Wednesday 16 May 2012

The finished vignette.

At last I have got round to a post about the vignette I made for my son John Jnr. Sorry that there is only one photo, but of the few I took, the one shown is the best.
John got an acrylic display cube for the vignette, and when he told me it`s dimensions, I realised that I would have to make another base for the figures. Mind you, I did tell him the size of the first base, so, I blame him for the double work. Still, the old base will do for another vignette.
I promised a post on the making of the colours, then decided just to describe what materials I used and how I went about the making of them.
The pikes were made from 2.5mm copper wire, easy to straighten, and as they will be protected by an acrylic cube, they will be safe from being bent. I had made an Italian meal (eh?) and had an empty tomato puree tube to hand, which, when opened out, washed and flattened, became the material for the flag. First I made the crown and lion finials on the pikes using Green Stuff, then super glued the edge of the foil flag to it, sticking my finger and thumb together in the process. That was fun! The whole flags were then primed, painted and bent to shape. That was the part I dislike most out of the way.
The figures I then painted "toy soldier style", i.e. flat paint, no shading or blending, and none of that dipping  that wargamers are so fond of these days, because I like my toy soldiers to have that traditional Wm Britain look.
The next stage was to stick the colours to their respective subalterns and glue all the figures into their cut out spaces on the base before coating the whole area with a mixture of PVA glue mixed with filler and acrylic paint and allowing to dry. I had left the stone and its base until last as I didn`t want it in the way when I textured the base, so that was the last piece to be glued into place.
All that remained to be done was the lanyards, thin wire with Green Stuff tassles, twisted onto the pikes and painted gold.

5 comments:

  1. John, that is certainly a lovely bit of work! Quite unique. Well done.

    Simon

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  2. Now, how about the cypresses? ;-)

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  3. Excellent stuff! I think the "Toy Soldier look" works well with this type of vignette and although you say you don't like doing the bending etc of the flags they have turned out really well.

    I'm sure it will be a great addition to the Mess!

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