Academic achievement...

I made this little diorama as a gift for a friend to celebrate the completion of his PhD.  Allegedly he had been extremely abstemious in the past months to concentrate on his studies so the scene and little label on the base reflected that. Figures are an assortment of Foundry 18th century range which I had picked up at various points in the past year or so. Platter of food and drink was created with green stuff. 

They just keep getting smaller...

Having concluded that I will never paint enough 28mm Napoleonics to be abel to game on a 'grand' scale I have had an experiment with painting 6mm Adler figures.  The figures are brilliant and are so quick to paint.  I thought if I could paint up a regiment in one evening then I could look at doing a divisional sized force with a few regiments of cavalry and guns over the course of a couple of months. I have found that acutely I can paint about 100 infantry in a 2 hour session providing I don't worry to much about the detail and am happy with a basic and fairly sloppy paint job - which I am.  Have now finished a brigade and 1 regt of Cavalry I am in the process of basing them up.  I have found that it is the basing which is taking the time.  I also have left metal until the figures are based so still have a bit of work to do on the figures.  Overall though it is a real pleasure to be able to paint up figures so quickly and, although these figures will not be winning any prizes for the quality of the paint job en-masse I think they look great.  Im thinking of doing Prussians to appose the French and keeping the 28mm figures for Peninsular gaming.  I have to say I also was really impressed with the service from Adler who emailed me to check that I was sure I was ordering the right figures as some were post 1812 some pre.

I know I should just stick with the 28mm until thats finished but you know how it is...

Two regiment half way through basing process

Brigade command without metal areas painted yet

the other half of the brigade and regt of currasiuer

First painted and based Naps

Have made a lot of progress on my French Naps since last post and now have a full brigade of French  ready to be based.  First to get the sand and tuft treatment is this French gun.  Perry miniatures foot artillery loading. More to follow.

Gun slingers

Pictures of a few new gunslingers for Old West games.  Some Pinkerton men and a lady gun slinger.  Pinkertons are from Artizan and the female figure from Foundry.  I've overdone the foliage but what can I say- I love tufts.  Im in the process of putting together several gangs of 5-8 figures each.

              

Progress so far and the wrong sort of Swiss

So having been extremely poor in keeping this blog up to date I thought I had better report on my progress so far with my French infantry WIP.  Id love to say that I have been so busy painting these that I haven't had time to update the blog but this would be far from true.  The truth is that, in addition to real life interrupting progress, I have also been distracted with starting a new project which I intend to be an 'imagi-nations' project involving seven years war Russians- I will write more about this anon.

For the time being I have returned to the creation of my French infantry.  Having pondered the question of bases for long enough I've stayed traditional and gone with six bases of six figs although with 50mm frontage these ensure that figures are nice and close.  The pic below shows the first three battalions partially complete.  I reckon that I have around 30 figures still to paint.  So I had better get on with it.

Picture below shows my WIP swiss regiment.  It has just occurred to me that I may have painted a regiment which didn't service in the peninsular- namely the 1st Swiss regiment.  Im not sure this is a particular tragedy and I am not inclined to re-do them.  Will have to check my references again.

I hope to make better progress and have resolved not to paint anything else until these French are complete.

Basing dilemma

I've been considering various basing schemes for my peninsular naps. I'm using Black Powder as rules, I'm collecting both sides so don't need to fit in with any one else.

I really want bases to be crowded and have a vignette appeal but still want to be able to represent basic formations; line, square and both march and attack column. I like the visual appeal of formations with officers etc standing behind the line. So after much blue-tacking of figures to various sized bases I'm considering using 60x60 bases with four bases to a unit and 8-10 figures on each. This looks good for the british in line and allows for reasonably convincing square to be formed by turning bases back to back.












Tis style however doesn't look as good for my French as the all important column looks a bit sparse.












If anybody can point me in the direction of successful, dynamic schemes or offer any thoughts I would be immensely grateful.

Big Viking

I had a day off work on Friday so I decided to visit the Wargames Foundry store with the express intention of purchasing some Napoleonic command packs, top up on paints and get a few bases. Things did not turn out that way and I returned with various bargain packs including an Indian elephant, acw figures, lots of ecw and dark ages and a number of other random items which I couldnt resist but none of which have the virtue of fitting in with my ongoing peninsular project.

One of my random acquisitions was a large Viking figure. I've seen this figure before and always thought it would be interesting to paint.  I wanted to try a technique which is new to me, by which the undercoat is removed with wire wool to reveal the metal underneath giving a more worn look to armour and weapons.

So in between various social events and a bit of DIY I've spent time over the weekend painting him up. As this is a new technique to me I thought I would show the progress on the figure.

First up the figure has been undercoated black. Once this has dried I've removed parts of the undercoat with wire wool.

Non metallic areas are re-coated black. The next picture shows the model with basic colours before any highlighting.

The painting is completed and the figure is based and varnished. As a final stage a file is used to remove the matt varnish from raised metallic areas to provide a bit of shine. The next picture shows the finished figure with freshly severed heads courtesy of leftovers from a box of Warlord miniatures Celts.

Overall I'm pretty pleased with the figure and I like how the wire wool technique has given the armour and weapons a worn, dark and menacing appearance.

Fearsome though he is the picture below reveals that he nearly met his match from our kitten Bradshaw who along with sibling Wellington offers me constant harassment during all of my wargaming and DIY activities. 

They have a seemingly pathological desire to kidnap my figures and I ran a bit of a risk letting her get this close. Worth it for the photo though.

Next post will be Napoleonics for definite.

Dark age figure

Just thought I would post this picture of a figure I painted from gripping beast el Cid range. This figure is a bit of a personal favourite not because it's a particularly brilliant paint job but because the figure is just so full of character. He's painted more as a generic dark age figure and one day I will paint him some comrades.

I'm really going to work on the lighting etc for my photos- I promise.

Distractions

Talking of distraction i ended up painting this wildwest figure while I should have been painting French naps last week.







I really love the foundry wild west figures and I have painted a few. Never actually played a game with them though.




Close up.

First pics

Here are some photos of my 28mm Peninsular project to date. The intention is to produce a large French infantry brigade (5) battalions plus a battery of foot artillery and some squadrons of cavalry. Opposing them will be a brigade of British, again with some guns and light cavalry. No problem eh!

The trouble is I keep getting distracted, no doubt a familiar story to most of you.



I havn't yet decided on basing yet, hence the blue tack, but will probably be mainly using Black Powder if I ever manage to finish enough figures for a game.



These photos are also early attempts at photography and I apologise for the slightly dodgy quality. I'm hoping to develop my photography as I go and I welcome any advice and tips.











Pictured on my new terrain boards made by Paul Darnell of Touching History fame. A dream come true.





Only 2 Brits complete so far so they look a bit outnumbered.