Gilding the Lily

I've always been enamored of Kev White's work. The man's an artist and his sculpts at Hasslefree Miniatures are sort of a gold standard for lithe, elegant miniatures. So it's pretty arrogant to presume to "correct" his work.

I picked up a small selection of his pieces through a local stockist (Armorcast, who still owe me an Alyx) and they're lovely. After some consideration, his Kendra was the ideal figure to represent the pistol-packing love of my life, my beautiful bride Josie. But there were some changes that Kendra needed to make.

She needed a new hair-do, and I discovered upon closer examination that she needed a far more determined chin if she was going to play my wife on the field of combat. So I pulled out my files, an Exacto knife, my small stash of ProCreate putty and a handful of sculpting tools I've either bought or made over the years, and I set to work...

Here's Kendra as she arrived from the caster. Mr. White’s smooth surfaces and crisp details look far better in real life than this photo properly conveys.
In this profile shot, you can see her chin. It definitely needs a little something....
I filed off the front of the hair-do (prepatory to removing the entire thing, eventually) and used a very tiny bit of putty to rework her chin. I love ProCreate because, after it’s cured, it can be shaved with a sharp blade. This made “correcting the corrections” to her new chin much easier. I started the hair, then hated it, so this photo represents a false start, coiffure-wise.
Here’s Kendra, her transformation into Josie practically complete. I carefully studied how my darling bride’s hair waves when she’s not concerned with straightening it, and how it flips off her forehead when she tosses her head in annoyance. I thought that gesture suited the hand-cannon this figure’s toting… Anyone who crosses Josie on the playing field is in for a world of hurt.

Now all that remains is to paint the figure in Josie’s favorite black silk SWAT trousers and one of her carefully-selected crop-tops.

And, yes, she is that lovely.

Projects on the Bench

Here's what I have going on at the moment:

• Once Upon a Time in The Andes: a diorama featuring a family of MegaMinis' llamas, for my wife Josie, who's fond of llamas. Built to fit into a bell-jar from Woodland Scenics.
• Zombie Horde: I have 72 plastic Zeds from Wargames Factory assembled. They need to be based, primed and painted.
• Survivors: First among the list of survivors is Kendra, from Hasslefree Miniatures. She's being converted to represent my lovely bride, a conversion necessitating a chin augmentation and a radical change in hair-do. The immense handgun, on the other hand, doesn't require any adjustment. :D
• The Battle of Britain: My nephew and I are building a pair of 1:48 scale fighters, since he loves the old warbirds. In the spray-booth right now are a Stuka and a Spitfire. These are The Lad's first attempt at painting up a model to look really good - and his uncle's first such attempt in about thirty years.
• A Wretched Hive of Scum & Villany: Since we've played the heck out of the map-sheets that came with the Star Wars Collectible Miniatures game, my nephew asked his old uncle for somewhere else to play. Since I happen to have a few square feet of EPS insulation board, a foam-cutter and a hot-glue gun, we're working on some terrain features and structures from some desert planet far, far from the bright center of the universe.

The Game's Afoot!

We've moved into the house and mostly settled in, the wedding is finished and done, and finally, in between the vital tasks I have as the newly married owner of a house nearly a century old, I'm finding I have the odd sliver of time when I can make my way down into the basement, to the corner where I've laid out my tools and stockpiled my  raw materials, to work on hobby projects.

I'm sort of a solitary wargamer. I don't belong to a local club, and I haven't any regular opponents. I have a couple pals with whom I can get together to play a couple times a year, and my nephew (a likely lad of 13) is still interested in games, albeit mostly the Star War collectible minis, which I bought for him a few Christmases ago.

Mostly, this is a maker's blog. There may, from time to time, be After-Action Reports posted, but mostly it's going to be painting, conversions, and terrain. I'll try to make it worth the visit.

Cheers!