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.