Harry, hands up!

Using Blutack to support the arms while I
work on them was very helpful. It made it
easy for me to detach them when needed.

It's been a hectic week or so since I was able to do any more work on Harry, thanks to a major computer game release (BF4) and an airsoft outing. But, other hobbies aside, I needed to get down to finishing Harry off as my brother is keen to do his magic with resin so we can move onto the next phase of our toy soldier project.

I have got his arms to a satisfactory stage - after several modifications - although I am not altogether sure about the proportions. But I have decided that I could play around forever, continually tweaking the figure, so it's best to just stop while I am reasonably happy with the model otherwise I might spoil what I already have.

So, onto the final stage of making the arms - the hands. I think in a previous post I may have said something like I wanted the quality of the hands to be somewhere in between those of Black Hat's figures and those of Armies in Plastic - and I think that's what I have ended up with. They are a bit chunky, but serviceable and have just enough detail to satisfy my needs.

Now, onto cleaning up my model and smoothing out some of the rough edges.

A little late to the party - Osprey's modelling manual
While undertaking the above mentioned work on Harry I received a long awaited figure sculpting 'manual' - Osprey's 'Modelling and Painting Figures'.

Sadly, on inspection I have found that this booklet covers - mainly basic - techniques that I have already discovered for myself through good old trial and error (with an emphasis on error)! It has lots of pretty picture but little in the way of intermediate or advanced miniature figure sculpting techniques.

I would have far preferred a series of 'how to' exercises on how sculptors recreate specific clothing textures and anatomical features, or step by step photos on how a specific figure was created in detail - what I got was something of what I wanted but with a lot of important steps missing. In fact, the book is a bit short of detail, and short on the number of examples it includes - it certainly doesn't live up to Osprey's strap line for it's series of modelling manuals of 'The complete "how to" modelling guides'.

To be honest, what was contained within in it's meagre 64 pages could be found elsewhere online for free. I found more in-depth tutorials by simply using Google. A good start for anyone who if considering following my pathway into figure sculpting might be to nip over to Planet Figure and join in the community of talented sculptors there, they all seem friendly and willing to help out those who are new to the hobby.