Paul Gauguin

I decided to create a painted background for this set based on Gauguin's Tahitian paintings. The disparate nature of these pieces taken from several of his paintings seemed to suggest an idyllic Tahitian landscape where these pieces could be inserted into the canvas.

Watch this space.

                                        The pieces laid against a background to check for the layout

                                         A suitable frame and mat border, painted with Mars Brown

                                                  Background paiting being developed

                                                 Mat border placed over background

                                                  Background painting developed further

          Wooden panels taken from a book on Gauguin. These were used on the door frame of one of his houses. Here, they act as panels to frame this piece when completed.

Greek Mythology pieces

Also started working on these pieces. Just basic tera rosa undercoating.

1002 Arabian Nights

I've started to lay in more colours and cleaned up the flesh painting.

1001 Arabian Nights

I eventually came back to this excellent Mohr set and have now started laying in basic colours to define flesh colour. I like to work in a loose style and may make further changes to the colour scheme.

The pictures show some of the figures in this very imaginative set.

Emperor Qianlong (3)

These figures are now painted with dragon robe motifs, mandarin squares on the surcoats, additional details added.  Close to final painting.

Grouping creates a colourful display

                                         Mounted Emperor figure is given a yellow surcoat

                                        

Several Hafer sets

I bought quite a number of sets from this flats editor.

                         These figures are based on an Osprey book by S. Turnbull on The Mongols.

                          These two pieces are of Napoleon and his stepson Eugene de Beauharnais

                                      These beautiful pieces are based on Greek Mythology

Hafer Egyptian Pieces

I got a set on Nefertiti and an Egyptian boat with reeds, all from the Wolfgang Hafer catalog.

Ancient India

A beautiful Ancient Indian Set from Hafer.

Several Hafer Israelite sets

The Hafer catalog lists many ancient sets, some recently purchased and some earlier. I attach a page from the catalog and also add some figures to show comparison.

The earlier sets that I have are the "Wisdom of Solomon", "Finding Moses" and "Dance of Salome".

Golden Calf (Moses) Set

My earlier Moses Set was by Wolfgang Hafer, as confirmed by the drawings in his catalog, attached here for reference.

Etruscan Banquet

Another orgy type set. Ah, if only we lived in those days.

Kreta

Here's another Hafer set on Cretan civilisation. The sculpting and anatomy on these Hafer sets are excellent.

Kreta SilerSprung Set

I got this famous Hafer set  thru Wilken. It depicts the art of bull jumping as found on the murals at Knossos.

I attach a picture of the drawings from the Hafer catalog for direct comparison to the actual figures.

A bit more work on the Palm Sunday set

I have just added a few more basic undercoat colours to this set, using either enamels or acrylics. Overpainting will be done with oils.

Moses set

This is a set obtained from Alexander Wilken sometime back. I finally started painting some of the pieces. The style of painting was deliberately kept fairly loose, in sincere imitation of the style of Douchkine, the famed painter of flats.

After undercoating, the flesh areas are given an undercoat of terra rosa, and when fairly dry, highlighted with old parchment and shadows were burnt umber. For this style of engraving, I don't paint the whites of the eyes.

Emperor Qianlong (2)

Painting is well-underway. I took the liberty of giving many of the figures embroidered dragon robes although period pics tend to show plainer robes used for hunting scenes. I also gave some of the figures yellow or orange robes to indicate princely rank.

Click on the pictures to see more details.

Palm Sunday

I started laying down the colours for this set. Jesus will be portrayed in a dark red robe with blue coat. His hair will be light brown.

More on the Emperor Qianlong set

I have started applying oil paints to the figures. Although the Emperor expressly forbade the wearing of yellow by his subjects, there are many contemporary paintings done during his time that show members of the royal retinue wearing yellow clothing.

Generally, Qing officials wore a dragon robe with long sleeves, over which a short surcoat with short sleeves was worn. The dragon robe could be of various colours, but the surcoat was generally of a darker colour. I have represented a figure wearing a yellow surcoat, assuming him to be the Emperor. I have also given him a horse with markings, as coloured horses are frequently portrayed in Chinese scroll paintings.