Young Miniatures - Obergefreiter, Operation Barbarrossa, 1941

I just though I'll take a short break from sculpting (and everything else) to wet my brushes in the palette with this box art assignment from Young Miniatures. Sculpted by Ebroin, this extensively designed bust provided me the needed opportunity to further my studies into the impressionist concepts of color usage.

With the exception of attaching the right wrist and MG sling to the MG-34,
the assembly for this kit was rather straightforward. I resolved the alignment issues during the test fitting phase by interfacing connecting parts with magnets before committing the super glue.

This process also made handling of sub assemblies much convenient as they could easily be attached to a "helping hand" during the various processes of painting.

There was no significant departure to my usual process of airbrushing on the local colors over a dark undercoat(in this case dark violet). My palette consisted of limited colors; mainly consisting of primaries and secondaries. Most of the shades and tones of the field grey tunic were mixed from magenta, orange, pastel blue and park green. Glazes of violet and blue were used in lieu of black for the shadows, with an occasional dash of orange to create the impression of brown dirt. The key reason of rejecting stock-mixed colors was to also create more reiterations of a singe tone as a result of inconsistent mixing of their parent colors. This inadvertently allows more subtle tonal variations to occur whereby no single tone will be exactly the same throughout.

Special attention however was devoted to the effects of bounced light onto lighter colored surfaces for greater atmospheric effect.

This concludes my recreational assignment from Young Miniatures and hopefully the next update will be on the long protracted sculpt for Alpine Miniatures.

Calvin

1/16 US Marine Recon, 1970

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A happy belated new year to all and what better way to usher the new year with a 1/16 scale sculpt based on the head study. There are obvious plans for a commercial release of this sculpt by Alpine Miniatures but not anytime soon due to other personal and work commitments.

With the exception of the hands and boots (done in epoxy putty), the entire figure is sculpted from a 50/50 compound of Super Sculpey and Super Sculpey Firm. There's still a long way to go before it finds its way into the rubber mold. Many details such as the canteens, grenades, K-Bar fighting knife and the tropical rucksack will needs to be fabricated and features such as the hands will need additional attention.

As mentioned, it's still a work in progress and do feel free to furnish whatever opinions of the sculpt.

cheers,

Calvin

A New Head Sculpt

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Here's a quick 1/16 scale head study realized in a compound of Super Sculpey and Super Sculpey Firm on a resin mannequin spare. A needle inserted through the ears helps gauge the symmetry as I sculpt. It's still a work-in-progress as I usually use such photos taken of the sculpt to identify mistakes and blemishes. The dots for the iris are placeholders and will be worked over before curing under a 60W lamp.
I've no idea what final form this will assume but I'm probably guessing an M-16 will be implicated ;)

Calvin

SS-Obersturmführer, Das Reich, Russia 1941

I've finally laid on the crowning touches to this protracted commission over last weekend. Hopefully I could squeeze in some time to do some sculpting before the start of fall.

Calvin

Helmet Cover Completed.

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Since the last update, I've finally made some headway in completing the helmet cover. Moving on to finishing up the rest of the figure and groundwork as I write.

Calvin

Collar Tabs and Groundwork

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I managed to get moving on the collar tabs early last week. Rather then sculpting them together with rest of the figure, I figured earlier that I could save some time on painting by sculpting the details by dying the epoxy putty with their respective colors and later homogenizing the stark appearance with a thin glaze of paint. Not only did this approach save me some time but also allowed me to attain better relief and finesse with the runes and embroidered piping.

Preliminary painting for the groundwork was also accomplished during this period in tandem with the rest of the figure so as to ensure an consistency and harmony. To echo the colors of the figure, I worked in hues of violet and blue to the shadow of the groundwork. I might have gotten carried away with the blue and now it looks too cold for my preference. Reckon I'll lay some ocher tones over to balance the temperature.

Calvin

Coming Along Slowly....

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Finding time during the past two weeks was particularly tough especially when my daughter is growing her first set of teeth. As of this week, I could only manage to get most part of the painting done for the back.

cheers,

Calvin