1889. THE MECHANICAL AND MAGICAL EMPIRE OF QUEEN VICTORIA RULES THE WORLD. - CMoN Welcome welcome welcome to a monumental post on The Art of Caesura!! Today is a big day for two reasons: it is my last post in our current house (where we've lived for the last two years) and also because it marks the completion of the entire box set of The World of Smog: On Her Majesty's Service! The very first miniature I painted on this blog  (way back in January 2016) was from this game. I have absolutely adored painting these busts. Whenever I approached a hobby rut, or was looking to get back into things after a few weeks off - these were always the go-to models. The larger scale provided a different style of painting, I found them a bit quicker to paint than a full-body miniature, but no less satisfying in their character and detail.  A lady with a flame-thrower, a mechanical Beefeater, a double-amputee with steam-powered prosthetic legs, not to mention an

Uncanny entities and events abound in London—some stranger than others—and the effects of their passing show like scars on the city - CMoN Ladies and Gentlemen, it's a momentous occasion today on The Art of Caesura! Today I present the final miniature from The World of Smog On Her Majesty's Service board game (including all kickstarter stretch goals!). I'm going to celebrate this achievement more next week so today we'll focus on the final mini.  Today's miniature is my favourite of the whole lot! My avatar whenever I play the game: Sir Daniel Home! What a cool and archetypically steam punk miniature - a bald dude (with a wicked moustache, no doubt) wearing a gas-mask emanating some fantastical aetheric vapour.  When painting Home, I wanted to challenge myself with a limited palette (mostly browns) and work on emphasizing texture. I hope you can tell that the overcoat is a softer leather than the gas-mask for example. 

...His shapeshifting abilities and penchant for 'artful wealth redistribution' made him quite unwelcome in official circles... - CMoN We're on to the final busts of The World of Smog On Her Majesty's Service! It seems I always leave my favourite pieces for last - and between this and next week we'll be looking at the characters that my wife and I use most often. Today it's my wife's meeple: Master Fox! Master Fox is the only non-human "Gentleman" (i.e. good-guy) in The World of Smog, but he fits perfectly into the lore as having been banished from Faerie. I really like this character, his full-body sculpt has the great pose of a secret agent, while the bust has the nice added detail of the pince-nez. I'm not a fan, however, of how the ears of the bust are rounded, instead of pointy. It softens him quite a bit. In retrospect, I should have just cut those puppies off and started afresh with greenstuff.  As with the

Suzanne Taylor's troubling resemblance to  the Queen was quickly noticed by Mycroft Holmes as he searched for a look-alike to  occasionally replace her Majesty for protection. ~ CMoN Welcome to another Friday on The Art of Caesura! I'm determined to finish the last few busts from The World of Smog: On Her Majesty's Service over the next few weeks; and today we'll be looking at Suzanne Taylor! Poor Suzanne has been languishing in the immaterium of being a "draft post" for the past few weeks, while I joyfully distracted myself with the new look of the blog , musings on miniature photography and then Warhammer Underworlds . But today is her time to shine. In the story of The World of Smog, Suzanne was a music-hall actress who happened to have a striking resemblance to Queen Victoria, so was brought on as her body-double.  There are two details that didn't make the transfer from the full-body sculpt to bust, one sligh

A specialist in the breaking of curses  and the sundering of dark enchantments, Stormsire is one of the God-King’s most trusted arcane agents,  as well as a font of  knowledge  on the negative effects of the reforging process. - Games Workshop Hello all and welcome back to The Art of Caesura! Well, the eagle-eyed amongst you may have noticed that the miniature that I used as my example in last week's photography post hasn't yet formally appeared on the blog...until now! I got Nightvault as a birthday present to myself at the end of November, and have really been getting into the game - reading the rules, watching battle reports , reading blogs , building decks and listening to podcasts - but I hadn't bloomin' put paint to plastic! Until I did. I've actually really enjoyed painting the few Stormcast Eternals that I have done so far: the Knight Questor for Silver Towe r, The Free Liberator , and The Free Knight-Incantor . Having already painted