The Officer’s body has been cleaned up, casting marks removed, degreased and undercoated with a thin layer of grey/white undercoat.
The lines that you can see on one of his legs are not casting marks, they are slightly raised relief lines for painting the uniform trousers stripe.
The plume has been fitted to the square shaped Polish cap (czapka) and again, the metal casting has been cleaned up and undercoated.
The parts that made up the horse have been glued together, all the flashing has been removed and a considerable amount of time has been spent getting rid of casting marks. Any joints or slight imperfections have been filled with fine miliput putty.
Originally there was a large gap between the front of the saddle and where it should rest on the horse’s right hand side (shown by the red arrow). This gap was filled with miliput and roughed up before setting to make the gap look like an undelaying cloth or blanket.
I had to use quite a lot of flour paper in order to remove all the scratches caused by the extensive filing needed to get rid of the casting marks etc. This morning was also spent re-carving some of the saddle and saddle cloth detail removed when getting rid of joins.
The white primer, applied just a couple of hours ago, has a slight texture and this gives the horse a slightly rough (and natural looking) coat.Now the undercoat will be left for at least 24 hours to dry and set before painting. At this stage I am not sure what colour the horse is going to be. Probably one of the many shades of brown, but I also need to carry on looking at pictures of horses in order to get a feel for how the light shows on the the body.
