A miniature gueridon tutorial: 3. Finally a pair.

Hello my friends,

It was high time to finish this miniature gueridon and let this little statuette join with its little counterpart. Because let us be honest my friends. It is a little weird for the little chap on the right to dance into perpetuity without having the little chap on the left beside him making the music to dance to. 

And I started back in august 2019! So it was high time to reunite these two boys. The picture below shows you what these ornaments to adorn a clock really looked like...

But when I took all  the components out of their box, the white and grey faux marble on the already finished plinth looked a bit too obligatory in my mind. I had to redo the plinth anyway to make sure that the paint finish on both plinths would match exactly. 

There I was, working away on the second gueridon when I got stuck. The paint effect that I wanted to achieve on both plinths did not work. However I tried it could not get it to look the way I wanted. Sad but also a valuable experience. The photo beneath was only half way the different paint layers and meant to be this coarse. The following layers did not bring the result I expected. And I had stopped making pictures. ;-) 

And as if that was not enough already...  As I looked again at the two plinths I realised that there was something off about them too. And it was not the miserable paintjob. No the rounded border on top of it was way to large for the part underneath. To excagerate it, it almost looked lik a small tabletop on a fat single leg than on the base for a statue. 

I compared it to the sketch I made of it. You can see it in the picture above.   Now I spotted the flaw. I had shaped the sides of the plinth differently from the design I had made. But the wooden disks I had used did correspond to the original drawing. So in effect the end result (structuraly) was an amalgan of two different types of plinths. And that is why it looked odd, if not to say wrong. But hey, mistakes are there to learn from, right? Right. 

Had I finished the paint job, and would that finish have been as intended, I might choose to ignore it. But it had not. And I could not... So I decided to take it all apart and start over. In the last post on the first gueridon I already said that the crown for the gueridon, to place a vase or candlestick on, was to big and clumpy in relation to the little statuette. So why not deconstruct that as well? 

So I did exactly that my friends. I took a craft knife and cut and peeled away all the fimo and paint that offended me. It really is to much to say that it made me feel better, but returning them to a somewhat blank canvas was very satisfying. I also deconstructed the crown. I cut away the fimo and seperated the two wooden disks. Round disks with a smaller diameter should be used under the octogonal plateau to make it less clumpy. 

I got out some fimo clay and sculpted it around the plinths once more. Now the new shape was going to be hollow/concave again but now arching out both at the bottom ánd the top. I baked it in the oven so that I could start painting it as soon as possible.

 I was done with faux marble for now. My intention was to give both plinths the look of old and unpolished silver and add some decorations in gold. I believe that to be (perhaps) an unusual but good companion for the blackened bronze and gold statuettes on top of them.

The plan was to add a bit of silver paint to the gunmetal paint. But unfortunately all the shops are closed as a measure against  the spread of covid. Due to this lockdown I can not buy silver paint. I do not want to wait two more weeks (and probably longer if the lockdown measurements are prolongued) so I used the unmixed gunmetal to paint the plinths. When that had dried I drybrushed some black onto it to emphasise the silver being unpolished. It was my first attempt at dry brushing and it has been a good practice. 

And yes, in case you are wondering... Since one has an instrument and a whirling sash around him, and his dancing buddy has to make do with just a loin cloth... I believed that he deserved a little extra. And that explains the gilded nipples. ;-) 

I did the same with the crowns on top. Merely adding decorations and details in gold paint to give it some contrast. I replaced the round disk underneath the octagonal disk with one that has a smaller diameter as planned. This gives more room for decoration without becoming too massive. But before decorating them I drilled a shalow hole in the round disks to make it easier to place them on the heads of these little chaps. Originally I had added an extra ring of fimo to mould it on top of the head but I wanted the crown to be smaller and a bit more elegant than the previous one. 

After the baking and painting it was time to assemble them. I screwed the statuettes in their plinths and glued the crowns on top. After the glue had dried I made some last retouches with the paints, et voila! a pair of exuberant and Baroque gueridons. 

Well that is it for now. I hope that you have enjoyed this post. I am glad to have deconstructed them when it did not work and to start over. If I had not, the result would have been something I would probably have hidden half and half behind other miniatures. Now they will get pride of place in full view. 

Huibrecht