Goblinoid Combat Cards - sculpting shields

As I toil away on a few other, quite large projects, I decided this weekend to have a break from painting and break out the greenstuff. I wanted to make the shields on my recreations of the Goblinoid combat cards, in relief, as I've always admired the shields of Kev Adams and Fraser Grey who did this originally. It's a chance to test my sculpting skills and to add my own twist to the iconic Goblinoids rather than a direct copy of the originals, which is what Jeff is doing in his same project (he started way before me though). The skin colour, when I come to paint these, will also be in my own style rather than the lurid greens on display on the cards.

When sculpting, I used very small blobs of greenstuff in the way that I watched Kev Adams work last summer. Building up in small increments from lowest areas to most raised seemed to make sense. Using some small sculpting tools I was able to shape the forms of the face before adding a last layer of detail when all the base work was complete and solid.

So first up, with an actual bead for a beady eye; a jolly shield, winking at us:

Followed by a backhanding, horned skull:

(Halfway through sculpting this, I realised that the horned skeleton was posed giving a backhand slap - needless to say it was way too difficult to sculpt this!)


And then the epitome of angry and evil:

And finally a burning skull:

This was a fun few hours/afternoon's worth of work and working on such a small scale has given me some added confidence going forward with my sculpting. The next shields I'll sculpt will be more in the Fraser Grey style, much more rounded, smooth and exaggerated features...