“The Gawk!”

Second and last of my “Big stompy robots” this time, this was an incredibly kind gift from Dave Stone, as when I ordered my “Blakes Seven” ships from him at the start of the year I was excited to get them (as I always am when I’m expecting new stuff in the post 😀), but when the parcel arrived I discovered another well wrapped ”lump” of resin in there too, intrigued I hastened to open this up only to find to my delight a casting of “Mongrol” my absolute favorite member of the ABC Warriors, that Dave had sculpted as part of his excellent renditions of all the “Warriors” for “Forgotten Heroes” a couple of years back, and the lack of which member had stopped me from buying the rest of the “Foundry” versions years ago (as mentioned in my post “Spread the Word” a few weeks back). Anyway I had no idea that Dave had even taken castings of his originals before he painted them up, in fact so pleased was I that I have to admit I did “dance” around the kitchen singing “I’ve got a Mongrol!” for several minutes. Much to my wife’s bemusement*

Now the figure was cast on a large round integral base, like a “big slotta” type, but as you are probably all aware by now I’m not a huge fan of these**, so first job was to cut and sand this away (that took a lot more effort than I first thought it would too!), but then I needed to re-base him, but how? He wouldn’t fit on a 40mm round washer as his left hand touched the ground waaayy outside of the edge, and to fit him to a custom circular one would be as large as the original base had been (why it was on one that size in the first place, of course🙄), much head scratching later I decided that I’d have to make a custom one. Now one of the ideas I had flirted with was to use two bases, a 40mm round under his feet, and a 20mm round under his hand, but I’d decided that this looked “messy” to my eye, but marking these out on a piece of MDF and joining the two circles together with straight lines I thought looked pretty good (to me at least), and still followed my bases “theme”, so one in that “teardrop” shape was cut out sanded, then “Mongrol” was glued in place. Now as I’m sure you all know by now, I can’t leave stuff “well enough alone” so after a quick look though my graphic novels I thought I’d add the “chin chain” and “forehead badge” he often (but not always) has, his design (as with all the Warriors) was subject to change dependent on who was drawing them at the time, but now finally happy with him I covered his base in filler and cat litter, and undercoated him in white primer as he had a lot of yellow on him.

I started by undercoating his arms and face in sand, then highlighting here with a mix of sand and lemon yellow, I then undercoated his torso in dark red that was highlighted with bright red. I took the black next and carefully painted in all his exposed metal areas, that were then dry-brushed with chainmail, luckily I didn’t have to be super accurate with this as I wanted a worn chipped look to the whole figure. To this end I then took the black again and painted in areas that would have large chips in the red and yellow areas, these were then roughly filled in with more chainmail, before I stippled either more sand or bright red over them. The chevrons on his forearms were added next with black stripes highlighted with dark grey. His badges were added after this, and I used the same colours I had on “Hammerstein”, so a base of ocean blue was applied then the details were added in cream and bright red, and his eyes were added in shamrock, with a dot of “luminous” lime green in the centre. Everything was given a final light dry-brushing with more chainmail before a coat of Quickshade “strong tone” was applied and once this had dried his base was finished in my usual colours and way, though I did add a sprig of rubberized moss, as there was a bit of extra room for a change. Lastly he was given a quick “blow over” with the old matt varnish, and he was done.

I’m rather pleased with my “Mongrol”, he’s a smashing figure and an incredibly kind gift from Dave too boot, I had planned to get him painted at the same time I did Hammerstein, but the additional work I did on removing his base (My OCD, I’m afraid!) put him back a bit, still he’s finished now and sitting in pride of place in my cabinet, Oh and the title of this post? I’ll let the 2000AD experts, fill you in on that reference…😉

Till next time, stay safe and cheers Roger.

* This is actually true! I really did 😁

** They are the spawn of the devil, to be honest!