The Asylum has 200 inmates...

... well, minus Neil who escaped to terrorises us all with his own blog... see the last post. So, 200 followers. I'm rather surprised if I'm honest. All going rather well. Not sure I have much content for this post though I can tell you I've got another John Blanche piece to put up very soon (and it's uncharacteristically big). So, I think I shall open the floor to all 200 of you. Upon this anniversary of sorts I'd like to take the chance, once again, to ask what you'd like to see in future? So, don't be shy, there's at least 200 of you...

The inmate...

Spyglass Asylum has, or rather had, an inmate. Now you must understand that Spyglass is not your average asylum and it's denizens should not be assumed so either. We specialise in the uniquely obsessional, the not-so-borderline lunatics and curious insanities. And then, on the end of the line, is The Mad Converter...

The Mad Converter is unusual even amongst the inmates, or 'hobbyists' as we prefer to call them. There was an assumption in the early days that he perhaps didn't quite 'get' the hobby, neither concerned with gaming or even painting. There was only the conversion. A terrible obsession with modifying figures, spending countless hours upon them before casting them aside unpainted. We once spent an entire decade watching him converting figure after figure after figure without as much as a lick of paint amongst them.

Eventually we managed to persuade him to actually paint a few of them and he begrudgingly did so before flying off on a tangent of more converting madness. An extended leg here, a reposed arm there, a completely rebuilt figure around the corner. The occasional overheard mutterings about powdered Artemis or about how 'he'd show that damned bald-headed, crooked grinned head doctor a thing or two'.

The collection of converted figures grew, and grew, and grew. Always behind the closed doors of his dank little cell. The odd painted figure amongst their plastic, metal and putty brethren.

Then came the incident...

Just a few short weeks past we opened the door of his cell to deliver his morning gruel only to find the place cleaned out. The mad converter was gone, the figures were gone, his tools were gone. There was simply a note...

'I've heard that there's this wonderful thing called the internet and you can do this thing called blogging'.

Not good, not good at all. He's out there somewhere in the wilds now. He calls himself Neil and the most terrible thing has happened. He has internet access and is blogging his insanity to the masses. CALL THE INQUISITION!!!

For the purposes of your understanding, and perhaps your morbid curiosity, I offer you the link below to the beginnings of The Mad Converter's blog. I can only imagine the horrors you will see as the floodgates open...

MASTER-CRAFTED

More deadly art of Blanchitsu...

Always a great day when I get to share some new figures from the desk of Mr John Blanche as we can all bask in the craziness of it all. Crazed Inquisitors, Preachers and other such mad characters. However, it's not always about the uber character types. John is obviously well known for such figures but for every Inquisitor there should be mad henchmen and beyond the henchmen there are grunts. Today I'd like to share John working at the basic soldier end of the spectrum. Of course John being John, there's more to them than just 'bloke with gun'...









The figs have all the trademark warmth and texture of John's work. No cutting corners based on their level of importance in background terms, just the underlying feeling that these guys are characters to and not just faceless drones to be mown down by withering enemy firepower...

The cut down lasguns are a particular favourite part of these figures. Gives a massively different feel to the weapons with minimal changes and this is an idea I'm sure I'll shamelessly steal at some point.

My favourite of the two is the guy with the mask (from an Empire Flagellant I believe) and the shield on his shoulder. There's just something of a total character to him despite only minimal conversion (plus I'm a sucker for that John Blanche vicious red (orange paint and red ink. Must try it sometime).

Thanks to John again for sharing his wonderful work. There's more to come but that'll have to wait a little while.

Hang on... what the???

Okay, this isn't even minis related. A good number of you will know the Tears of Envy blog which often touches on minis stuff but also contains, well, everything else you can ever imagine (and frequently what you can't). The lady herself often posts music and videos on there from all over. I thinks to myself, there's an idea I can borrow, steal or whatever...

So, what's this one about. Well, I have something of an obsession with movie trailers. I love the distilled movie experience offered and tend to grab hold of music tracks via said trailers. Today's is a piece that I dearly love from the trailers to the last Star Trek movie (wonderful examples of the trailer art). The track is called Freedom Fighters by Two Steps from Hell. Rousing, dramatic stuff...

