Miss Maple, A Pulp Investigator

Every now and then I find it's pleasant to have a figure in the panting queue that isn't part of a project or an army I'm building, but is simply a pleasant diversion.   Bob Murch's Pulp Figures line fits that bill perfectly.   This Murch figure is a lady investigator with a kitty, who I've named Miss Maple.    Aided by her clairvoyant kitty, Justin, she's investigating a nefarious plot to rename Canada the 51st state.   She has goggles pushed up into her brunette curls, so she seems to be ready to move quickly.  Justin must be more patient with motor vehicles than my cat is!

The kitty is painted in tribute to my own buddy, Marshal Luigi, who sometimes graces this blog.  The paints are a mix of Vallejo, Foundry, and craft paints.

I've started using clear Litko bases for my pulp figures, as they work well with a variety of matts and backgrounds.   I suppose Miss Maple could be assisting some Mounties I painted a ways back, if I ever resurrect my Rockies Aflame project.  Hmmm.

Thanks for looking and blessings to your brushes.

MP+

Another Year, Another Painting Challenge Done and Dusted

On 21 March, the first day of spring, Curt Campbell (aka The Snowlord) called Time on this year’s Painting Challenge.   I’ve taken part in these efforts off and on over the last decade.   The AHPC has become an international hobby community with painters of all different skill levels and interests.  It’s a fascinating snapshot of the miniature hobby landscape.

Here's the happy builder and painter with his total output for this year's Challenge.

This year I focused mostly on 6mm historicals, but thanks to the special theme rounds or mini-challenges I was inspired to paint this set, The Triumph of Frankenstein, sculpted by Bob Murch of Pulp Figures.

It was also an opportunity to play with my new 3D printer and try make some scenery for a mini diorama:

My post for the Challenge, with more pictures and some “How I Made This” details, is here.   

Taking a break to paint these figures was a welcome rest and an enjoyable diversion.  Sometimes I think we get too focused on our big projects in painting and wargaming, and we forget the pleasure of just doing something for fun.  

Cheers and blessings to your brushes,

MP+

 

Tak

Lady Rathbone's Raiders: Some Pulp Figures

Have you ever painted figures just for the fun of it, without a really clear idea of what they were going to be for?  

That was my motive for painting these five 28mm figures from two-fisted Canadian sculptor, Bob Much, proprietor of Pulp Figures.  This set, called Lady Rathbone’s Raiders, had just been released and somehow snuck it’s way into my shopping cart on my last trip to Bob’s site.

Faithful readers of this blog will know that I am partial to Pulp Figures, and have painted a lot of them for my Rockies Ablaze project.   However, these figures seem kitted out to take on a dangerous tropical paradise, so I don’t really have a clear use for them at present.

 

 Nevertheless, I like the strength and whimsy of these figures, as well as their racial diversity.   Not sure who Lady R is, but like a good pulp character, she has an exotic and varied crew at her back.  I also enjoy painting unique figures, which feels like a painting adventure, free of the dull constraints of the same uniform X 20 or X30, though these figures mostly ended up in predictable military colours, except for the Lucy Liu-is sword lady, who got a treatment of Citadel/GW contrast paints.

  

 

Perhaps they are on a rescue mission to find Amelia Earhart?    That sounds like a pulp tale in the making.  Now, to find some tropical islanders and perhaps Imperial Japanese sailors and soldiers?   That sounds like a fun project in embryo. 

 

Thanks for looking and blessings to your die rolls!

MP+

 

 

The Rockies Ablaze, Part Three

 This post picks up where Part Two of The Rockies Ablaze left off. Part One can be found here.

Near Camrose, Alberta, February, 1937.

The morning after Frenchy Lamoreux’s visit, Sgt. Bill Craighurst set off for the mountains.  It was a calm, bright winter day, and he figured he could make it to Indian River and back before dark.   From Frenchy’s account, he wanted to have a word with Ratko Gligic, the person of interest in the disappearance of Scotty Grainger.   Craighurst relished the chance to get away from the post and breathe the mountain air, and Laurier, his massive Husky, was clearly delighted to be trotting along.

 The Mountie stopped first at Grainger’s cabin, which as he expected was cold and empty.  There was no sign that it had been ransacked.  Everything was tidy and orderly, like the man himself.  He reached Gligic’s ramshackle place shortly before noon, and saw faint smoke rising from the chimney.  Craighurst dismounted, tethered his horse, and approached cautiously, studying the cabin.   Other than the trace of smoke, there was no sign of life.

 Craighurst didn’t see the trap until he was on top of it, but his natural dexterity allowed him to throw himself aside before his foot descended on the touch plate.

