” do a very nice figure of that particular agent, and I hope to add her to my collection in the near future, but for now, stay safe and cheers Roger.