Milliput milestone

This morning I got my Milliput out again. This is indeed a milestone, because it's been so long that I honestly cannot remember when I used it last.

The catalyst was the approach of A Show of Two Halves in September - a live show where the first day is entirely given over to performance classes. Performance is not really a strong point of mine, but for a long time I have been planning a scene, and I'd really like to get it finished for this show if possible. To do this, I needed to make a few minor alterations to some Britains people, and so the Milliput was needed.

I always find that I end up with more mixed Milliput than I need, and this morning I deliberately mixed quite a generous amount, as there were various other projects hanging round in which I knew could use it. Mostly these were resins or customs on which I want to build up various areas before painting them, and there was also a sculpted base for a model which has been waiting for quite some time.

Luckily I found that I had a unopened packet of Milliput, although because it was a couple of years old, the sticks of epoxy had gone rather hard round the edges. I therefore trimmed all the hard areas off with a sharp kitchen knife and discarded them. Bitter experience has taught me that if you try to incorporate them into the mix, you just end up with unmixed hard flecks which can later fall out and spoil your sculpted area.

This morning also marked the first time I had actually used purpose-made sculpting tools. I bought a set of them several years ago, but they had sat unused until now. They are double-ended stainless steel tools bearing a strong resemblance to the things that dentists use to poke your gums, and the pack I have is labelled 'Wax Carver'. I bought them from Horsing Around, but I don't know if they are British or American in origin.

Prior to this, my only sculpting tools have been my fingers and sometimes a cocktail stick for small details, but I found these tools extremely helpful. Wet fingertips are still very good at smoothing a Milliput surface, but the flat-end tools were also good for doing this in areas which I couldn't reach with my fingers. As I chiefly work with Stablemate scale, there are quite a lot of those - between the forelegs, for example - and having the tools was a real help. Also, as the Milliput dried out during the session, it became more and more prone to sticking to my fingers instead of the model, and applying it with a tool helped to solve this problem.

I was mostly using the tools for smoothing rather than actually sculpting detail, but I'm sure that over time I will be using more of their capabilities.

The only difficulty I encountered was really caused by my own impatience - I always want to make as much progress on a model as possible, which often means applying Milliput in several different areas. For example, on one mini resin I was wanting to deepen the girth and build up the belly, chest and upper legs, while on a Heredities model I was working on the neck, chest, belly and hindquarters. The problem was that several times I found myself marking or displacing an area I had just worked on, while I held the model to work on another area. Frustratingly, I then had to go back and repair the earlier work. I did manage to get quite a lot done, but I think that with all these horses, further sessions will be needed. Luckily the changes needed to the Britains people were quite simple, and so once dry, they will be ready for sanding and painting.

This is just a quick post without pictures, I'm afraid, as I am having an exceptionally busy summer and just don't have the time at the moment. However, I'll be showing you pictures of all these projects as they come to completion.