Saturday, April 28, 2012

On The Painting Bench

This weekend is mostly dedicated to cracking on with these mounted and dismounted Yankees and getting them finished.

I've needed some US cavalry for my ACW collection for some time, and particularly for my ongoing email campaign. The mounted figures are mostly Perry, with a three ancient RAFMs, and the foot figures are Foundry. The Foundry figures are especially nice, and I have some lovely GMB flags to adorn them when they're done. The impetus for getting them done is the April 30 midnight (UK time) deadline provided by the Guildwargamers website for its year long Build project,which has helped me decide to focus this painting year primarily on the ACW. I'll report progress Sunday, and hopefully Monday have some finished figures to show off here. Wish me luck.

Speaking of the ACW, here are some 1/600 scale ships in progress:

These two ships represent the Confederate navy for the above mentioned ACW email campaign I am running - the ironclad is the fictional CSS Joshua and the cottonclad is the CSS Maccabbee. They are both from Throughbred Miniatures, and I can't say enough good things about Toby Barrett, his models, and his customer service. As soon as these two get done, I have the Union fleet to work on for the campaign.

It's not all ACW, however. Here are some 20mm WW2 late war British/Commonwealth figures I bought from TQD Castings.

These figures will be useful for skirmish gaming, and will stay individually based.

More TQD stuff in progress. I placed an order with TQD when I discovered they made a Padre figure, who you can see here on the right. The officer in the middle will represent Lt. Denis Audet, the callow French Canadian whose Normandy adventures are chronicled on this blog. The fellow on the left seems to be a motorcycle dispatch rider who is doing temporary duty as a traffic cop.

Finally, I mentioned the Guildwargamers site, and last week I noticed that they have an eight week challenge to make some buildings. I have had these two kits for a year or more, and haven't really come to grips with them because they are rather Italian - definitely would be out of place in Normandy. But now that there's a challenge, I think I'll jolly well build them and use them for something.

Any ideas what to use them for?

Finally, I am both pleased that I discovered how to do manual paragraph breaks in html and annoyed that the new version of Blogger requires me to do it. Perhaps its the older version of Vista I am running, since I am getting an odd message when I load the Blogger composer. Can't say I'm impressed with the new look of the Blogger back end, but it is free, so I'll live with it.

9 comments:

  1. Nice looking river boats. Love looking at others works in progress. Motivates me to finish my stuff up.

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  2. Some great looking figures, I like the look of the ships!!!

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  3. Would those buildings be so out of place in Normandy? I agree one thinks of Italy - or just about anywhere along the coast of the Gulf de Lyons.

    I like those ACW gunboats! What are they made from? They look wooden, possibly balsa, but very, very well made.
    Cheers,
    Ion

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    1. My Lord Archduke:
      They are nice ships aren't they? I wish I could take credit for them, but they are pewter models. Now that I've seen how Toby at Thoroughbred makes them, I could make some out of balsa, but they wouldn't look nearly as good as his kit.

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  4. Great looking stuff there so far. Looking forward to seeing the Yanks and the WW2 Brit's finished.

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  5. Great post Mike with some nice looking work. The Gunboats look up to the job an the painting on the figures lovely.

    For the buildings I was thinking you could add in window frames centrally to break up the apertures.

    And maybe some putty plastered on the walls as rendering.

    They look far too good to leave in the ox and any rate.

    Model on!

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    1. Thanks Paul. Good advice ref the windows. I think I will have to get them out of the box, no question. They are said to be well moulded and fit together nicely, so that's encouraging.

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  6. Good stuff Mike! You'll like the buildings. Dan has them and they're great models. I don't think they'd look TOO out of place in France (lot of tile roofs there too)

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  7. Damn nice work Mike especially the Ironclads!

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