Fairy-tale: 'The Seven Ravens' (Semi flats)

These are so called 'Semi Flats' (thicker than flats, 'halbrund'), made by Heinrichsen. The original forms from 1899 were used. The engravings are not as fine as for most of the Flats, but the figures are more robust. Like most of the Heinrichsen products from this period they were meant to be children's toys (they were sold painted). They are somewhat larger than typical flats (about 40mm compared to the typical 28mm - 30mm size).

I tried out new paints for this project - Turner Acryl Gouache. The paint behaves like Acryl paint (it does use acryl resin) and is fast drying, but like Gouache it is very opaque. Shading and highlighting with this colour is a bit more difficult, but in my opinion a somewhat coarser style works well with these figures. Most of the Turner Acryl Gouache Colours are quite bright, which again works well in this case. There are also quite a few paints called 'Japonesque' in the product line (supposedly representing ancient Japanese paints) - the pigment for these paints is coarser, but there are some very interesting shades in the 'Japonesque' line-up. The paint dries flat (like gouache), but I used satin varnish to give the figures a more toy-like shine.

The figures illustrate 'The Seven Ravens', a fairy tale written collected by the Brothers Grimm. An 'enhanced' version may have been used, or only some forms survived and then scenes from two fairy tales were combined for one package. For example the picture above clearly shows a scene from another fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm ('The Six Swans'). [Brueder Grimm: Kinder- und Hausmaerchen, 1819 edition, re-print (and possibly some editing, not sure) by Artemis & Winkler 1993].

As can be seen above (look at the woman's face), some of the castings have minor imperfections. probably long use wore out some molds, or they were slightly damaged during the passing of the years.

The final scene - again probably from 'The Six Swans'. Despite the gruesome scene the story actually ends well - the heroine had to keep silent for six years, and these are up now, so she can speak and defend herself (and her brothers, the six swans, are redeemed - they become human again).


Will I use Turner Acryl gouache again - yes, if I need a very opaque yellow or similar. For a whole project? Depends, I prefer delayed-drying Acryls (I use Golden Open) when shading and Vallejo or similar for '3D' figures (I like the more muted colours they provide), but if I again paint flats or semi-flats that require little shading, I will probably use them.