No Camels? Conversion Time

Long time followers will remember I was asking if anyone had a pair of camels they did not need as I had 10 of the blighters but needed 12. Well I am afraid to say that the required 2 spit machines were not to be had. Never mind I thought, I will pick up a pack of three at Triples. Of course no one had the required camels at the show and me being me I wanted to get it sorted as soon as I could. Then an idea came to me. If I can't buy a pair of camels I will do a bit of conversion work, more on that below but first the regular camels.

 

Here we have 9 of the original 10 camels, these already have had different riders supplied as Martin the original owner of the figures could not get bow armed riders at the time. These don't really sit the camels well but are OK. I have to admit that whilst at the start of painting these up I was happy but by the time I was working on the riders I was getting more and more unhappy with the look. I feel like they are of the quality I was doing 20+ years ago. Either that or.......

 

........... it's because I can't get away from the feeling that a bunch of Scousers have nicked a bunch of camels from the local zoo.

 

 

But before I started the conversion the friend in Holland sent me the Roman Army that also included these six Camels which I have included in the paint run. The camels and riders are much better casts and I was far happier with the results with these models than the others even though they were painted at the same time.

 

I liked the ruff hair patches on the necks and rumps as these allowed a better result on painting as well. Basing is not fully finished, still need to remove the excess flock and matt varnish (waiting on a order) and then tufts adding. I will start to have a backlog of varnishing if the sprays do not arrive soon.

So back to the conversion's, well I had already had the idea so there was no stopping me! After trying to get camels from all sorts of places I finally had to accept I was not going to get camels so I got a different make and hope from a distance they could be mistaken for camels. I went with a dark finish in the end to add a little Eastern feel to them, please let me know what you think.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sorry I just could not help myself. It seems no one smokes camels and I wanted something a bit more classy than Embassy Number 1.