Davy Jones

 My pirate crew has a leader, at last! Ladies and Gentlemen, let me introduce you the fierce captain of the well known ghost ship, the Flying Dutchman: Davy Jones himself!

This figure comes from one of the two 1/72 sets made by Mars to represent the characters of the "Pirates of the Caribbean" movie series, and it is one of the best sculpted ones, in my opinion.

Regarding the painting, two things are worth mentioning:

- the weathering of the clothes must give the idea that the pirate spends most of his time under water, hence I had to paint some small shells and and some dark green to represent seaweed

- the tentacles covering the face of Davy Jones are pale yellow (almost ivory) with some traces of blue and purple to add some contrast

Among the crew, the figure of Davy Jones catches the eye, as expected of an unchallenged captain.

Hope you're frightened :D

2020 Advent Calendar: Day 3

This blog wouldn't be complete without Fantasy figures. Luckily, 1/72 Fantasy figures are rather easy to find these days, even unexpected ones, such as the crew of the Flying Dutchmen.

For Day 3 of 2020 Advent Calendar, let's discover two new recruits in the service of Davy Jones.

On the left is Koleniko. He's serving as the ship's primary navigator and keeps order on the ship. On the right is Clanker. His face is covered in barnacles and mussels—his left eye being completely covered—and he had seaweed in place of hair under his algae-covered hat, while sea anemones grew from his left shoulder. He's fighting with a pair of chain-shots.

And then, a picture of the new recruits in front of the crew so far.

Here are links to former posts if you want to know more about this crew and their painting:

- Penrod and Old Haddy

- Skirmish on the dock

- Hadras

- Undead pirates

Well, not exactly Magi Kings, but a good entry for the Calendar, I hope :)

New recruits for the Flying Dutchman: Penrod and Old Haddy

Good evening everyone!

If this post has a fishy smell, it's not because I spent last week-end by the sea (I did not, the sea is more than 100 km from Lyon, and due to the pandemic, I can't go that far), but because the Flying Dutchman has new recruits this evening. Let me introduce you Penrod, and Old Haddy! (sounds like a pair of entertainers from the Muppet Show).

Old Haddy commonly wears a stocking cap. He is covered in mussels and fights with some sort of knuckledusters. He might even be seen as a Deep One, according to Lovecraft's description in "The Shadow over Innsmouth".

Penrod is transforming into a lobster. He has three legs, one right arm holding a broken sword and a claw instead of a left arm.

I'm not very familiar with lobsters (we have a cat at home, and no lobster), but one thing I knew for sure was that the red color of the carapace is red when cooked, but not when alive. Here you are a live lobster:

I must admit that this painting was rather challenging, and to say the truth, I'm not very happy with the result, probably because the light blue spots on the carapace are too big.

That's all for today. What do you think of them ? Your comments will be appreciated and answered, as usual :)

Pirates of the Caribbean: skirmish on the dock

Hi everyone!

My Flying Dutchman crew needed to raid, they found a small coastal town with a dock, and even opponents to fight against. Come on, the battle begins!

1. Skirmish on the dock

2.The Making of

First of all, let me introduce you the two teams. I've already painted a small group of Zombie pirates, three crewmen of the Flying Dutchman, from left to right:
- Palifico, whose head is covered with coral
- Maccus, first mate of Davy Jones
- Hadras, already presented here.

I also added a zombie pirate, though he should be crewman on the Black Pearl. All Mars minis.

To defend the dock (and the city), a few mariners took their poor weapons and tried to stand before the horrible crew. They are Hät minis, from mini set #8325 British Marines and Fighting Sailors.

What about the dock ? No, not scratchbuilt alas. It's a piece of scenery I bought once in a local shop - just needed to paint it. It is designed for 28mm figures, but I thought it might be ok for 1/72 figures. Ok, the crates and coffer are a bit too large, but I think it works well enough.

And what about the sea ? My first idea was to paint some piece of paper to represent water, waves and maybe the coast, and I think I will do something like that one of these days, but it will take days before it is over, and I wanted to take pictures today (first day without rain for at least one week), so I needed something ready to use. Mrs Philotep (nicknamed NeferCaro on this blog :)) proposed me some blue crepe paper. Nothing extraordinary, but good enough. The first pictures looked like that:

Nice but really flat. Then she went to the kitchen and came back with some plastic film. A layer of plastic over the blue paper, and this was it:

Brilliant, isn't it ? It is maybe a common trick for miniature sceneries, but I didn't know it, so Mrs Philotep takes credit for this very good idea!

Last thing (see the edit below), I changed the color of the sea to turquoise with my computer, and there you are:

Hope you like them all, even the ugliest ones :)

Edit: I just found a way to replace the blue of the sea by some turquoise, which is much more realistic, so I've replaced all the pictures in this post.

Flying Dutchman Crew - Hadras

Today, let me introduce you Hadras, a damned pirate from Davy Jones' crew. If you have seen Pirates of the Carribean movies, you certainly have noticed a guy whose head is in a shell. The head was replaced by a coconut during a fight on an island, and the body began to move and eventually forgot his head on the beach.

Mars has produced a couple of sets representing the movie characters, mainly pirates of course, and Hadras is one of them, here:

Here are the pictures I found on the net to get some inspiration.

I've already painted other pirates from the same set a few years ago, here is another picture gathering the crewmen:

Not the best figures in the world, but interesting to paint - what do you think ?

Undead Pirates

Hi everyone, a small update this evening.

Among the most improbable minis I could have dreamed of, the Undead Pirates, or Cursed Pirates, or Fishy-Sharky Pirates (or whatever you want to name them) are certainly a reference I would not have expected to see in 1/72... but here they are, produced by Mars, and I couldn't resist the siren's song :)

Some may say that these minis are not very attractive, but I found them nice to paint.

Well, to be honest, I painted only three of them (for the moment).

I would like to use them in a naval skirmish game, but I have no rules and no opponents - any suggestions ? I wish I could buy the Napoleonics naval troops by Hät, but this reference seems difficult to find these days.

Some closeups.

Thank you for visiting this page :)