Sleestak Bust

This is a Jimmy Flintstone product. I finished it up just in time to take it to Wonderfest this year. Most of my time was spent cleaning up the mold seams running up the sides of the head and reestablishing the scales. After priming with Mr. Surfacer, I shot the eyes with Mr. Color gloss black, added a wash of reddish brown Vallejo Model Color (I don't recall what exact color), then brushed on a liberal amount of Quick Shine (which is the new Future, I guess. It dries to a nice hard shine, even though it's kind of milky in the bottle). Then I painted it with various Vallejo greens and ochre yellows, drybrushing successive layers. I mounted it on a block of rosewood with a length of acrylic rod.

The Wonderfest judges awarded it a Bronze, which is about right. It seems figures get Merit simply for a competently applied coat of paint, and paying attention to color modulation and variations of sheen from flat to gloss is enough to get you Bronze. If y'want more, do something special!

The picture at right is from the figure display case at AAA Hobbies in Magnolia, NJ.

Italeri No. 6037, 1/72 scale Austrian & Russian General Staff

 My wife and I saw Ridley Scott's Napoleon just before it was pulled from the theaters. I had my doubts about it going in, having heard of obvious historical inaccuracies and Scott's attitude toward historians, which he stated as "Were you there, mate? No? Then STFU!" Perhaps Scott thinks he's valuing lived experience over book learning, or art over pedantry, but he's really valuing ignorance over knowledge. Even with his cavalier attitude, Scott would have been very short on material about Napoleon without the detective work of historians.

Anyway, seeing the movie made me want to know more about the Napoleonic Wars and to try my hand at painting Napoleonic figures, something new for me.

I started off by priming the whole set with Mr. Surfacer 500, then painting faces and hands with Vallejo flesh tones. The figures are molded in polypropylene, which takes paint rather poorly, so the primer coat was essential, and even that was easy to scratch off. Then I started painting uniforms on one of the two trees of figures, the Russians.

My knowledge of Napoleonic uniforms is close enough to zero to constitute complete ignorance, so I had to do some research. I found that except for the three general officers, the remainder are grenadiers, probably the Pavlovski grenadiers, who kept their miter hats after other Russian grenadier regiments had traded them in for shakos. I found images online, including color plates from the 19th century and beautifully painted figures in larger sizes, and at first what I saw was blue uniforms. This made sense to me, since the diagonal white straps crossing over blue-uniformed grenadiers' chests would form the Cross of St. Andrew, an official emblem of the Russian Empire. In fact, it's the ensign of the Russian navy both under the czars and since the fall of the Soviet Union.

But I also found green, and various shades between blue and green, and a description of the Napoleonic Russian uniform color as "bottle green." That description is very specific, and wouldn't be applied to any color you'd describe as blue. I think the source of the supposed blue color is similar to the notion that USAAF P-51s in the ETO were painted blue, namely fading of color images and faulty color reproduction. But I'd painted them all blue! What was I to do?

I decided that repainting three generals wasn't too much trouble, but that repainting 18 grenadiers was out of the question. Before this, my figure painting experience was modern figures, generally WWII troops in monochrome uniforms. I could practically paint an entire platoon in olive drab in the time it takes to paint one Pavlovski grenadier! (Yes, while painting these, I kept telling myself to just be patient. The more patient I was, the better I enjoyed painting them. But that didn't mean I wanted to start over!)

One modification I made, based on the review of this set at Plastic Soldier Review, was to shave the monogram of Czar Alexander from the saddle blankets and paint on a star of St. Andrew. All the painting was with various Vallejo colors, except for some shiny bits that I painted with my old stock of Model Master metallics. The turf on the bases is Woodland Scenics held down with some of their scenery cement, which I then thinned and let soak into the attached turf to help it hold together.

I have yet to paint the Austrians, so they'll be the subject of a future post. Meanwhile, these figures are for the time being on display at AAA Hobbies in Magnolia, NJ.

Revell "Astronaut in Space"

Here's Revell's 1/12 scale astronaut from about 1969, in this case a 1990s repop. Given the EVA equipment, the chest mounted ventilation unit and the hand-held maneuvering unit (HHMU), this could only depict Ed White on his Gemini 4 spacewalk on June 3, 1965. It was the first spacewalk by an American astronaut, and White enjoyed it so much he said having to get back in the capsule was the saddest moment of his life. He would lose his life on January 27, 1967, in the Apollo 1 launchpad fire that also killed Virgil "Gus" Grissom and Roger Chaffee.

