Wee Free Men

I actually wrote this post and made model last summer so the photos are long gone by now. 

Horace the Cheese first appears in The Wintersmith. He is a Lancre Blue, a blue cheese known for developing character and personality. Tiffany in addition to being a witch, is something of a cheese expert and so when she tried her hand making a lancre blue she ended up with Horace, a cheese with an attitude.

Fond of eating mice that made the mistake of setting foot in the dairy, once Horace met the feegles, his destiny was fulfilled. Good pals with Daft Wully, Horace can now be found running around with the tartan of the clan wrapped around him.

Funnily enough, there aren’t any miniatures of sentient blue cheeses on the market so I have to make my own. There is this  great piece of artwork of Horace from Paul Kidby.

Here’s how I did my Horace (without arms cos I just think it looks more sinister):

• Starting with tin foil, I made a cheese shape. Compacted as much as possible to make a stable core for the next step
• Using what I had around the house, I opted for Super Sculpy for most of the work on Horace.  I have quite a lot of it; a lockdown purchase that never saw any use until now. This is a very soft polymer clay that is lovely to work with. Once you’re happy with it you can bake it and then add more to it if you like. Horace got two bakes; one once his body was done and one once his kilt and legs were done
• Texture was done with rolled up tin foil, a little piece of hessian for the kilt fabric, and the rest of the sculpting with some basic tools I’ve had for years but never really done anything with.
• The legs have some wire inside them and weren’t fun to do.I don’t like them but this is his second set and I’m trying to just let things go so these are the legs he has.
• Feet are hard and after two attempts I went looking through my collection for the best feet to use. GW Rockgut Trolls have great feet but because GW are just soooooo inconsiderate, there aren’t spares in the kit. Never mind, that’s what blue stuff was invented for. Milliput was used for the final feet. Easily drilled so they could be attached to the wire with some excess left to pin to the base.
• Daft Wully riding on top of Horace isn’t mentioned but felt like a reasonable thing to do. I tried bending the legs but at the size of the models, it didn’t work so I chopped them off and did a very rough Milliput version. A little more Milliput to help blend the join and Horace is ready for the next step
• [this is where Horace languished from last summer until the Spring Clean Challenge started] Coming back to the model, the legs needed some reinforcement so, when I was doing some work elsewhere in the army with a green stuff/Milliput mix, I came in and put an extra layer on Horace. This was especially necessary around the ankles

This is the first time I’ve made a model from scratch and I’m pretty happy with it. He looks like a cheese with legs. Perfect? Far from it but I have a model which didn’t exist otherwise. And more importantly the feegles have a cheese friend to fight alongside them.