Trish Carden (Morrison) has been sculpting fantasy and wargaming miniatures for more than three decades. Included within her bulging and highly impressive CV, Trish has produced hundreds of wonderful sculpts for Games Workshop and Marauder Miniatures. Since going freelance in 2018, she has also produced a range of fascinating and exciting sculpts for Lucid Eye and Footsore Miniatures and Games.
As Trish is one of my all-time favourite miniature sculptors, I was thrilled when she agreed to speak to me about her work and career. In addition to wishing to thank Trish for kindly offering me her time for this blog, I would also like to thank Trish for all of the wonderful and inspirational sculpts that she has produced over the years, thank you, Trish!
Trish Carden Miniatures And Designs… Part 2. (continuing from Part 1).
Trish: My main foray into Elves was with Marauder Miniatures. I helped develop and sculpt High, Sea, Wood and some Dark Elves for our ranges. It was an interesting exercise in making the figures slightly different from other manufacturers but also similar enough that people could mix them into their armies without them looking out of place. Of these, I particularly enjoyed the Wood Elves which had a bit of a Native American feel to them, due in part to my love of a good Western movie… I always took the side of the Indians!
For me though, the real joy came in sculpting the various beasts that went alongside the Elven infantry figures, particularly the Dragons. I’ve loved wildlife and cryptozoology for as long as I can remember. As a kid I spent many weekends at Edinburgh Zoo where they ran a club for young animal lovers. We were lucky enough to be able to spend time with the keepers and get up close to many species, highlights for me were hand feeding a cheetah that had been hand reared, also handling many different snakes and reptiles. My interest grew and I became friendly with a conservator at Edinburgh museum and was allowed to borrow taxidermied animals and reptiles to take home and draw. I travelled on the bus and there were always strange looks from people as I wrangled a badger or fox or some other more exotic creature into a seat!
This gave me the opportunity to study animal anatomy up close and I spent a lot of time drawing which gave me a solid base when I started sculpting. Visualising an Elven dragon meant I was taking elements of what I had learned and exaggerating the anatomy so that the resulting sculpt would look fantastical but also believable. If there were certain motifs running through the army I could use these in parts of the armour of riding beasts. Wood Elves and High Elves would use Hawks, Eagles and Unicorns and Dark Elves had their lizard like Cold Ones. There was lots of scope to add many varied beasts to the ranges and I loved every minute of making them!
MM83 High Elf Mage Riding Unicorn. Designed by Trish Morrison. 1993. Copyright: Marauder Miniatures/ Games Workshop 
MB 14/ B Treeman. Designed by Trish Morrison. 1993. Copyright: Marauder Miniatures/ Games Workshop. 
MB 14/ A Treeman. Designed by Trish Morrison. 1993. Copyright: Marauder Miniatures/ Games Workshop.
Dark Elf Sorceress Riding Dark Pegasus. Designed by Aly Morrison and Trish Morrison. 1995. Copyright: Games Workshop. 
Dark Elf General Mounted on Cold One. Designed by Aly Morrison and Trish Morrison. 1995. Copyright: Games Workshop.
Trish is one of my all-time favourite sculptors. From her range of fantastically unique early Chaos Beastmen, Lizard Men and Gnomes, through to her classic Elven creatures and dragons, then her Chaos Spawn and Fiends, Minotaurs and Centaurs, her models are truly inspiring. Preparing my armies for battle, I am far from alone in having spent many hours painting Trish’s wonderful creations, her sculpts have taken part in fantastical battles the word over! I was interested to find out more about Trish’s methods of sculpting and also how long it takes her to complete her models.
Trish: Something the size of a unicorn would usually take me a couple of days depending on the amount of detail. A dragon varies a lot. There’s a lot of textures to sculpt especially if it has a lot of scales and the wings take a while too. A very small one would maybe a week, but something the size of Skalok can take a long time. I worked on that one for three days a week over the course of a year!
I begin my sculpts with concept drawings and any research I need to do. That can include looking at rules for what has been written for the figure I’m planning or jotting down ideas for bits of detail and looking at weapons and appropriate anatomy, etc. After that I draw out how the armature will look with approximate measurements. I use different thicknesses of copper or steel wire to build the armature and then pose it. Wings are cut out and shaped from aluminium mesh or thin brass sheet. In the past when I sculpted with Green Stuff, I would begin with the legs and work upwards. When the putty dried the next layer could be added on top, perhaps clothes, armour or weapons. Sometimes a part of the sculpt would look wrong and would have to be carved back and resculpted.
Nowadays, I use Polymer clay, which I much prefer. The putty can be applied to the whole armature and continually adjusted until everything looks right as it will not set hard until it is baked. It’s much easier to get the anatomy and movement right as you can move back and forth between different parts of the figure, continually adjusting and refining. On bigger figures I will often bake them more than once, smearing a thin layer of Vaseline on the baked putty which helps the unbaked putty to stick. This is useful if I want to sculpt some hard edged armour or something similar over a torso… It gives a firm base to work on and stops the clay underneath from distorting. Once the sculpt has had its final bake I carefully cut it up for moulding using very thin scalpels and saws that I make from razor blades!
- Excerpt from Trish’s Facebook page… “This figure began as the mount for an Imperial Hero riding a Pegasus, released by Marauder Miniatures. A few years later it became the mount for a High Elf Pegasus rider, released by Citadel. It wasn’t unusual for miniatures to be used more than once, usually with a small conversion or some extra detail added. In this case a different set of wings were made for the Elf release, folded rather than outstretched. I designed it to look like it was about to leap into the air, ready to soar above the battlefield. As it was going to be a metal figure it was important to make its build sturdy and strong in this pose so that the back legs could take the weight of the figure without bending. Less Arab stallion and more warhorse! Flaring the wings backwards slightly helped to counterbalance the weight of the rider who was positioned in front of the wings. It was always a bit of a compromise between pose and strength/ balance with a metal kit like this. I took the risk to make the pose more dynamic and hoped that the legs would be thick enough to hold the weight. It was made out of Green Stuff over a wire armature. For the wings I cut out the basic shape out of thin brass sheet first and shaped it with pliers. The feathers were then sculpted on one side at a time, beginning with the larger primaries and working upwards, overlapping each row. Once one side was dry, the other side was sculpted and then the fittings were done. A long process but worth it for the effect.”
Highly anticipated by the Warhammer community, the mid-1990’s saw Games Workshop release a new range of Wood Elves and Dark Elves. While Aly Morrison and Gary Morley were largely response for the infantry models, Trish brought to life the monsters of Athel Loren with her Great Eagles, Warhawks, Treemen, Elven Steeds and Forest Dragon… Meanwhile, in the bleak lands of Naggaroth, the Wood Elves’ evil cousins the Dark Elves saw their ranks bolstered with Swordsmen, Witch Elves and Black Guard (designed by Aly Morrison and Colin Dixon), along with Knights upon vicious lizard-like Cold Ones (designed by Trish). Bringing forth his dark legions was Beastlord Rakarth atop his fearsome Black Dragon (designed by Aly Morrison and Trish Morrison, respectively).
Released in 2018, Trish’s final (extra) large release for Games Workshop (via Forge World) was Skalok… A model that will be covered in more detail later…
To be continued… Part 3 HERE.
Follow Trish Carden Miniatures And Designs on Facebook HERE.
Follow Trish on Instagram HERE.
Official website for Lucid Eye Publications HERE.
Official website for Footsore Miniatures and Games HERE.
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