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.
