Bronze Bull

The flash makes him look shinier than he is but the light is so bad today that I can't use daylight

This bronze bull is from the new Foundry Tribes of Legend range and is obviously meant to be one of the Khalkotauroi.  These were a pair of fire-breathing bulls made by Hephaistos as a gift for king Aeetes of Colchis.  Some accounts say that Hephaistos merely gave the bulls to Aeetes rather than having made them.  The bulls had bronze hoofs and a bronze mouth but in Apollonius’ account they appear to be automatons rather than living creatures.

In the 2000 TV version of Jason and the Argonauts they interpret this as a mechanical bull and the Foundry version is very strongly based on the one from the mini-series.  It appeared to be much larger, proportionately to the size of Jason, than the Foundry model, however.

ln this production there was only one bull and I suspect that I won’t bother to get another.  It was, however, one of the models that I found very attractive in the initial Foundry range, although not so much that I would pay £12 for it plus £8 postage!  Luckily I managed to get it on eBay for rather less than this.  I painted it yesterday afternoon and having just given it a metallic finish using Vallejo’s excellent bronze paint I decided it looked too shiny so added some patches of verdigris and some brown and black washes to tone it down a bit.