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 4. (continuing from Part 3).
Following many years working for Games Workshop, producing hundreds of wonderful sculpts, Trish recently set up as a freelance sculptor. Very quickly, Trish found her services in demand as model companies including Lucid Eye and Footsore Miniatures and Games sought out her expertise.
Trish: Being freelance after so many years working for the same company was an exciting prospect. So many old colleagues have their own small miniatures companies now and I was lucky enough to be approached by lots of them! I’d already decided to limit the amount of work I took on as I was enjoying having time for other things that interest me, like watercolour painting.
Steve Saleh from Lucid Eye got in touch about doing some figures for their Toon Realms range, it was something I knew I’d enjoy doing. The range was full of character and my first sculpt for them was Pitch the Dragon. I loved having the chance to make a cartoonish dragon and that led to me making lots other figures for the range. It was a totally different style for me, which was really refreshing to do. Steve and Joe pretty much let me have free reign on how the figures should look.
I also got back in touch with Mark Farr from Footsore Miniatures and Games. He and I had known each other from the Marauder Miniatures years when he was working with us as our sales guy for quite a while. He and Andy Hobday were planning the Mythic supplement for their Mortal Gods game and wanted me to make some of the creatures for it. I didn’t need to think twice about this. I’d always loved the wonderful beasts that Ray Harryhausen did and so making some Greek monsters that could be inspired by his work was so much fun.
Because I didn’t have to adhere to any existing IP it meant I could just go where my imagination took me. The Hydra was the first figure I sculpted, and I must admit to some unladylike language when Mark said he’d like it to have nine heads! It was a challenge to get it all to fit but it’s turned out to be my favourite figure of them all. It was great to work with Mark again and I think we ended up with a good range of monsters. The Kickstarter (HERE) campaigns certainly went well and I’m looking forward to seeing how people paint up the various creatures. They’ll be sold in the main range after the Kickstarter is fulfilled, so hopefully we’ll see lots in people’s fantasy armies!
Raymond Harryhausen was an artist, designer, writer and film producer famed for his skills in stop-motion model animation; ‘Dynamation’. His films include ‘The 7th Voyage Of Sinbad’, ‘Jason And The Argonauts’, ‘First Men In The Moon’, ‘Sinbad And The Eye Of The Tiger’ and ‘One Million Years BC’. Noted as an influence to a range of fantasy and science-fiction film producers, his fans include Steven Spielberg, Peter Jackson, Tim Burton and Nick Park. George Lucas once said, “Without Ray Harryhausen, there would likely have been no Star Wars”.
Trish: Ray Harryhausen was an early influence for me. I loved all the ‘Sinbad’ films and would be hard pressed to decide on a favourite! The creatures in them entranced me, I’d never seen anything like them before and was instantly hooked. I think Kali must rank as one of my favourites, I loved the sinuous way she moved. The cyclops also made a big impression… literally! ‘Jason And The Argonauts’ was another favourite as it had the amazing Hydra in it. When I began sculpting monsters all these creatures were a huge inspiration for me.
As a miniatures sculptor with more than thirty years experience, I wondered if Trish had any advice for anyone looking to enter into a career in sculpting toy soldiers, or simply wished to improve their sculpting and modelling skills.
Trish: Sculpting miniatures is a really satisfying way to earn a living but its not the easiest if you’re freelance! There are lots of people out there sculpting and you have to try and make yourself stand out from the crowd. The best advice I can give is just to keep practicing until you feel you’re at a level with some of the work you see getting sold. Nowadays, of course, its much easier to start sculpting digitally and this does have its advantages. You can build up a library of basic figures to use as a starting point which saves a considerable amount of time. The ability to delete as you go along is good too, it frees you up to try new things, knowing its easy to get rid of them if they don’t work out right… not so easy with putty!
If you prefer traditional sculpting though, I would recommend starting by using Polymer clays. These allow you to work as long as you need to on a sculpt, building up the whole shape to ensure your proportions and movement are right. You can be changing and refining as you go along before you bake the finished piece. It can be frustrating when you start out to have to keep cutting off bits of cured putty that don’t look right. It can also help to start by doing conversions, it’s not quite so intimidating. Head swaps are great for practising faces and adding different weapons, bits of armour or cloaks, etc all help to increase your skill level. You would have to use epoxy putty for these if you were converting a plastic figure though…. baking the end result would not have a good outcome!
You can also pick an existing figure and try to copy it exactly. This gives lots of insights into what makes a successful sculpt. You don’t need to spend a lot of money on tools. For useful tips that go into detail on the tools I use and how to make some, I’ve got a few posts up on my Facebook page (HERE). There’s lots of resources on the internet for studying anatomy and analysing existing figures can be useful… why do they work well, is it the pose, the detail, etc. Once you feel that you’ve got a reasonable level of skill then emailing a small portfolio of clear photos of your work to various companies is a good way to get noticed. Networking at shows is good too. Then being reliable and professional with everyone you work with will hopefully ensure the commissions keep coming your way.
Being one of my all-time favourite sculptors, the final question I asked Trish was about what we can expect to see from her next…
Trish: As far as upcoming projects go, I’m continuing to do some sculpting for Footsore but you’ll have to wait to see what that is! No spoilers! I may also make a few figures for a range of my own at some point in the future as I have plenty of ideas that I’d like to explore. I’m very interested, some would say obsessed, by cryptozoology and mythology so that’s got plenty of scope for interesting sculpts. I also love the fact that the “Oldhammer” style is so popular and it would be fun to revisit that.
One thing I’m really enjoying right now is getting into painting more. I’m doing a lot of watercolours and loving the effects I can get with the paint. I love trees and spend as much time as I can wandering round woodland taking photos and have found so many wonderful characters in the tree bark and branches. I’m finding a world emerging that I want to explore more and more. I’ve just set up a shop on Facebook and will be putting a few originals up for sale on there shortly. I’ve also got six limited edition prints ready to go as soon as the printer I’m using is able to open up his workshop again. I’m really pleased with how they look.
- Trish’s artwork can be purchased directly from her Facebook shop 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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Copyright © 2020 John Wombat & Ruth Moreira
John Wombat 
Thanks for turning on the comments. Another great series with one of the nicest ladies in the hobby. I’m going to do a small post on my blog to promote yours as I think quite a few of the guys and girls who I interact with will be interested but may not have come across you as they rarely hit Althea FB pages
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