I don't do figures often, so when I do get one, it's because I really want to do one, and therefore I tend to pile straight in whatever else I may have planned or on the plate.
I have had some interest in the Naval Division at Antwerp since back in high school, when I came upon an article on it in an academic history magazine in the school library, and then read Mr. Churchill's history of the Great War. I was interested to discover the Tommy's War people did a figure of an enlisted man in the unit, and found I could get one from a state-side supplier.
There was a pretty significant mould mis-alignment on the lower legs....
I dealt with this as my first step, it being something I know how to do....
After this comes the tricky bit (
ie just about everything else...)....
I started with the eyes and face because if these aren't at least passable, nothing else is going to matter much. I am pretty much a duffer at figures. I did not try anything fancy, and will spare you the preliminaries: what is pictured here represents the result after the third complete stripping of the face down to white primer....
I'm going to put the head aside for a bit, so I can come at it with fresh eyes after a spell. I expect I will want to try and get a little more dark color at the edges of the eye-lids, and perhaps add a couple more touches of glaze/wash on the cheeks and chin. But next on the agenda is putting on the arms and beginning to paint the clothes.