Stewart's Best of the West

Figure Busts

Then I started to play... hmmm, if I cut these 2 torsos in half, I could put the good shoulders on the good hips and.... wait! If I just cut the bad hips off, put on some upper arms, grab one of the worst heads from my other pile... I could make busts like they do for GI Joe or other comic book heroes/villans!

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My first attempt! Johnny as he should have been. Johnny is painted with a light blue shirt with pearl buttons and white t-shirt. The trousers are dark blue. A brown belt with silver and bronze buckle complete the overall look. For details I painted the tobacco pouch fob hanging out of his shirt pocket red and green.

I matched the color of his hair (a medium brown) and then sealed his hair with a satin, acryllic top-coat. The body was sealed with several layers of a flat, acryllic top-coat.

The base is made from pine and stained with acryllic paint. The letters are stamped into the wood and painted yellow. The whole base is then varnished and polished.

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The early carmel Chief Cherokee figures are really brittle so I had a bunch of these pieces too.

This Chief is painted with 'textured' paint to give the feel of buckskin leather. The beads are individually dotted with paint in various patterns and colors - Boy! was that tedious ;-) The hair bands are painted and shaded to look like leather straps.

I matched the color of his hair (black) and then sealed his hair with a satin, acryllic top-coat. The body was sealed with several layers of a flat, acryllic top-coat.

The base is made from pine and stained with acryllic paint. The letters are stamped into the wood and painted red. The whole base is then varnished and polished.

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Completely Custom James T. West. My inspiration was from a cover of a 1960's comic book. I then created some custom box art that Marx could have used to make this figure.

This bust is made from a Sam Cobra torso I had. Mine was completely torn up with busted hips and shoulder sockets. Lots of sculpting putty later, I finally had James' body. I mixed green, teal and blue to give me a nice color for his jacket and matching pants. His vest is painted with cream, green and gold swirls. His ascot is green with white dots. The hair and vest are coated in satin where the rest of the figure is top coated in a flat varnish. The base is stained oak with a photo copy of the custom box art on the back. Varnish to follow.

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Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP): WOW! What a project!

This project started when I read about the 4 Mounties that were tragically killed in the line of duty on March 3rd, 2005. More here.

I stared with a Johnny West torso. I sculpted the high collar and the pocket points.

I then sanded and smoothed with finer and finer grades of sandpaper. Next came the painting.

After priming the figure I painted the whole figure a bright crimson red and topcoated it. Then another coat was necessary. After topcoating that, I painted the blue collar tabs.

I made the pistol lanyard out of white string braided to the correct thickness and then soaked it in elmers glue so that I could form it to the shape I wanted.

I cast the buffalo head collar insignia, painted and glued them on. I made the shoulder boards from sheet styrene and cast a little swirly thing that represented the RCMP letters on the boards (at this scale I couldn't actually do letters!). I glued the insignia and shoulder boards on with superglue making sure that the lanyard was on underneath the left shoulder board.

The buttons are the heads of tiny brass brad nails, cut off with a little of the nail still on, I then drilled into the figure with a tiny drill bit and glued the nail posts into them.

For the Sam Browne belt and pouch I asked a great 1:6 leather artist named Stevo, to make me a Mountie pistol rig - You can see his great work at: Stevo's Toys

I used a recast of Sheriff Garrett in hard resin and painted it up using acryllic paints and powdered artist crayons (kinda looks like Sgt Preston). His hat is a vintage Mountie hat from GI Joe.

For the background I used an image of the painting created by Silvia Pecota called "Duty, Service, Sacrifice"

If you have any comments on my customs, please let me know.