"By God sir, you've lost an arm. And a head!"

In between the rush between trying to meet year-end deadlines at work on one side, and preparing for the holiday season on the other, I managed to sneak in some painting and modelling time this week.

Some French infantry are now sporting natty overcoats and habit-vestes, and I was able to texture the base of an artillery piece.  But a sudden- and, these days, rare- creative urge flew in through the window from out of nowhere, and perched itself on my usually lethargic shoulder.  

Before it had a chance to take flight again, I quickly took out the razor saw, pin vice, epoxy putty, and some wire in order to do some converting.

 

This is to be the chef de bataillon of another regiment of French light infantry I've been working on.  He was converted from this Front Rank mounted French officer.

 

A nice miniature, but unarmed, and as this unit is to be modelled assaulting its enemies with ferocious élan, I wanted something more dashing and more evidently eager to inflict some serious GBH on his foes.

I like my French officers to be unrepentant dandies, so this one is sporting a colpack, with a flamme waving behind him in the breeze.  Both were modelled from epoxy putty, and I used a filed-down shako as the frame for the new colpack,  texturing the "fur" using a sewing needle.

 

I added a plume that I had lying around, left over from a previous conversion done some time ago.  I swapped the arm with that of a figure waving a sword, re-positioning the angle of the hand so that it looked more natural given the pose of the figure.  After some judicious work with a rat-tail file, I then added epaulettes, a new collar and a gorget, all from Tamiya epoxy putty.

Not Perry sculpting by a long shot, but I really like the way he turned out.

Tomorrow should be clear and dry here in Tokyo, and he will get a coat of primer.

 

I have decided on which task I would set myself for the La Bricole painting competition, part of which you can see in the photo above.  On the agenda next week is trying to set aside an hour or so every evening on the necessary- if tedious- task of removing the flash and cleaning up the moulding seams.  

I like green uniforms, I do...

Update: the weather cooperated, so here it is primed and ready for painting, once the primer has had some time to cure.

"En avant!!"