Flash Gordon - Tomb Maiden

There is a short story behind this particular miniature. I had first seen it in an issue of No Quarter, the Privateer Press in-house magazine. It is a Tomb Maiden miniature ref. No. PIP81027 and first seen it for sale at Waylands Forge, Birmingham. I felt that the £5.00 price ticket was a little steep for such a slim casting and decided to wait. Later while visiting family in Swansea I found the same miniature in The Comix Shoppe, Swansea reduced to 99p!

The miniature has been stuck in my 'to-do' box for some time and after recently sorting through some magazines I came across a photo of a painted example. This spured me on and I am not sure if I should be proud of this fact or ashamed - the figure took less that 12 hours to complete, from opening the packaging to adding the static grass!

The first thing was assembly, this is a five part miniature, the only joint that I pinned was the torso to the hips, all other joints were superglue. I have read criticism of Privateer Press models - that they are made in too many individual parts and the fit is not very good. I would agree, however with some twisting and patience the model went together OK.

Next was the base (I usually base my figures before painting) which was made from odd pieces of cork (wine corks, sliced into layers and broken apart), DAS modelling clay and some sieved sand. The figure was undercoated with spray can black and touched up with watered down black paint.

Then the whole model was 'wet brushed' (like dry brushing but with more paint) with very dark brown, the figure was then 'dry brushed' with Copper, bronze and gold acrylic paints which gave a 'Steam Punk' look that I thought looked very good.

I then picked out individual sections or plates of metal in different tones of metalic paint as well as a little bit of colour here and there. The face was painted very pale flesh and the spear or halberd was painted to represent ivory. Please note; I am sure the halberd is meant to be bent!

Once the paint was dry or nearly dry as I was moving quite fast with this model, I washed the miniature with different washes - black, black/brown, brown and green. Then more touch up and highlighting to any detail that had been lost with the washes.

The base was painted as usual, pale grey and white to represent stone, with dark earth and a black border. The base is a 40mm round base and the miniature stands 50mm tall head to toe.

Tony