Monday, January 4, 2016

The Statue Got Me High, Part 3

I finished the tiny statue of John Stephens for the Marias Pass section of my client's layout.


Not a perfect match, as you can see when compared side-by-side, but darned close. The prototype coat is shorter, and my collar turned out differently, because I had to wrap it around farther to make it match the figure. My model is about 12' in HO scale, and my guess is the prototype is around 10'.

Here's what the original 1/48th scale figure, from The Model Cellar, looked like on their web page.



He arrived in four pieces: body & legs, arms, and head. Before assembling, I used an X-acto to shave away the upturned collar and diagonal map pocket on the body, as well as the glove he held in his left hand. Then I assembled him with CA glue and shaved away a bit more of the helmet on each side of his head. I made his collar by cutting a small crescent moon shape from the foil you find around the neck of a wine bottle (incredibly handy stuff, that), and attached it with CA glue. I added some small creases to the collar by pressing it with a large sewing needle. I then attached the figure to a small square of styrene, again with CA glue.

To change his headgear from a leather helmet with a brim, I took a very thin strip of blue paper shop towel, soaked it in CA glue and wrapped it around his head. The porous surface looks a lot like sheepskin when you view it with a magnifier.

The primer coat came from a $1 rattle can of matte black. Then I brushed on two coats of thinned green/bronze acrylic mix, waited for that to dry, and then I applied the very thin turquoise patina coat. As you can see in earlier posts, I did a fair amount of experimentation to get that color mix.

The base is made of several slabs of chipboard soaked in CA glue. I simulated the pink granite (?) base with pale magenta acrylic splattered with darker magenta and off-white, with a final grimy wash of India ink thinned with isopropol alcohol to grunge it up a little.

Total assembly and painting time was just a couple hours... as long as you don't count all the time I spent thinking about how to do it over the last few months.

By the way, in case you wondered why I gave these posts such an odd title...


And here's another song about a statue that ran through my head as I worked on this...



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