Here is La Meridiana’s 1/10 resin bust of Mandeh Pachu, a man of the Mandan tribe in the 1830’s. The bust is based on a painting of this individual by Karl Bodmer who travelled the west and painted a goodly number of people he met.
The kit consists of 5 resin pieces, (flute, torso, head, hairpiece and large decoration for the right side of the head) and 4 white metal pieces (small decoration coming off the hair piece, right side beads, and a 2 part left side bead, which is divided not side by side but top and bottom leaving a miniscule glue point). The side beads had some very noticeable flash on the outer edges as well as on the inner edges. This was very hard to clean up and with the tiny attachment point on the left side beads, made them virtually uusable. I cut off the top decorations for both and the fur on the right and replaced the beads with craft beads and aluminum tubing cut to the size of the kit beads. These were strung on wire locating holes drilled as needed in the decorations and fur as well as on the left side of the body.
The kit also comes with a small wooden plinth, nice, but in my opinion, too small for the bust. I used a base from John Jeffries instead.
The box art, a picture of the front and back of the completed kit is the painting reference. The original painting shows there to be two red stripes surrounding the face as well as red paint on the ears and around the eyes.
The bust is painted in Vallejo acrylics.
Below is the original Bodmer painting from one of my reference books.