2011 done! So then, 2012...

2011 was somewhat the year of the Asylum for me. I actually set up in the last days of 2010 in a fit of spontaneity while trying to deal with a very difficult Christmas period (2010 was not a good Christmas for my family) but I consider it something of a new year launch really. I created this blog for a number of reasons, one of which was as a way to externalise my thoughts on minis and gain some perspective as I'd been a bit 'sculptor's block' for a while. All worked out very well on that front and I spent the first few months of 2011 secretly working on a new start for Spyglass Miniatures. It wasn't to be a radical departure but just to get what I wanted straight in my head. Plans involved working with other sculptors and artists too. I came up with some interesting stuff that will obviously not see the light of day now (don't worry, it never got to the point of finished minis) as 2011 had something else in store for me...

So, the GW juggernaut came knocking at my door with questions of whether I might like an actual paying job with crazy things like holidays and so on? Hmm, says Steve. So, I pack my bags and leave Cornwall for the slightly grim alternative of Nottingham (but with a salary and a nice place to work).

The second half of 2011 was mostly about getting used to a 9-5 schedule and discovering that I'm really not used to having proper time off. It did, however, mean that I was a lot more prolific and have been churning out minis at a fair rate that I can neither show anyone nor tell anyone about. You'll see the fruits of my labour eventually but it still feels like a long way off...

2011 was also a year where my hobby mutated. I got very into the idea of painting in quicker ways and making extensive use of washes. I'm learning all the time with this new way and am enjoying it much more than my older meticulous style. Works nicely as I was never able to achieve the level of quality that I wished (seriously, scouring the Eavy Metal cabinets in the studio is a humbling experience).

2011 also saw my first ever placing in the Open at Golden Demon. Picking up my third place behind Mike and Martin was something of a highlight and it was cool to play with my new quick painting techniques on the grander canvas of my Corpse Cart.

So, 2011 is behind me and 2012 has arrived on my doorstep. I'm starting the year with an earache but hopefully that wont be around for too long and things will move forward.

I have all kinds of hobby plans for this year that I will be sharing via this blog. I have one major plan that will be talking about in the coming months but I'm not quite ready yet. I've been somewhat inspired by Migsula's posts about the dream workspace for modelling and painting on his blog Legion of Plastic. Now I'm not planning to do this but what I'm interested in is certainly sharing in the philosophy of doing something with a different approach. But we'll get back to that...

I'm also planning to paint a few small armies now that I'm starting to get the hang of this quick painting lark and have recently started an Eldar force that I'll be sharing before long. This is my first proper foray into army painting for a long while and I plan to follow up with an army for fantasy battle as fantasy is a little more my thing and I think I've chosen which to go for and an interesting theme to go with it.

And I'll try to come up with some random insights into sculpting stuff too.

Thank you to all the readers here for helping make Spyglass Asylum something that I'm immensely proud of. When it comes to the future of this place I have plans within plans within plans...

So, 2012! Going to be interesting. Ahead, groove factor 5. Yeah!

Art of femme...

It has been quite a time since I talked about sculpting in any kind of detail but decided that I had something I'd like to talk about. So, today's topic is sculpting women. This will be more about the broad nature of doing so rather than an instructional piece.

I've been a pro sculptor for just over twelve years now and have specialised in sculpting women for most of that time. It's generally what I bring to the table and, during my freelance years it was by far the lion's share of what I was asked to sculpt, mainly because there really aren't that many sculptors out there who can convincingly sculpt women and those guys tend to be very busy people. The best out there, in my opinion would be Kev White and Juan Diaz. Both incredibly adept at rendering the female form. I consider myself to be pretty good too but those two I feel are the masters within our industry.

So, what's the best advice I can give in approaching a female sculpt? Well, first up I have to draw a bit of a line in the sand. I'm talking about sculpting women in 28mm and thereabouts and it'll be far from reality. In the real world, femininity is a complicated affair without a whole lot of rules. Like most in life, what works works and what doesn't probably does for someone else. But, in 28mm it's much easier to have harder rules. I have a rule that I put above all others for female minis and, in my opinion, it's where many sculptors fall down and miss the mark...

