I wanted to do another gnome/dwarf figure where I made use of wire mesh to make clothing. This one took a while and spent a few months sat on my bench unsure of who he was but finally took shape....
I started with wooden shapes for the feet as this gives a strong and stable base. Galvanised wire is bent into shape for the body and fleshed out with cardboard and masking tape.
I'm going for a sort of gnome/dwarf look, so the slightly pissed off look is enhanced by a cigar from a piece of dowel and the goggles are pipe fittings, Ive coated them with pva and stained them with acrylic rather than spraying them (it was raining so couldn't go outside to spray) and this eems to be fine, in fact the acrlic adheres better than the normal spray I use.
The trousers are mesh coated in masking tape and white tissue paper. I like the baggy and crumpled look this gives.
His belly is built up from DAS, I apply a coat of pva to the armature before building this on, which help it adhere.
The armature for the arms was a bit bendy so the DAS has cracked a bit, next time I'll use thick brass for the arms as this is much more rigid. The body is coated in pva and then stained with brown acrylic.
I've given him a leather jerkin, studded with split pins,and bent to hang around his paunch. At this point I wasn't sure what he would hold, the original plan was for a large spanner but this obscured too much of the figure, so a thick piece of dowel with a piece of coarse string becomes a stick of TNT.
I found some lovely bits of blue transparent plastic in the scrapstore which makes up the barrel of a ray gun.
His napsack is from shaped wire mesh and all the belts and staps are parcel paper coated with masking tape.
Lots more TNT. I opted for a subtle shade of parchment rater than the iconic orange to give it an old fashioned look.
The spanner, originally intended for his hands slips nicely into the straps over his shoulder, giving him a nice busy look from behind.
The hair was a lucky accident. It's stained artist sponge which had slowly fallen apart from overuse. It looks great as hair and really adds to the look I was trying to create (Mad Max, steampunk gnome). It took a while to recreate the look of the original bits but I will be using this technique again.