 He was still lying in the snow when he heard a snarl, a shout, and a fusilade of shots as Gligic stormed out of his shack.   Craighust felt a bullet pass through his Stetson as he crawled behind the shelter of Gligic’s woodpile, dragging his rifle by the sling.   “Ratko, calm down!  I’m just here to talk!"

“Go away!  Leave me alone!  I kill you!”   From the thick Slavic accent, it was clearly Gligic.

A bullet slammed into the woodpile.   Craighurst chambered a round as a precaution, but thought talking was still better than shooting.  “I just want to talk about Scotty Grainger.  Where’s Scotty?"

“Wasn’t me!  It was him, the wolf!  The wolf gets him!"

“What wolf, Ratko?”  

“Wolf with red eyes!  He get you too!"

This conversation was clearly going no where.   Craighurst gave a hand signal to Laurier, who trotted off behind the cabin.  Another shot, and a volley of Balkan curses.  “You go now, bastard!  I kill you!  Wolf kill you!”   

A snarl and a shout told the Mountie that eighty pounds of Husky had pulled down the trapper.   Craighust raced over, rifle at the ready, putting his boot firmly on Gligic’s pistol.   “Good boy, Laurier.   Now, talk sense, Ratko.   Tell me about Grainger.   What’s all this about a wolf?"

Spittle flecked Gligic’s beard and his eyes were rolling in his head.  He spoke in a kind of keening moan now.  “The wolf!   The wolf!   He coming.   He coming now.  He eat you up!”  As the prospector’s voice tailed off, a snarling growl came from deep within Laurier as the big dog bristled and bared his teeth.    Craighurst’s rifle came up, following the direction of the dog’s muzzle.

Craighurst’s gaze locked with a pair of deep-set, coal red eyes as his brain tried to make sense of the upright figure crouched in the trees, a hundred yards from him across a small clearing.

 Time seemed to freeze.  The figure in the trees was as motionless as Craighurst’s rifle.  Sensing his moment, Gligic scrambled to his feet and ran towards the woods.   The Mountie wasn’t going to shoot a man in the back, and he wasn’t going to take his sights off the strange creature across from him.   By the time his eyes flicked back from the fleeing suspect, the apparition in the trees was gone.

Craighurst slowly exhaled, and lowered his rifle slightly as one thought kept going through his brain.  Wolves don’t walk on their hind legs!

 Moving slowly, his senses on full alert, the Mountie crossed the clearing, searching for the tracks of the creature he had seen.  Gligic wouldn’t go far, he could be easily be picked up later, or killed, if that was how he wanted to go out  A skilled naturalist and woodsman, Craighurst had no difficulty finding and identifying the tracks in the snow.   They were the hind feet of a wolf, as deep set in the snow as any man’s, and only the rear feet.  After several hundred feet, they tracks went to four feet as if the creature wanted to make more speed.  So damned big, he thought.

Craighurst noted the sun’s position, and calculated the remaining hours of daylight.  Just enough to get back to town, he thought.  He’d be back tomorrow, and he wouldn’t be coming alone.

(Figures by Bob Murch from his Pulp Figures range. Werewolf by Reaper.  Cabin by 4Ground).

 

 

 

"Herbie": The Canadian Wargamer Podcast Mascot Figure

On his blog recently, Dai, a good friend of this blog and a good mate, was lamenting the tedium of batch painting.   Having almost finished 42(!) 6mm Napoleonic cavalry, I can well relate.  Sometimes it’s a welcome break to focus on one figure and lavish it with attention and with all one’s meagre talent (speaking purely for myself).  Hence, I present “Herbie”, a WW2 Canadian infantryman, named for the wartime cartoon drawn by Bing Coughlin and published in the Canadian Army newspaper The Maple Leaf.  I don’t think there was ever a widely adopted nickname for the Canuck soldier in that war, comparable to “Tommy” or “GI Joe”, but “Herbie”, Coughlin’s bewildered and misfit hero, seems to fit.

 

This figure is perhaps too martial and competent looking to be a “Herbie”, but I think that’s the name that stuck when my mate James got Canadian sculptor Bob Murch to design him as a registration gift for the 25th anniversary of the SW Ontario miniature gaming event, Hot Lead.  Here he is enjoying a brew (tea, hot, sweet, with a dollop of evaporated milk), his foot propped on a German helmet, in the ruins of some unfortunate city.  He wears the light blue shoulder patch of 3 Division and the “turtle” helmet issued before the Normandy campaign.

 Herbie will not be a gaming piece, but he’ll grace a bookshelf and perhaps be the image of the Canadian Wargamer Podcast, which James and I are dreaming up and which may see it’s inaugural episode recorded tonight.   Stay tuned for more.

 

Cheers and blessings to your brushes,

MP+

 

More Murch Pulp Progress

As the year winds down, I’ve been finishing some small and large batches of figures.

