John Blanche - Sculptor

ManicMan

ManicMan

Lord
Okay, so I trust everyone knows that John Blanche was a major time painter and artist who did alot of concept art as well as generic pictures for GW/Citadel, as well as painting up miniatures as part of the 'Eavy Metal Team..

BUT.. other then some heavy conversion work, he sculpted atleast 1 (I think 2) Miniatures himself.

White Dwarf 121 shows us some of his current painted/converted lot and this guy:
JBGanger.jpg
A bit low quality image but oh well. Blanche, in the right up, describes this as:
"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. "

This figure itself was unreleased, but I believe (of course) a few copies were cast up and this would be one of them painted (Lost minis shows a copy of an unpainted one from ye_alchemist

Earlier in his career, he did also so some sculpting for Asgard, though how much of this was from scratch and how much was a converted dollie, I don't know. Of course, this miniature (CC6 Trunkhand Tuskoid) is still available to buy.
1783010660542.png (image from Lost minis)

Though this got me thinking.. He sculpted a miniature BEFORE that gang member.. yet claimed it was his first... probebly due to the whole dollie thing maybe.. but other then the Asgard miniature, did he happen to sculpt any miniatures which were released for sale, or may still be for sale?

we all talk about his drawing and painting but, not much said about his sculpting. even if he only ever did these two, that isn't 'nothing' and really, even that ganger isn't TOO bad
 
Yup, that ganger was known to me as was in my first WD! 😉
Did it get a release? It is catalogued as unreleased Necromunda on Lost Minis https://www.miniatures-workshop.com/lostminiswiki/index.php?title=File:Citadel-NM-U-02.jpg (despite Necromunda not been released for a few years later…), so assume a few copies have made it out into the public?

Lost Minis also mentions his sculpted for Garrison https://www.miniatures-workshop.com/lostminiswiki/index.php?title=John_Blanche#Has_Sculpted_For - but again this would be a cataloguing error as it states it was actually concept & artwork. 🤔
 
Ganger was never officially released, but like I said, I'm pretty sure a number were cast up inhouse, so some people would have the odd one, the Garrison stuff I think was just concert art.

and yeah, seen that page ^_^ he did alot of good painting and converting work
 
I was reading through WD131 tonight. He didn't do the sculpts, but he did the concept art for some of the Tyranid line. The 2nd edition Lictor is definitely based on his 1990 concepts.
 
yeah, he did ALOT of the concept art, so sculpts based on them aren't uncommon.. Hell, he even had a couple of lines purely based on his work.

problem with some of the Second edition Tyranids was the whole rebooting them to be connected to Genestealers.. ugh.. the two race concepts don't even mesh..

but anyway.. I do find it out that he only sculpted two figures.. If he only did one or two which were unreleased as they were 'test' or just playing around, that's fine... but the fact the Asgard one was released.. okay, I'll say it that Asgard are a bit rough at times, they were young and 'learning' but, kinda makes me think he had some interest at some point.
 
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