Blue horrors 1

I had some ideas for what I wanted my first humanoid sculptures to look like... I made some pretty shocking attempts, which I might show in a later post. With my design settled and my mental visualisations pretty constant, I began sculpting. This is the first design:

The armature was made from jeweller's aluminium wire, which was not a good choice as it was too flexible. The first layer was of Kneadatite Green Stuff, which was roughly shaped, and I then used Fimo (1:1 with MixQuick) for the body and clothing layers, with three short bakes of ca. 10 mins each time roughly at the stages shown above. At some point I will sort out some weapons for each of this guy's hands.

I debated on a colour scheme when I came to paint, and picked blue because I don't use it very much. I was clear on having these figures as Faceless Horrors, but I remain unsure about whether I like the heads painted as they are. I am far from an artist, so I tend to use just four paint layers after priming: base colour; dark wash; light drybrush; finishing touches (e.g. the gold buttons). I'm slowly getting to grips with blending and glazes, although using dirt cheap acrylic paints probably doesn't help!

I'm pleased with the proportions and the pose for the sculpt, but I still have some work to do on sculpting natural-looking creases in cloth, e.g. the medial aspect of the inner arm:

 
This sculpt is 29mm top-bottom, making it about 27mm eyes-feet. Here he is compared to an old 28mm Citadel Miniatures skaven jezzail:

The difference between the deliberately-oversized limbs and paws of the skaven and the more anatomical proportions of my sculpt make my effort look quite puny and under-powered; hence the need to exaggerate those elements, which I haven't quite got to grips with yet. And yes, the paint job on the skaven is even worse than the Blue Horror.

I like Fimo because edges always soften slightly after baking, which I think lends a more natural appearance to clothing and flesh. However, it is not good for very thin layers, and can get quite friable. The colour of the Fimo ("champagne") was suggested in a video series (Miniature Mentor) but I really didn't get on with it as the contrast wasn't really good enough. I now use a terracotta red Fimo, which is easier on the eye and has a much improved contrast. More about Fimo in another post.