Drummer, 7th Fusiliers, 1781 - Part Four -

This will be a bit of a lengthy post as a bit of progress was made yesterday. I started the day out by changing the eyes on the figure per Mr. Horans suggestion. I wasn't going to do this, but I am happy that I did as it adds a bit more 'fear' in his expression. Basically the eyes were made larger and more open, I tried to show him looking hard to his left. This will be reinforced with the painting as well.

The next step was the waistcoat. The same procedure is followed as pretty much anything I do. A blob of putty is added to the figure, this is then rolled out and bulked out into the shape necessary,this is then smoothed out and folds are sculpted into the putty.

Once the vest was cured, the coat tails were next on the list to get done. This time the putty was rolled out, cut into the deisred dimensions and the corners were folded over. This sheet was then added to the figure and positioned. When doing coat tails like this I don't worry too much about what the upper part of the coat looks like, it will be fixed later, the important part is to get the free hanging parts of the coat in desired position.

Now that we have the coat tails in place we can go ahead and sculpt the rest of the coat. A layer of fresh putty is added and blended in with the previous cured parts and the folds are sculpted.

The lapells and collar were sculpted next. Since this is a one off, and will not go into production, most of the lace detail will be painted on, being a drummer he will have conciderable amounts of lace! The only thing I did here was just a nice flat surface with no raised details. Buttons will be added out of lead foil before finishing up the figure.

Next up will be the arms, bear skin hat, hands and the groundwork.