Making a scene

In the last post I promised you a look at how some of the projects I was working on turned out. Well, only one is finished, and ironically that’s the one with the least Milliput involved, but here are some pictures to show you what I was working on.

It’s a strange fact that most of my favourite British horse and pony breeds are rare and to some extent endangered, and because of this, I have for years been aware of the work of the Rare Breeds Survival Trust. Several years ago I had the idea of creating a scene which illustrated an RBST Stand at a county show, but I’d never got round to it. However, the Scene class at A Show Of Two Halves (ASOTH) held last month provided a catalyst for me to get on and do it.

Here you can see the scene as it eventually ended up at the show. The base is a piece of hardboard covered with railway grass (the sort that comes as a sheet, not the scatter). The animals and people are all Britains or similar makes, and most of them date from my childhood forty years ago. The two equine representatives were already painted up as part of my collection, but the rest of the animals I repainted as specific rare breeds for this scene.

The metal hurdle-type fences are also vintage Britains, bought on eBay with this scene in mind, but the mesh stock fencing is modern, part of a range now produced to complement Britains farm pieces, and again available on eBay.

The Milliput in question was used on the human figures in the scene. The lady behind the information desk is Britains, but she was originally wearing overalls and carrying a tray of some sort. I used Milliput to fill in a hole in her belly and give her a smart dress instead of overalls. The other two figures, picked up separately at car boot sales and the like, I think started life as some sort of firefighter figures. The man nearest the camera needed no work but a repaint, but the figure approaching the desk has had a sex change! To begin with it was a male carrying something really obviously inappropriate like a fireman’s axe; I managed to remove most of this but left a lump which I decided could pass for a handbag, so it seemed sensible to make her a woman! Cue long hair and an addition to her chest area: in actual fact, in comparison with the other figures she is much smaller and should probably go as a child or young teenager, so I may have overdone her chest a bit! Shall we say she is well-developed for her age… why else do you think she is facing away from the camera?

My favourite part of the scene is the information desk itself, with tiny posters and booklets on it, and the posters on each pen identifying the breeds. I spent quite a while researching these on the internet and shrinking them to tiny sizes to print out.

The scene attracted plenty of attention at the show, as I had hoped it would, being something novel and a bit different. I was delighted when it won the Scene class and then went on to be chosen as Performance Champion! Look out for it at a few more shows next year.