58
SPOTLIGHT
Shep Paine ’64 admits that sometimes,
when his job comes up at cocktail par-
ties, people glaze over as he’s discussing
his passion for military miniatures. But
there’s one question that is particularly
pressing to those who
are
interested in
hearing about his uncommon career.
“The usual question is, ‘How do you
get those little eyes in there?’” says
Paine, who is known as one of the world’s
best military miniaturists.
The secret to the eyes, explains Paine,
is a sharp-pointed brush, but not simply
to dot a painted eye into place. “Eyes are
important because they are the windows
to the soul,” he says. “When people look
at my work, they may not know about the
history of costuming, or about the lives
of those portrayed, but they look at the
faces first. They have to have character.”
Paine developed a passion for history
during his years at St. Paul’s and, while
he found the events of the past inter-
esting in their own right, he was more
drawn to the
people
who made the
events happen.
“You meet more interesting people
and make more interesting friends if
you don’t limit yourself to the ones who
are alive,” he says. “History is really the
history of people.”
Although he had not previously con-
sidered himself an artist, Paine had
always been consumed by artistic pur-
suits. He was a Fifth Former at St. Paul’s
when he began to experiment with com-
bining his love of art with his affinity
for history. He spent his spare time in
his final two years at SPS painting
20mm-high plastic figures (about the
length of one knuckle), forming them
up into regiments along the wainscoted
molding of his dorm room in Wing.
By the time he had completed his mili-
tary service with the U.S. Army and was
studying humanities, history, art, and
literature at the University of Chicago,
Paine had more than doubled the scale
of his figures to 54mm, crafting them
out of two-part epoxy putty, with a
particular focus on figures from the
Napoleonic period, an era in history that
attracted him because of the fascinating
characters it produced.
“People began wanting to buy them
and I started putting myself through
college by selling these figures,” he says.
Military Miniaturist Shep Paine ’64
Austrian drummer,
1813 (54 mm figure)
by Jana F. Brown
