My first homemade model!

[Advicot]

Lovely models as always.   

[Isidro]

Thanks for your kind words dear Advicot, I appreciate them 

New batch was baked yesterday, all but one painted today.


1. The vulturine guineafowl, Acryllium vulturinum. Usually I look at images in the internet for sculpt my figures more accurately, but this one was sculpted entirely by memory as I had the PC busy with other things, and hence the result may be not a star sculpt. This was the last I've painted, just a while ago I finished. It was a nightmare to paint. Each white dot on the feathers is made with the head of a needle (the same needle that I use for sculpt... how useful is it!) and the white paint dry on it after 4-5 dots, so painting the whole bird took a long while!




African Savannah pals


2. The marbled polecat, Vormela peregusna. One of my favourite small carnivores. It was dpne almost from zero three or four times as two first were too big and third too wrongly shaped. After that I got a correct shape and size and hence I was able to start the details of sculpting such as fur, eyes, etc.



With one of its main prey, the European hamster!


And another European friend...

[Isidro]

3. The white-necked rockfowl, Picathartes gymnocephalus. One of my favourite birds since ever!



More and more from African rainforest


4. The four-horned antelope (Tetracerus quadricornis). One of the most interesting antelopes in the world! I just needed to have it in figure
Honestly, this is not my best sculpt... but is enough for be displayed.



More Indian pals


5. And finally, this is the one that I like most! I'm really in love with my model of eyed torpedo ray (Torpedo torpedo) I made it after knowing the existence of a Happy Kin torpedo ray, very well painted. But after seeing by other images that the figure have a very noticeable mold mark and also that is impossible to find for sale, I've decided to do my own




And now to a dive in the Mediterranean sea

[Advicot]

Ooh a picatharates. I absolutely love them, aren't they also called bald crows? I've always been looking for a figure of a picatharates, after I learnt they were rediscovered by my idol who I wish to meet before he passes away.

[Isidro]

Yes I love them too! Bald crow is an appropiate name for them too You wanted a figure of a picathartes? Now it has been done today! I've looked a bit in Google for find who's your idol... hmmm.. Jackson Weckstein? He's apparently who made the pics of Picathartes gymnocephalus rediscovered in Ghana in 2006 (tough the species is present in other countries too, where is not tought as disappeared), altough he was with a team of other people apparently.

[bmathison1972]

your figures are getting better? I cannot remember, are you creating 'skeletons' with wire or foil? In other words, is there something under the clay to provide longterm support?

[Isidro]

Only rarely. I prefair to not use skeletons because is more difficult to sculpt around it. The first model (the porpoise), the bay cat and the Jame's flamingo have wire skeletons. The other figures don't.
Maybe in general my figures are getting better, but this four-horned antelope looks like a step backwards

[bmathison1972]

Only rarely. I prefair to not use skeletons because is more difficult to sculpt around it. The first model (the porpoise), the bay cat and the Jame's flamingo have wire skeletons. The other figures don't.
Maybe in general my figures are getting better, but this four-horned antelope looks like a step backwards

OK, but understand they might fall apart over time, especially those with thin parts (for example, bird legs)

[Isidro]

Oh yes, but bird legs are bare wires. The toes are made from paste tough.

[Beetle guy]

Unstoppable!

[Isidro]

Hello!
After a week of pause, I charge again! This weekend I've been busy and I only did 5 models (the previous one I've did 10 models in 2 batches). I show you them in the same order that was painted



1. First figure is done after reading the Blaine's sentence: "Weirdos? Aliens? Those are my peeps!" So I've decided to do the weirdest animal on my collection: the green spoon worm, Bonellia viridis. Those creatures have a 15 cm blob-shaped body, usually with a constriction in the middle, and a long extensible appendage that born from the body and end in a fishtail-shaped structure. The most famous fact of this animal is that the male, that is fusiform, very simple and dozens of times smaller than the female, lives inside the body of the female.


Usually, this is all that we can see on a dive. The body is generally hidden in a rocky refuge, and only the appendage is out. I wanted to show the beautiful undulated border of the model. The appendage itself is just a wire, for avoid breakages.


More Mediterranean pals (well the horse mackerel is Japanese, but nearly identical to the Mediterranean one)


2. The silky anteater, Cyclopes didactylus. One of those species that animal freaks (like me) likes more.




With the giant armadillo these are all my xenarthrans for now. I would wish a good giant anteater for my collection, I think Papo one is the best.


Tough they could win the award to cutest animal in the world, they're not defenceless! When threatened by a predator, these slow animals unable to run away just present their formidable claws to the danger. They're sharp as razors and taking a silky anteater for meal is not an easy and harmless task!

