Joan Of Arc
28mm White Metal kit from Infinity Corvus Belli
Painted in 2024
I may have said it before, but it’s worth repeating, I really like the Infinity Corvus Belli range of figures. I don’t mind admitting that I’ve managed to collect a lot of them, and probably will never get around to painting them all – Maybe a slight understatement there.
But I just can’t help myself from adding to the legion of figures I’ve collected, especially when they’re usually less than six or seven pound each on Ebay.
There are a few exceptions to the price of course, obviously larger figures and sets that contain several figures command a higher price, and “character figures” such as this one seem to be limited in number and so tend to sell for a greater amount.
This one cost me £12.50 plus postage, and I felt I’d got a bargain at that, the same figure I’ve seen go for £25 to £30 in previous auctions. I suppose if depends on whether there’s several people with the will and the depth pf pocket wanting to fight it out to win the auction driving the price up – fair enough, you pays your money and takes your pick.
At the end of the day, it’s still a single White Metal casting standing around 28mm high, with very good detail, high quality production, and in my case, after painting the Helen Of Troy figure, something I wanted to put paint on.
Photo #1 shows the “box art” in the form of a card within the blister pack of a nicely painted example. Something to aim for if not completely copying the colour scheme, certainly the level of brush control and painting skill is something to attempt to replicate.
In photo #2 I’ve begun on the flesh tones. I’ve left the arms off at this point – the problems they caused me I’ll talk about later. The face is undercoated with acrylics and then painted with oils, aiming for a moderately tanned colouration, bur trying to get the transitions of colour as smooth as possible.
There’s a large leap forward in photo #3, the armour having been coated with two layers of white acrylic paint, then Prussian Blue oils blended in to that to fade the blue into the white as smoothly as possible.
The hair has been painted to depict a strawberry blonde, using Mars Brown oils as a starting point and working through Light Red, Mars Yellow and on to Buff Titanium for the highlights.
The eyes and lips have been added as well, which brought the face to life, and having the eyes look to her left, as though she’s swinging round to engage a possible attacker adds just that little bit more interest, rather than having the eyes looking into the mid distance in front of her.
Photo #4 shows a close up of the model at this point, and it must be remembered that the head is about 5mm tall, possibly smaller.
Because the face is angled slightly downwards I decided to add a bit more shadowing to that side of the face, and this can be seen in photo #5 the shading on the armour sections showing up a lot better in this shot too.
Whilst photo #6 is a bit out of focus, it does show the skirt having been painted. I began with a pale grey acrylic undercoat, adding several thin layers of a cream colour acrylic over this gradually lightening it with some white acrylic to bring out the highlight areas. Once fully dry I added White Spirit to some Sepia oils and painted in the shadows of the deeper creases.
Photo #7, Ah, that’s better, back in focus, and showing the skirt painted, the belts done in a pale orange colour to offset the blue / white colour scheme and the arms added.
The inscription on the sword is very well sculpted and reproduced on the casting and is very easy to paint to make it stand out, the one on the scabbard is a little more difficult to render, but it’s there if you have the patience to work at it – and trust me it’s worth that effort.
Photo #8 shows the other side of the sword, and I have to be honest here, that thing doesn’t half cause problems. The amount of times I’ve glued the arm back on because I’ve caught the tip of the sword either with my fingers, on the side of the carry case, well, on just about anything that comes within half a mile of it…… Well, it goes without saying that it’s a big sword with a small point of contact for the arm at the shoulder and is very easy to knock the darn thing off.
Photos #9 and #10 show the figure pretty much completed, and really I just need to sort out a proper base for her to occupy.
Photo #11 shows the addition of some 1/35th scale bricks along with some Chinchilla bathing sand, some small lumps of ( unused ) cat litter…… Why anyone would need the latter specifying that it’s unused, but hey, best make sure we all know where I’m coming from. And all of the above fastened in place by dripping very thin Superglue over them using a thin nozzle attachment on the glue bottle.
Photos #12, #13, #14 and #15 show the groundwork painted and I’ve also added some grime to the bottom edge of the skirt – she’s a feisty lass and been in combat, why would she be completely clean ?
The grubbiness is added with some Vandyke Brown oils on a mop-head brush and scrubbed into the lower edge of the skirt.
Photo #16 shows a larger base being constructed to house the small round base that she’s on in the previous shots.
I wanted to be able to remove her from this “display” base for the purpose of using her as part of a larger urban type of display when I go to shows.
The base in this shot would be used if she was being entered into a painting competition, although any figure could be slotted into the space at a later date I guess.
So it’s a generic “display base” then.
The rolled up tape backing has been made to slightly bigger diameter than the round plastic base the figure is on, and is being used as a dam to stop the loose groundwork from entering the area that the figure will eventually occupy.
Why use old double-sided tape backing strip ?
Well, Superglue tends not to stick to it, in fact superglue will stay useable for quite a while if it’s put onto such backing strip – an advantage I’d used for some years now.
The same mix of cat litter / bricks and Chinchilla sand has been put on the wood plinth along with a short section of “dry-stone wall” casting that has been trimmed to fit at a slight angle at the back of the scene
Yes, I know you couldn’t see the wall in the last shot, but here it is in photo #17 along with the hole left by the rolled up backing strip.
This just needs painting to match in with the groundwork on the figure’s round base and a little static grass adding.
The rest of the shots show the finished model in place on the larger base. I’m not over-keen on the amount of static grass on there – I’ve bought one of the applicator things and feel that too much grass has adhered to the groundwork, so I’ll have to get some tweezers out and do a little trimming probably to neaten it up.
The groundwork was painted prior to adding the static grass, and then the grass itself was painted to make it look a bit more natural.
Final thoughts.
OK I mentioned that I like the Infinity Corvus Belli figure range already, but I will reiterate the quality of sculpting and casting that the range display, not to mention the animation, sometimes quite extreme that some of the figures have.
Painted as single pieces I feel they drag the eye of the onlooker and almost appear to grow in size simply because of the aforementioned quality and animation.
Recently I’ve acquired some figures that are cast in resin – the Agamemnon Atreides figure, which is about 40mm tall is one such. So it might be that future additions to the range could become available in resin as opposed to White Metal.
I also got hold of a two-player “board-game” that is encompassed within the Infinity Corvus Belli Universe, with what appear to be plastic figures as characters for the players to use.
“Uggh Plastic figures !” I hear you say.
I was going to give the game to Thomas, as he’s more inclined to play it, but the eight figures are just too good to let go of, and I may well ( if time allows ) add paint to them at some point.
So, positive vibes from me regarding this figure and others from the range and well worth the money. The other good thing being that there are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of different figures to choose from.
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