... femininity is in the hips!

There's a tendency amongst many sculptors to approach sculpting a woman in the same way as a man but to keep the figure skinnier and give it boobs. Frankly, you should be able to sculpt a flat chested female figure and still have it look female or you aren't getting it right and the breasts wont make it right. This often compounds by the sculptor making the breasts larger in an attempt to make the figure more feminine and it just gets comical or grotesque. No, the breasts aren't the point (err... so to speak), it's hips and bums where you'll make a female figure. I often surprise other sculptors when I tell them that I start my sculpture with the bum (male or female). I always sculpt torso first and the bum is the first putty to go on.

At an armature level, keep the hips wide and don't be scared to put a little meat on the thighs upon bulking out.

Keep a smooth but deep curve at the small of the back, it accentuates the bum and gives an elegant quality to the profile of the figure.

Flat belly? Not so fast. Just as you deepen the curve of the back you should let there be a gentle curve to the belly.

So then, I said not to use the breasts as a way to make the figure feminine but obviously they need to be sculpted right as well. The biggest mistake made other than oversizing in an attempt to make the figure more female would be in their positioning on the torso. They're lower than expected. I see many figures where the breasts emanate from the collar bone. Make sure there is a significant gap between the collar bone and the top of the breast.

And so to faces. Almost a topic in itself but I will do the quick version here. As with body shapes there is an idealisation that is generally required at this scale. It's very easy to sculpt an accurate version of a beautiful real woman and have it look rather masculine at 28mm. The nuances tend to get lost and the femininity with it.

Pointy chin! Keep the chin narrow. Woman can have quite wide jaws and still be very feminine but at this scale it's tough to make it work.

Narrow mouth and keep it low on the face. A wide mouth is very difficult to pull off on a female mini so keep it narrow. I tend towards a full but quite narrow lower lip and not so much sculpting the upper lip as tilting the gap of the mouth upwards around 45 degrees and shaping the edge.

Keep the eyes nicely defined and probably avoid lower eyelids (not a hard rule but usually better without).

When it comes to nasolabial folds on a female face I either avoid or try to keep them subtle.

Above all when you are sculpting women everything seems to be elegant curves that run into one another whether it be the body or the face.

Remember, you can often get away with anatomical murder when sculpting a bloke but it's easy to get a female figure wrong (I'm not going to pretend that I've never got it wrong).

Haven't sculpted my traditional birthday mini this year... hmm... wonder what it should be?

Bountiful Basing Buffoonery from Blanche and Buddle...

Okay, about time for another blog post I feel (okay, overdue I'll admit).

When John gave me notes on his painting for my last post he also talked a little about basing. I decided his thoughts would be more appropriate for their own post though I'm also going to touch a little on my own basing technique...

First up, basing thoughts from Mr Blanchitsu himself. Fundamentally John sees his figures as gaming pieces, despite the level of work, and thus he doesn't like to go overboard on his bases. He doesn't like them too elaborate or too high and refers to it as a frame for the mini and also remarking that he dislikes the big guilded frames often found surrounding paintings in galleries. He finds them disrespectful to the artist. Frames should not be noticed, they are not in competition with the artist just as the base should not be in competition with the figure. Consider the figure moving through a grim futuristic landscape, not stuck to 10 tons of wreckage every step.





As well as regular sand, John also uses Bicarbonate of Soda as basing material which is a lot finer. Looking at his figures it gives just enough texture to pick up the paintbrush strokes without building things up too much. The different grades of sand work nicely to break up the groundwork. Though at pains to not go too nuts over his bases I'm sure John doesn't want them to be dull. A little interest on the base goes a long way... be it a skull or some discarded remnant of tech.

I rather like painting bases on my own figures though I have a slightly unusual take on things. Painting the base is my first step in painting rather than the usual last one. I find if I paint the base last it can become a bit of an afterthought and so I like to 'set the scene' right at the start. The only real part I don't do is add static grass (or tufts) as I like to varnish figures and it's easier to add this stuff afterwards. But whether an army figure or a grand Golden Demon entry, base is almost always first.

Now, I really need to get basing on my latest painting project, I'm well behind schedule...