The “Lu Shang” Project

Building "Lu Shang"

Part 4: Face and Hair

I still hadn’t quite decided what to do with the head but I knew that the nose needed to be fixed. My goal was to even out the bridge of the nose and at the same time widen it at the nostrils just a bit so that it didn’t look quite so European. Working on such a small area proved to be very frustrating and literally took me a couple of hours before I was satisfied. At this point, I needed a break so I went back to my reference books to try and find a hairstyle that would be appropriate.

Most of the illustrations I had seen so far showed topknot styles very similar to that of Japanese Samurai but more ornately decorated with golden plates and hair pins. Since I wanted this character to be very distinct, I didn’t think this would clearly define his origins at a glance. Even though the Shaolin “que” hairstyle was from a much later time period, I felt that it was more easily associated with Chinese culture and so I opted for that instead. An additional bonus would be that I could emphasize the sense of movement in the miniature depending on how I positioned it.

I began making the que by twisting together two strands of fine copper wire about 4 inches long. I made two more sets of these and then braided all three of them together until I had a piece that looked like braided hair. Switching my focus back to the head itself, I added a patch of hair onto the back with more gray stuff as the front and top of the head were usually shaved clean in this hairstyle. Once the putty was dry, I drilled a small hole, super glued one end of the braid into the hole and then unified the joint with more gray stuff. At this point I thought that the braid itself looked a little too much like braided wire, so I gave the whole thing a quick coat of liquid plastic to fill it out a little.

As for the facial hair, I was leaning toward the long Mandarin style mustache but decided that this would be too similar to the mustaches on the Kislevite Horse Archers. Instead I gave him a “Fu Manchu” beard which was actually more appropriate for the time period I was using as a reference. This was applied using the gray putty once again.

Once all the putty was dry on both the head and the body sections, I did a light scraping on all the surfaces with a sharp blade. This was done to smooth them and eliminate any fingerprints or imperfections that might show up once I started applying paint. I also took this opportunity to sharpen up any rounded edges on the details. I felt that scraping was a better alternative to sanding as the rubbery consistency of the putty doesn’t respond well to sandpaper and I also didn’t want to destroy any of the surrounding detail in the plastic parts. Once this was done I gave both sections a quick rinse under the faucet to remove any dust and set them aside to dry. I was now ready to apply a primer coat and begin painting.
 

Home