A man who can dominate a London dinner table can dominate the world. The future  belongs to the dandy. It is the exquisites who are going to rule. - Oscar Wilde Happy Friday one and all, it’s that time of the week again: The Art of Caesura! Before we get started, just a few exciting things to share...well, I guess first off it's my birthday tomorrow!! So Happy Birthday to me! And secondly, the 100th post of The Art of Caesura is fast approaching as are Christmas, New Years, and the 2nd Anniversary of this blog! So fasten your seatbelt over the coming weeks, because we've got a lot in store! It's been a while since we've had some World of Smog action on The Art of Caesura. The last post was the full-body sculpt of Colonel Steel , back in March! While we await the completion of the next game , it's time to set our sights back on the busts from the original.  The Dandy: "The man once called 'the gentleman burglar' by The...

Come not between the Nazgûl and his prey!  Or he will not slay thee in thy turn.  He will bear thee away to the houses of lamentation,  beyond all darkness, where thy flesh shall be devoured,  and thy shriveled mind be left naked to the Lidless Eye – The Witch-King of Angmar to Éowyn in The Return of the King Welcome back to another Middle-earth-based post on The Art of Caesura! We've a lot to discuss today, so I'll delve right in. After having a great old time with Gimli and the Uruk last week, I decided to do another Lord of the Rings mini that had emerged from the basement box.  The Witch-king of Angmar! Well, the first thing I noticed, when I took this guy out of his crumpled blister-pack, was that the chain of his flail had snapped in half. I tried pinning it back together, but even using my narrowest drill bit I wasn't getting anywhere. So I decided to be a little creative and just cut the chain out all together, turnin...

Forty-two? Oh, that's not bad for a pointy-eared elvish princeling.  Hmph! I myself am sitting pretty on forty-THREE. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (extended edition) Welcome to Middle-earth and to The Art of Caesura! I haven't painted too many of The Lord of the Rings models (the last one, and first on the blog, was Faramir back in May) but everytime I do, I wonder why I don't! They're great, characterful, "old-school", low fantasy models, and many of them are sculpted by institutions of the miniature sculpting biz: the Perry brothers! Whilst doing a bit of research for this post, I found out that  "Gimli on Dead Uruk-hai" was actually a limited edition model sculpted by Michael Perry. I can't actually remember picking this guy up, but he recently emerged from a basement box! From the outset I knew I wanted to paint Gimli in earthy tones to contrast the metallic Uruk.  I started by painting t...

This is madness... THIS IS SPARTA!! - 300, Frank Miller The best part of Fridays: The Art of Caesura! We're back to Conan...well sorta...okay, so this is a bit of a confusing one. Well, I backed the  Conan board game from Monolith  on Kickstarter and one of the minis that was thrown in as incentive was this Spartan Warrior from their subsequent game,  Mythic Battles: Pantheon . So while he may not technically be a Conan mini, I'm including him in this bunch.  I think it's pretty clear to see where they got their inspiration from: But hey, I love 300 so I'm not complaining! I had a few goals with this model. I wanted to work on a nice Mediterranean ruddy skin tone, and I wanted a nice rich red cloak (as opposed to the grimy ones I usually do!) To this end, starting from a base coat of Cadian Fleshtone,  I used diluted "Indian Shadow" and "Pink Flesh" as a targeted shade to bring out his musculature.  I then worked t...