Tuesday 23 April 2019

A Duo of Marauder Citizens (#makeatrish)

Over the last couple of months, ex-Marauder and Citadel sculptor Trish Carden (previously Trish Morrison) has been sharing a host of memories and pictures of many of her sculpts on Facebook. This has revealed that Trish has been responsible for many more classic figures than many people believed. As a celebration of Trish's output, the Oldhammer Facebook group has run a painting challenge titled #makeatrish. Below is my entry.




The sheer number of possible candidate figures available was mind-boggling. I could have chosen space slann, treemen, high elves or any quantity of the beasties that Trish is famous for.



In the end I settled on this pair of Marauder Empire citizens that had been discarded into my trade box because I had no real plans for them - a beggar and a figure that could be a scribe, bookseller or perhaps an apprentice wizard. Trish had happily shared photos of the greens on her Facebook posts:

The green of the poor beggar is even more worse for wear than the original sculpt!


I removed both figures from their tags and set them onto a scenic base (from The 36 Chambers sold on ebay). I positioned them so that the beggar looked as if he was in the road, with the aloof citizen attempting to ignore the beggar as he hurried past on the pavement.



To add some more interest to the scene, I also added a pile of horse droppings made by rolling a few small ovals of greenstuff. I also added a small pet/familiar for the scribe. This is a small winged cat that I had sculpted by John Pickford for my Eternal Champion collection (you can see a black and white version of him here). 

The beggar was painted up with pale, sickly skin with yellow tones and a greenish note. I painted his clothing to look dirty and worn.



The bookseller was given a much more saturated colour palette - a healthy skin glow, luxuriant blonde hair, robes dyed in expensive purple, grey slippers and matching grey shoulder drapery. I painted his winged cat familiar white just so it was different from the black and white version I've painted previously.


The base itself was painted in a mid-grey and then variously washed, stippled and drybrushed with everything from dark browns through to light grey.


I painted the horse dung in a very dark brown, before giving it a coat of 50/50 gloss/matt varnish to give that newly produced look! I did get some feedback that suggested my dung should be browner, but I guarantee that I did research and looked at plenty of photos of horse poo before selecting this particular 'finish'!.


The final touches were a couple of grass tufts from Army Painter and some lasercut paper maple leaves from Plus Model.

Hopefully Trish likes the resulting vignette. I'm looking forward to seeing all the other entries!

20 comments:

  1. Wonderful vignette Jon, I'm always surprised to see how a story or scene can arise from so few elements. All of them add their part to evoke a greater setting.

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    1. I always want to do more vignettes, but invariably also want my painted output to be game-usable. I think this is one of the first proper vignettes I've created - where positioning isn't compromised by ability to remove them from the scene. I think it benefits from that enormously - I'm glad it resonates with you as well.

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  2. Brilliant Jon! A worthy contender for best entry I'm sure. Never seen that haughty citizen before. Nice touch with the manure. We don't see enough shit on bases to be fair!

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    1. There are some stellar entries already, and more promised, so I have no real expectations on the competition.

      First time I've ever added manure, but I reckon we do see a fair bit of shit on bases!!

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  3. Not only the challenge itself is great, the composition and the whole idea is terrific. I love what you did here :)

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    1. Thanks Suber! It's funny really - all it takes is a couple of correctly posed figures and some careful positioning and a whole story develops!

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  4. Really convincing scene Jon! Worthy of the occasion. 😉

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  5. The research levels we go to in the name of our hobby huh! :DDDD

    I never knew of these minis before Jon, civvies aren't my strong suit when it comes to GW history.

    It looks great Jon, well done!

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    1. It's all about the research!!

      It's worth taking a look at the range Shane - some very nice figures: http://www.solegends.com/marauder/marfly/bits/198901marflyfx-1-01.htm

      Thanks!

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    2. Research is what makes our hobby so fun. Well done axiom!

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  6. Great entry! I really wanted to join that competition, but I couldn't find anything in my collection that I was sure was hers apart from the Space Slann. And all of those were already painted. (Because they're awesome, of course!) Sooner or later I'll figure out what's not painted that's a Trish sculpt, but in the meantime, I'll goggle at your paint jobs in envy. Well done!

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    1. Over the last few months, the number of Trish sculpts I was aware of has multiplied tenfold - it's been really interesting to challenge my preconceptions that Trish was only(!) a creature sculptor. Shame you didn't have anything suitable and glad you like these guys!

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  7. As you say, she's sculpted a lot more than I would have guessed. I suppose she's flown beneath my radar more even than most. Hers is certainly a name spoken in hushed tones along with the other great masters of yore, but I've really only begun learning who sculpted what over the last ten years or so. Slow process, but very rewarding.

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    1. It's a shame really that her profile appears to have been lower than some of the other sculptors who were perhaps given the marquee ranges to sculpt. It's a fun process to discover which figures Trish did sculpt.

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  8. This is a really nicely composed piece. Needs to be displayed with one of those 360 rotating images. You've executed another nice non-combat situation vignette here.

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    1. All I need is a steady hand and our rotating cake-icing stand. It's a possibility! Thanks Curis.

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