Mounted Baroque officer

As I had a few spare Cafe Storme figures, I wanted to convert them into mounted pieces. Two converted Historex horses are also shown.

Converted Tiger

I decided to rework the dismally converted Phoenix Model leopard. Only the head and front paw were retained. I used Edvard Muybridge's series of photos of a tiger published in a Dover book. A&B putty were fully used here.

By this stage, only the head was retained. All the commercial legs were removed and new legs were sculpted onto wire armatures drilled into the body. 

Getting creative with non-military subjects

I made Maqoma, king of the Xhosa, mounted on a horse. This was based on an illustration in Military Illustrated, a great looking magazine then. The figure was made from Preiser parts, mounted on a Britains horse. The cape was sculpted Duro putty.

Two Indian dancers are featured here. Except for the heads and hands, the rest of the figures and pantomime horses were sculpted from putty.

Sculpting a master for TimeMachine

Sometime back, a small model soldier company based in the USA commissioned me to make a master for his company in exchange for some of his production figures. The result was a mounted Mongol figure on a pony.

This was a great learning piece as I planned the work with sub-assemblies with a view towards making castings. To make great looking drapery and flowing hair, I used Duro green putty which had a rubbery consistency. Although in my opinion, this material is not so suitable for one-off pieces, its use in making masters cannot be underestimated.

This piece was never put into production.

metal castings

I discovered that high melting point silicone rubber could be bought locally to make flexible 2-part moulds for metal casting. The best that I've used was Dow Corning. Pouring channels were made to allow the molten metal to flow into the moulds.

These were used to produce my own range of toy figures. The picture shows a figure that was made more than 20 years ago and a later version. In both cases, I added sheet metal and wire to the figure to elevate it into a connoisseur piece.

Cantiniere

This figure was made using a commercial head and some hands. I used a mix of Duro and Milliput combined as a putty. The story is that of an unhappy lady holding a bunch of red roses. Red and green work well as a striking colour combination.

Red Indians

I made this figure without any armature. Using a Verlinden head and some commercial hands, the figure was built directly onto a converted Historex horse, the Arab horse head was converted to reflect a mustang.

Painting was done in a mixture of enamels and oils.

Emboldened, I made this Crow Indian piece, flushed with the success of his first Bison kill. The figure was made from converted Preiser parts but the Bison was made from a cut up toy Bison, cast in metal and with the parts rearranged to form a dead animal. This piece is heavy!

This piece is now in a private collection.