A Couple New Sculpts

Here are a pair of new sculpts I've been working on. These are the first scratch-built minis that I've tried since my Blood Bowl Troll: http://mdarrow.blogspot.com/2012/11/the-second-string-sculpts-finished-troll.html. I was excited to try something at normal scale for 28mm (which is funny, because these came out more like 32mm) and I wanted to try out mixing Aves Apoxie Sculpt and Green Stuff, which ended up working quite well. It's less sticky and it blends very well, unlike straight G.S. which always seems to leave a seam.

Above is the first mini and its concept sketch, The Electric Wizard Comes to the Wastes: Link, loosely based on the wonderful stoner-metal album Electric Wizard. You can tell that the work is still very much in progress, what with the lack of hands, but I'm very pleased with the face, as it is very first human face I've ever sculpted. I made it roughly following this tutorial: http://www.ebobminiatures.com/sculpting/faces.htm. This is a good, simple way to start studying the art of the visage.

I'm also taking my first crack at weapon-making. (The wizard's sword, Slamdring the Foe-Slammer, and his Staff of Incandescence are mounted on wires out the sides of his cork.) That part's not going quite so well, but I'm learning a lot. It's a very fiddly business, and, as you can no doubt see by my attempt on the Evil Dead below, I have not quite figured out how to get an elegant result:

I tried to fashion this chopper out of plastic card, but that turned out to be even harder than using G.S. Furthermore, mounting it to the figure to achieve a strong bond proved to be impossible save by sculpting it into the hand itself, which came out looking...odd.

It was a good experiment, though, and I don't mind rough results on what will wind up being a rather mookish character. You have to start somewhere. I am, however, pretty pleased with the face on this one too, in spite of its being out of scale and anatomically out there. I'm discovering that I enjoy making my minis closer reflect my twisted visions than they do "reality."

What do you mean "reality?" This is fantasy, damn it.

That said, I will be trying to work on my sense of scale and the elegance of my putty work. Any and all comments and suggestions are greatly appreciated.