Here are four more heroes of the north for my Rockies Ablaze project from Bob Murch’s Pulp Figures range.   I haven’t had time to think up names and backstories for them yet, but I am sure they will come to life soon.  

 

As faithful readers of this blog know, I love me a Murch figure.   

 

Early in 2020 I plan to get my Murch Zeppelin Troopers on the bench and do them in one big batch, after which things will undoubtedly heat up.

Cheers and blessings to your bushes!

MP+

 

The Rockies Ablaze, Part Two

Near Camrose, Alberta, February, 1937.

 

It took Frenchy Lamoreux a day and a half to snowshoe down from the mountains and into town.   Normally he gave the Mounties a wide berth, as did most of the trappers.   It wasn’t that he had anything to hide, he was as honest as any man, but where the redcoats were, it wasn’t long before the surveyors and the mining men and the road crews appeared, taking his way of life away bit by bit.

 

He shrugged when he reached the simple cabin of the RCMP detachment.   “Tant pis.  On fait ce qu’il faut.”

 

 

“Sergeant Craig’urst”, he nodded to the man in red serge behind the desk, as a friendly, hawk-nosed face looked up.   Craighurst was well known to the trappers as a fair and decent policeman, someone who knew the woods and mountains as well as any one.

 

“Frenchy!”  Bill Craighurst’s bantam figure rose easily as he offered his hand.   “What brings you down to town?”

 

 

“Not any t'ing good, Sergeant.  Maybe you ‘ave coffee on dat dere stove?”

 

“Of course.   Sit down.”   Craighurst poured thick strong coffee into an enamel mug and handed it to the trapper.   “Tell me your news.”  He could see something haunting the other man’s face as Lamoureux sipped the coffee and gathered himself.

 

“You know old Grainger, ‘ee ‘as dat claim up on Indian River, nearby of me?”

 

“Scotty Grainger, yes.   Keeps to himself, but never troubles anyone.   By all accounts a good neighbour.  What of him?”

 

 

Lamoureux stared out the window behind the mountie’s desk for a moment.   "I t’ink ee’s dead, Sergeant.”  He told the story about finding the blood-soaked snow.

 

“The last time Grainger was in town, he spoke ill of another trapper, the Serb, Gligic.  Accused him of stealing his furs. Even threatened him.  Do you think there was bad blood between the two?”

 

The trapper shrugged.  “Peut être.  Is true dey not les amis.  But I do not t’ink it was any man what killed ‘eem.  It was … some t’ing h'else.”

 

Sergeant Caighurst’s big husky growled faintly and looked apprehensively at his master.   “Easy, Laurier.   Easy, boy.  Well, Frenchy, I think I’d best go have a look.”

 

One look at the trapper’s face told Craighurst not to ask for his company.  The man was clearly spent.  “Eh, you go if you want, Sergeant.  But as dey say, attache ta tuque."

Some Good Pulp Doggoes

Hello and Happy (Canadian) Thanksgiving.

Here are two Very Good Doggoes (are there any other kind?) for my 1930s pulp project, The Rockies Ablaze.   These good puppers are from Bob Murch’s Pulp Figures range of Yukon Adventure figures.

My wife Joy has had two Siberian huskies in her life, both sadly gone across the Rainbow Bridge, but our house is replete with pictures, which I used as inspiration.   Joy holds that huskies are the most beautiful animals that God ever made, and I am inclined to agree with her.

Of course, Mounties need husky sidekicks.  Maybe not Constable Benton Fraser from the TV series of the 1990s, Due South, but perhaps his grandfather.

“Let’s go, Fang, there’s trouble out there!"

Sadly our house no longer has a resident dog.  Our very good girl Dinah came to the end of her road last week.   Joy adopted her three years ago after her owner passed away.  Dinah was already elderly then, and while she got deaf and started losing her sight, she had a good life until recently  when her ability to walk and keep clean declined, and we decided to let her end her life in peace and dignity.  I suspect the only dogs here in future will be miniature dogs, as we hope to travel once Covid is over, but you never know.

 

Blessings to your brushes and to your furry friends!

MP+

It's .... Crash Callahan!

R

Racing down a gravel road, her trusty dog Fred in the sidecar of her roaring Indian, it’s Crash Callahan, intrepid girl reporter / secret agent / daredevil / archaeologist - take your pick.

As readers of this blog know, I’m a sucker for fellow Canadian Bob Murch’s line of Pulp Figures, and while I couldn’t see an immediate use for it in my gaming, I thought it would be an ideal present for my lovely bride and dog lover, Joy, who still struggles to understand the art form of miniature figures.  And who can resist a dog in a sidecar with goggles and his tongue hanging out?

 

 

The set also comes with dismounted figures of Crash and Fred - nice touch.  Her blue jeans are done with Citadel contrast paint which I have only begun to use.  I thought it was a bit garish when it dried, but the matte spray varnish toned it down a bit.  I think I like it.