The kit came out after this tragic accident, and doesn't mention White, instead presenting the figure generically as an astronaut. It's based on Revell's previous 1/6 scale Gemini Astronaut, and has a similar clever design to show the astronaut on a spacewalk. My goal was to do present White on his spacewalk and paint his G4C spacesuit in accurate colors, but without doing all the work of fixing the umbilical, which is simply wrong. I also wanted to make the figure's face visible through the gold-toned visor, using a bit of artistic license. The face doesn't look much like White, but after I lightly airbrushed the inside of the visor with Vallejo Liquid Gold, it's hard to tell.

After applying white primer, I preshaded the suit with Polly Scale blue in the folds--shadows should be blue in low earth orbit! Then I airbrushed it with Tamiya white with just a little Testors Turn Signal Amber and thinned with isopropyl alcohol, using my Paasche H. This looked fine before I sprayed it on, but it came out too yellow, so I mixed up some burnt umber and clear flat varnish, and shot that over it, followed up with very light drybrushing with Vallejo white. The helmet is also Vallejo white, the straps Polly Scale blue, drybrushed with the same tone but lightened, and the gloves are painted a mix of Testors white and steel acrylic, with the black areas painted with Vallejo black lightened with grey. The HHMU is painted with more Vallejo Liquid Gold (it comes in silver, too). Various parts on this and the suit are anodized blue and red, which I represented with red Sharpie.

I did basically no modifications, with a few minor exceptions. The designers seem to have rotated the arms as an afterthought, so the seams on the sleeves don't line up with the seams on the shoulders, as I think they should. To fix this, I filled the upper part of the seams and rescribed them. The two antennas on the left wrist broke off, so I replaced them with wire. A plain black rectangle is provided on the decal sheet for the name patch, so I drew a black rectangle with "E.H. White II" in white lettering in Autocad and printed it out on plain paper, then glued it on the chest. It's a little oversized, but if it were any smaller the text would probably not be legible.

It's possible I'll redo the umbilical at some point in the future. It plugs into the wrong place, the instrumentation port above the inlet port where it should plug in. There's supposed to be plumbing or wiring connected to all three ports on the front of the suit and to the ventilation unit and the helmet. The kit represents these features either inaccurately or not at all. If I do replace the umbilical, I'll probably use steel wire and add weight to the Gemini capsule base.

SRS Prototyping Figure: Mirror Universe Col. Green

Scott Spicer of SRS Prototyping has his Mirror Universe Col. Green figure out now. You may remember the character from the TOS episode "The Savage Curtain" (and the Star Trek: Enterprise episode "Demons"). The story is he's the emperor of Earth around the mid 21st century, but in the Mirror Universe. He's a genius--he invented the shield generator he's wearing on his back--and he's still evil. I'd expect his alternative actions gave rise to the mirror universe.

The figure stands 4.25" tall, which is about 1/18 scale if we allow Col. Green is over six feet tall, which seems probable since he's genetically superior. (I'm over six feet tall myself, so I should know!) He's molded with a separate head, which can be posed, and right arm holding a space helmet, which cannot. His Imperial dagger and officer's sword are also molded separately, and a base is provided with the Imperial logo laser etched by Laserfire Creations. The whole thing is $16 plus shipping.

SRS Prototyping Ta-Opet Figure

I had the pleasure of meeting Scott Spicer of SRS Prototyping four weeks ago at JerseyFest, where he was one of the vendors as well as a contest judge. One of the items he had for sale was a 3 inch figure "Ta-Opet," which stuck me as very reminiscent of Frank Frazetta's "Egyptian Queen," one of my favorite paintings by one of my favorite artists. Figures are not my usual thing, but I couldn't resist buying one.

Here you see the finished figure at left, and a poor quality jpeg of the painting, in case you don't know what I'm referring to. The figure isn't directly sculpted from the painting--the pose isn't quite the same because the figure isn't leaning against a pillar--but the similarities are obvious, notably the shape of the metal brassiere thing.

In fact, I love this painting so much I once painted a copy.