[Isidro]

3. The baler volute, Melo melo. I wanted to have represented a more diverse arrangement of biodiversity on my strongly mammal-biased shelves, so I've decided to do a mollusk. But must be a big species with colorful and nice pattern and not too difficult to sculpt at decent scale. Few candidates for that, but the ideal species is this one!





All my mollusks for now! The colossal squid is far fom "colossal", but it can be left as a juvenile


Indopacific coral reef encounter!


The pink-eared duck, Rhodonessa caryophyllacea, that @Advicot devinated
4.

These are all my ducks for now:


Unfortunately, the only natural habitat for this species now is... the natural history museum. Here with my other recently extinct species (I don't collect species extinct in prehistoric times, but I do with those exterminated by mankind)

[Isidro]

5. And finally, what is probably my most favourite snake of all times: the mandarin ratsnake, Elaphe mandarina.




I've tried that the underside went accurately painted too.


All my snakes for now (the other is a Fea's viper, also homemade)


And what better companion for an animal called "mandarin" than this guy?

[Advicot]

Looking great as always Ididro. I would love to be able to make my own figures. 

[AnimalToyForum]

Fine attention to detail there, even painting the underside. 

[Isidro]

Advicot, with love, patiene and passion (and the correct materials of course) you will be able

Thanks both for your nice comments :*

[Advicot]

I'm not a very patient person. I also have hugely unsteady hands, as my hands constantly spasm.

[Isidro]

Hey friends! Here I attack again after a long pause!
This time I present you a very heterogeneous patch

Here just out of the oven:


Plus, maybe do you remember certain model that due to calculating badly the size I've rejected to my collection and saved for sell it unpainted to a friend:

This set contained a giant ibis (Thaumatibis gigantea), but it's indeed too giant! Similar in body mass to my jabiru stork!!! So I rejected it and I will sell raw to a collector friend.

1. So now, I present you, begining from the first that was painted: the Indopacific blue starfish, Linckia laevigata. Extremely easy to paint as it's monochromatic, and it was done precisely because talking about making figures to a friend he argued than an echinoderms must be the easiest figure to do, which I disagreed. Well, some are easy to do, and maybe this one is the easiest. But for species with spines such as urchins, ramifications like in sea cucumbers, feathers as in crinoids or geometric patterns of tubercles with certain volume (think in Oreaster for example), they must be some of the most difficult to sculpt accurately! Anyway this caught my attention because I didn't had any echinoderm in my collection so I dediced to do an easy and colorful one.




Here a Indopacific tropical reef scene, tough without the reef


And here you can calculate easily the scale with a real specimen of this species (with colours very faded due to preservation, but when alive they're cobalt blue)


2. Followed by one of the mightiest and most magnific birds of my country: the great bustard (Otis tarda). Well, they're big birds, overall the males, more or less like a big domestic turkey.


But yes, I did again what I do always: make them slightly bigger than I should! Or at least this is what thinks the Mojo Iberian lynx. Well, more meat for him, hehe (tough an encounter between these two is unlikely, as bustards are almost restricted to open spaces where they can see the horizon, while lynxes prefair dense scrub for hide and hunt being unseen by the prey).


However, it fits very well with the Nayab genet, another nice animal found in my mediterranean land

[Isidro]

3. This one I did as a gift for a friend. That friend is an entomologist specialized in true bugs (Prosorrhyncha) and I've offered to made a model for him, he asked a Notonecta. Well, I must confess that insects are even more difficult to sculpt accurately than tetrapods but I've tried my best. He finally decided for the attractive species N. meridionalis




Of course, this one can't be made in the same scale range than the figures for my collection In fact it's about 2:1 scale! Here with my other homemade insects:


4. And now, I dediced that sell the raw model of giant ibis to this other friend is not a very professional thing. So I've painted it and now it looks much better. Here the giant ibis (Thaumatibis gigantea), one of my mythical dreamed species, in the same edge of exctinction and sadly neglected by all zoos, that could save it.


Compared with my other ibis, the Takara Tomy Japanese crested ibis, that is also endangered tough not as much as the giant ibis.


And now with some other pals that inhabits more or less the same region (the peninsula formed by Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam and Thailand.. not sure if there is a name for the whole peninsula?)


5. And finally, this piece represented a challenge for me, but after reshaping various times I've got a fairly decent result The suuuuperbeautiful Red-shanked Douc Langur (Pygathrix nemaeus), probably the monkey with most colorful coat in the world



here my whole monkey troop!

[bmathison1972]

that notonectid is STUNNING