24 January 2021

British Intelligence Officer

The Annual Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge is still going strong, so here's my fifth submission for those of you who don't follow our progress there:

Another chamber that took some heavy head scratching. I mean, like many of you I do have a few Fantasy figures flying about the place which would have fit the bill. But I'm not a Fantasy gamer and only once in a blue moon actually fancy the idea of painting anything Fantasy. Thus I was on the verge of skipping this chamber...

But when reading the line "...recreated from steel, clay, earth..." for what felt like the umpteenth time it was that inspiration finally struck. With some leeway for interpretation one could argue that the masters for our miniatures are made from something very similar to clay. In fact Green Stuff, Grey Stuff, Bees Putty and what not are the modern equivalent of the clay our ancestors used to model many a masterpiece for reproduction:

Picture taken by me in the National Archeological Museum Athens in 2018


And to top things off I actually had a master sculpt in my stash. It was shortly before Christmas that through fierce negotiation with the man himself (my favourite sculptor Paul Hicks that is) I managed to get hold of a sculpt he wasn't satisfied with as it was too big as to fit properly with some 1/72 figures he had planned to use alongside it. Made from Grey Stuff and about 23mm from foot to eye:

When put alongside the few AB 20mm miniatures in my collection he's a little bigger but well within the norm. He's simply a rather big fellow but the proportions fit perfectly. When compared with your average 28mm figure he's both too small and too slim to fit in with anything.

Now it took some more head scratching as I couldn't make up my mind as to what to do with this unique piece. And actually I haven't quite decided yet. Thus I simply painted the tab the figure was sculpted onto to look like the wooden floor of a building. So for the time being he'll have pride of place in the cabinet till I can finally decide on his further assignment. I do have an idea already but it'd include getting back into scale modelling after more than 20 years. A prospect I find a little disturbing as of yet...



Points wise this submission is 20 points for the chamber plus another 4 points for a single 20mm figure = 24 points

10 comments:

  1. A lovely paint job on a lovely little miniature...

    All the best. Aly

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  2. Very lovely work as I've mentioned as the blue tone is excellent. I would really like to see Athens someday.

    Christopher

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  3. Brilliant work Nick - sorry I missed this one in the Challenge (so easy to do, sadly, this year).

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  4. Great work Nick, I missed this one on the Challenge.

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  5. Impressive brushwork on this figure, Nick. Love the subtle color changes on the folds of the clothing.

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  6. Lovely detail painting for a 20 mm figure, very interesting images of early casting techniques, my work involves making molds and melting metals both precious and non precious, the basics for making castings had not changed that much.
    Cheers John

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  7. Obviously a lot of though went into this project ... a great result at the end.

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