Jim Bertges’ Gwangi

This is an old Resin From The Grave, Valley Of Gwangi resin kit I built on commission for a local comics shop. The casting on this particular kit was quite poor and there was a lot of extra work done to it. The casting of Gwangi himself was passable and was a pretty straight forward build and paint. However, it was a chore cleaning and restoring his teeth.

The real problem with the kit was the one cowboy that came with it. There was a strange texture to the casting of his upper torso, so I replaced his head and torso with action figure parts. The horse was OK, but he needed extensive reworking with putty on the tail and mane.

As I worked on the kit I decided to expand it a bit. The base was attached to an 11 x 14 plaque and expanded out with plaster and real rocks. I added a second cowboy and horse to make the scene more interesting. The second cowboy was an assemblage from several different action figures, boots, head, hands and arms were all from different figures.

It took a while to find the right horse. I spend a lot of time searching through the horsey sections of toy stores, carrying the resin cowboy from the kit, trying to find a horse in the right scale. I found one that had “real mane and tail” and little brushes to comb them. Anyway I tore the horse apart and repostioned the legs and head to makeit look like it was galloping away. I resculpted the mane and tail from Magic Sculp. The horse is attached to the base with a length of coat hanger that runs up through one of his back legs. The rider’s feet are attached with pins to the horse’s side. The lassos are thin string wrapped with thin wire so they hold their shape. When the whole thing was finished, I took it out to a small park and photographed it in the sunlight against a hunk of good old Southern California rock. I was really happy with the way the whole thing turned out and wanted to share it with everyone

— Jim Bertges