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Wet Feet

The figures

These are heavy modification of the « Stalin’s Kazaks 1943 » Alanger box. The set is decent and provides a neat base to carry on some work on Russian figures though a lot of work has to be done to clean the moulding edges.

So, as both are supposed to be patrolling near the shore, I supposed they must have left their shoes somewhere. So I cut the legs under the knee, found some feet in a Nemrod set and proceeded to sculpt legs.

As in normal life people are more or less tall, some with wide shoulders some with hairy feet etc, I decided to make the cap wearing soldier quite tall with longer legs and to slightly broaden the helmet one’s shoulders with some extra Miliput.

I replaced the hands and heads with Hornet replacement parts. There was a slight problem though – though I tried the Russian caps that you can find in ICM boxes and that Alanger one, they all way too big to fit on Hornet heads. I therefore had to sculpt the cap. I made it slightly too small for him so that he has to put it on the back of the head.
So then I had bought the Hornet HRH03 head set which were supposed to hold five heads with model 1936 Russian helmets which I think look pretty cool and alien. Big deception when checking the packet two actually wear some Adrian helmets with some red crosses on it. As I had used the cooler looking one on another project, I had to use Tank’s model 1936 helmets set. There are seven of them in the set but they’re far from getting the correct shape which Hornet’s have. Furthermore, I found it to be quite a nightmare to pick out the big resin sprue sticking out of the inside of the helmet WITHOUT destroying the perky borders. I destroyed two before getting one out - finally! So I used one of the Adrian-helmeted Russians of the Hornet set and put that new helmet over the head. The two Mosin rifles, from Tank, were downright superb; the bayonet looked especially cool, so I quickly forgave Tank about my helmet problem.

The equipment is from my spare box, mostly ICM and Dragon parts.

I have observed that on a lot of diorama pictures the figures appear as shiny as if they had been coated in gloss varnish. I find out that the ratio matt/gloss is pretty much vital for the realism of a figure: the clothes have to be really matt, the leather garments as belts and cartridge holders can me somewhat glossier, and so is the skin.

So I began to first paint the clothes with an acrylic basis and then and oils for shadow/highlights, I let them dry for a few days and then sprayed them with some matt varnish. And then I painted the skin, belts etc.

On the reference pictures I used for these two Russian blokes, the helmet appeared indeed as if somebody painted them in a glossy dark green which I did.