Did he Sculpt? John Blanche

Back at the start of June, it became known that Artist John Blanche had died. Blanche’s connection to the field of miniature gaming was HUGE. He did alot of illustrations, both final published work and concert art for miniatures. He also painted alot of miniatures seen in White Dwarf, specially before (and partly during the time of) Mike McVey.

For most of the mid 80s he was even the Art Editor for Both White Dwarf and ‘sister’ magazine ‘Warlock’. For alot of his miniature paintings, and some diarama’s, he even did some quite heavy conversion work and in fact, alot of the Citadel Combat Card (original series) painting and conversion work was his hand.

With this conversion work, there is a high amount of sculpting. Just because you can sculpt well enough for some extensive conversions doesn’t mean you can sculpt figures from scratch but it kinda means you can atleast try.

In White Dwarf #121 (Cover dated January 1990), he shows off a 40K Gang member which he says

The Warhammer 40,000 gang member (…) is my first attempt at building a model from scratch. After attempting this, my esteem for the Citadel designers doubled overnight.

now. I have never met John Blanche but I’ll make 2 notable comments on this statement. First is his esteem for Citadel Designers… that appear to be a shorten version of whatever he meant as designers of miniatures… well, I would say Sculpting is part of design, but it also sometimes follows on from an artist who designs the miniature and gives them designs to a sculpture. John Blanche did a fair bit of that designing so it just jumps out at me. I’m probably just being very picky though. I’m pretty sure he meant to say the sculptures.

The other thing is it being his first attempt. With this, I will not stand. It is kinda equal to his ‘fact file’ in White Dwarf 95 (Cover dated November 1987) saying he was 33, Though he was in fact born in 1948, making him 39 at the time. Now, the figure shown was never officially released as far as I am aware (though some copies have been made at Citadel. They did that alot, gave them a better copy to paint and stuff) and I’m sure some staffers would have had a copy spun for themselves. But I want to go back quite some time.

Back in 1976, Bryan Ansell, Paul Sulley and Steven Fitzwater created a company called ‘Asgard Miniatures’. Many of the models made by them are still in production with a couple of different companies, though not every single one. Bryan Ansell was the one out of the three creators who was a sculpture, and he did quite a few for that range, of course, until he left to form Citadel Miniatures in 1978. While only a short time (in fact, Asgard appeared to have gone under in the mid 80s) some good sculptors either got that start or atleast ‘early days’ with them, including Tony Ackland, Nick Bibby and Jes Goodwin.

After Bryan’s time, in 1982, they released the ‘Creatures of Chaos’ range, which were mostly sculpted by Nick Bibby, with one known to be Jes Goodwin and there is then Trunkhand Tuskoid. Who is he credited to? John Blanche.

How was it known? I’m not sure. I don’t know how good the records at Asgard were, and I haven’t seen any adverts which feature the figure and credits but it has been, for some time, credited as being done by John Blanche, so his only known officially released Miniature. That’s quite a thing.

Well, as it is currently being sold a by John Blanche, why not ask the seller?

So I e-mailed Gavin Syme at Alternative Armies, who are the current producers of the Asgard Miniatures range. Basically, some asgard figures were signed on the bases but alot of the time it comes down to the sculptor saying it was one of his. Nick Bibby stuff (specially his dragons) are well known so they are pretty easy to ID, some others also did list there stuff on their own websites or in books and magazines. For the Creatures of Chaos range, it was pretty much know who did what. Not completely, but it was a special case. So we know it was a John Blanche.

One thing I am wondering about. Was the figure a dollie? If you don’t know, a Dollie in sculpting can come in various forms but they are basic versions of a figure, sometimes with basic details sculpted in, which are then moulded up so that you can just take the basic figure and post, and sculpt a new head, or arms or just clothing in order to get a new figure. Most dollies can be quite advanced and you can often see figures which share a dollie.

Of course, If it was from a dollie.. though I’m not convinced that Asgard, with it’s small(ish) output made any, what miniatures in their range come close to being anything like ‘ld Trunkhand..

well.. there is a figure which I believe, if any, is a good match for a base on which John Blanche may have worked, and that is the Chaos Doomguard from the ‘Barbarians & Chaotics’ range. However, I will say it’s kinda weak. If you look at the basic pose with the position of the two legs, the arms and the leaning backwards pose, it does match up fairly well. Remove the head, remove the armour and then do some resculpting work on the arms and I could be the same mini. But it’s weak. However, there is something kinda interesting.

The Chaos Doomguard doesn’t have a known sculptor. and it’s kinda close in style and pose to Trunkhand… If it wasn’t a source mini that was edited.. could it possibly be… by the same hand? Could it be the reason there are a number of unknown credits for some figures and only one by John, because he sculped more figures and kinda ‘hid’ the fact?

Personally? doubt it. He might have sculpted more, and we KINDA have evidence that he may have hid that fact (unless it was a dollie, so he didn’t feel he did it from scratch) but I’m not convinced he in fact kept this fairly large history of sculpting hidden. Guess we may never know for sure.

Well, So I connected Geoff Solomon-Sims from Oakbound for some second opinion on the sculpt and Doomguard as he is a good sculptor and has some experince as well. As expected, it is highly unlikely Asgard did use any dollies and it’s possible that Trunkhand was created by reworking the original green sculpt of Doomguard, or just an old armature, which is basically FAR less developed then a dollie. Often it can just be some metal in the shape of a skeleton (well, kinda).

Anyway.. we know 2 figures that John did Sculpt, one of which is commercially available. I think that’s interesting.