 

Thanks for looking.  Blessings to your brushes!

MP+

The Rockies Ablaze, Part One

<I’ve been going on here about my pulp project for a few years with precious little to show for it, so here goes.   Narrative fluff to start with slightly elaborated from @MarshalLuigi ’s tweets.  Small actions and character reactions to be determined using Call of Cthulhu 7th ed rules, larger actions probably by TFL’s Chain of Command.>

Near Camrose, Alberta, February, 1937.

Frenchy Lamoreux walked his trapline in the high foothills near Indian River every few days, weather permitting.   He often crossed paths with Old Grainger, out walking his line.  Frenchy looked forward to his chats with the Scot.   They’d share a tot of rum or whiskey from their flasks, and compare notes on what they were catching and who was paying best for the fur.  Lately Grainger was becoming convinced that another trapper, Ratko Gligic, was stealing from his traps.   “If I catch yon rascal in the act, I’ll kill him stone deed, I will!"

In the late afternoon, near one of Grainger’s untouched traps, Frenchy found the blood.   He was certain that it wasn’t the result of someone field dressing a kill.  It was more like something, or someone, had been simply torn apart.  Nearby, in some trampled snow, he found Grainger’s briar pipe, still full of half burnt gold flake.

As he surveyed the dismal scene, he felt his hair rise under his toque.  Frenchy knew with a terrible certainty that he was being watched.   He also knew that nothing he had ever seen on earth had made the bloody tracks heading off into the woods, and nothing on earth could make him follow them.

<Notes:   A good exercise in seeing how much winter scenery I’ve assembled thus far, and some fun with a backdrop.  It may be a while before the next scene in ready.  Frenchy is a Bob Murch Pulp Figures casting, and the thing in the trees is by Reaper.  Say vigilant, chaps!>

Two More Crazy Canucks

Hello friends!

In the time since my last post here, I’ve been busy with work and also had the chance to travel to Africa and back to some church-related work in Ethiopia.   It was an amazing experience, and I hope to write about it on my “God blog”, www.madpadre.blogspot.com, in due course.

There has been some painting time here and there, including these two dangerous fellows for my Rockies Ablaze pulp project.

These two are figures are Bob Murch sculpts, figures from his Mad Trappers set from his Pulp Figures line.  

The fellow on the left is Ratko Gligic, Canada’s Most Dangerous Immigrant.   Rumours had it that he personally killed an Austrian general in a cafe in Belgrade, made him into goulash, and then served him to his troops.   He escaped from a Bolshevik prison camp, fought with the Whites, the Czechs, the Poles and basically anyone who had gold and booze, before escaping on the last ship out of Archangel.  He steals, curses, drinks, and only comes into town to trade furs for supplies and whiskey.

On the right, Old Jock Montrose has never paid the Crown for a trapping license, or for anything else.  Some say he won the Victoria Cross at Second Ypres, others say he shot his RSM, and some say both.   He once killed a bear with his fists and a broken bottle, and has threatened that any Mountie or excise man who comes near him will lose a foot in one of his innumerable rusty traps.

As always, they were tremendous fun to paint.

I hope to keep puttering away at this project, but the next few months ahead are busy.   I have a few interesting things to do before I retire from the Canadian Armed Forces in June, and then some planned travel this summer with my lovely bride Joy, though she has come to realize that the odd hour of hobby time is good for my mental health, so we shall see.

In the meantime, be well and blessings to your brushes.

MP+

 

A Dangerous Duo for The Rockies Ablaze

Hello friends.

My pulp project set in Western Canada in the 1930s needs some baddies, and I found the perfect pair in two of Bob Murch's Pulp Figures sculpts, from his "Mad Trappers of Rat River" set from the Yukon Peril range.

On the left, Phil Turcotte was never the same when he got home from Passchendaele, and doesn't say much except "Get off my land!"    On the right, Sven "The Hatchet" Olsen shows up in the trading post once every three months with a sack of furs and a baleful stare.  According to local legend, he once killed a man in Pincher Creek for suggesting he needed a bath and a haircut.

As always with Bob's figures, these were a delight to paint.  As I see it, besides being ornery, smelly, armed and barking mad, they will have some special abilities, like possibly being able to turn into wolves or bears, which is why the German zeppelin might be looking for specimens.   I am sure there will be wild doings afoot.

The frozen Canadian north needs as much scenery as a table will hold, so here are four terrain stands made of Christmas village trees on old CDRs (remember them?).

I discovered this white texture gel at a local art supply shop, which being white, takes paint and Woodlands Scenics snow quite well, for a pleasing final effect.

They look like trouble.

Fortunately there are some good guys to show off soon.  Thanks for looking.  Blessings to your brushes and stay vigilant, chaps.