Sunday 3 August 2014

Fix ups are forever.

It's official, elveses for the August painting competition, and I will be doing wraith-Galadriel. I never know exactly what to call the model, but it's her 'What if I had the Ring" thing.




 Before I get anything more than an undercoat on her, however, I feel the need to deal to my latest batch of stripped and new models. It seems to be my curse that any second hand mounted heroes need a bit of fixing up. The way this is going, when I finally get hold of a warg attack Theoden, I'll probably have to sculpt an entire arm. In this batch, mounted Strider had a broken horse leg, hardly a complicated fix, and not worth photographing.

There was also mounted King Elessar, and Legolas. In this case, Legolas is a fourth-hand model. It originally belonged to my brother about seven years ago, then to me when he stopped collecting soon after. After that, I sold it to a mate, and now recently re-acquired it. Through this chain of ownership, I knew it had a miscast bow, where the top half was warped and shrunken. To this end, I removed the offending bow limb, and constructed a new one from two sheets of 0.5mm plastic glued together. I also had to fix up a hoof that I had mangled when I originally assembled the model for my brother.


Elessar was a little more complex to fix. I got the model through the interwebs, and all I knew was that it had been stripped of paint before I got it (evident by the discolouration of the metal). When it arrived with me, I found that I had been supplied with the sword arm of the foot version. I removed the lower hand on the sword, and drilled into the hand a couple of millimeters before gluing in some brass rod. Because I couldn't get a stable drilling surface directly beneath Anduril's blade, I had to cut the sword between the hand and crossguard, and move it around a bit. Some trimming was also necessary at the top of the arm to get it so sit right in the shoulder. The shoulder on the model now is formed by the underarm of the foot model. Finally, I sculpted the ornate shoulder armour on, and raised the cloak over top of the armour.


Because I had a little putty leftover after this, I decided to stick it on a base and replicate the rare invisible Frodo, essentially a base with sculpted footprints on it. A useless piece, but fun all the same.



When the putty sets, I'll get all the bases sanded and models undercoated. There's a total of eight mounted and twelve foot heroes to do in this batch. Afterwards, Galadriel will meet the brush.

Until next time, may the wind beneath your wings bear you to where the sun sails and the moon walks!

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