Painting Table Saturday - Too many projects running ?

Unbelievable but true: This week I'm in time with Painting Table Saturday.

Although it'll be a rather busy weekend with some friends visiting us and a barbecue at my parents I hope to be able to spent some time at the workbench.

Besides more KGL greenjackets, the Napoleon vignette and more WWI Tommies there are the thing above on my workbench. You recognise the Dark Ages bulding easily I presume. It's the pitnhouse by Stronghold Terrain which I bought on Tactica this February. In addition there are some riders for our retreat 1812 project "White Death" and some Perry miniatures to deflash. While some of them shall reinforce my Normans for Saga the others will start another side-project...

Anyway I hope you'll have a great workbench at or away from your painting tables.

Enjoy your weekend !

Major Baring and three more 2nd KGL Riflemen

During the weekend I finished the announced riflemen finally. First of all their brave leader Major Georg Baring who lead the defense of La Haye Sainte during the battle of Waterloo nearly 200 years ago:

It's a rather simple conversio based on Perry Miniatures' light infantry officer, a bicorn head from the plastic box and some greenstuff. Although I'm definitely no talented sculptor I'm rather satisfied with the figure. Especially the part of the breast where the knot of the mirliton hat was sculpted. I had to remove it and then imitate the straps of Baring's jacket. Best seen on the image in the middle. Baring is based on a rather unusual 20mm x 40mm base. Actually that is slightly smaller than mounted figures are usually based but I wanted to be able to place him seamlessly between the riflemen on foot.

 

Second is a sergeant showing the boys where to go.

Another officer on foot. I'm not sure whether my attempt to paint NMM gold on the strap of the mirliton was successful. Looks a bit too yellow I'm afraid. So I would appreciate any hints for NMM recipes based on Vallejo Model Colors.

Once again it was great fun to paint this bunch of Perry miniatures. They are very well sculpted and a funny detail is that all the riflemen have a moustache. The only thing I didn't like that much is that all the colours of the uniform are very dark. That doesn't leave too many possibilities over to play with highlights. Especially the many black parts are a bit boring for painting and unpleasant for photography. Anyway the riflemen wore such an equipment in 1815...

Pandora's Box opened: Facebook

This time no pictures from miniatures but a short update for the blog itself. Yesterday I opened Pandora's Box and entered the largest social network community thing on earth:

FACEBOOK

Honestly I'm not sure whether that was a good decision or not but I have a couple of  friends who use Facebook but avoid Google+. Some of those friends are living rather far away and so Facebook is hopefully a way to get closer to them. At least electronically...

And undoubtlessly there's a lot of awesome miniatures and wargaming stuff on Facebook...

Anyway I was already lucky enough to find some of you chaps there and from time to time I'll drop some more friend request. Momentarily I have my hands full with figuring out which boxes to check to disclose some things but not everything...

But feel invited to visit me there as well: Here.

WW I project going on - Four more Tommies finished.

Besides painting the next KGL riflemen I relaxed a bit with some more WW I Tommies. Finally I got four more of them finished that will reinforce the ranks of my collection:

As usual the boys are painted with Vallejo Model Colors and with the same colour choices as the first ones. Now I started to write down my colour recipes because I realised that it is quite hard to remember all the triads for the different themes...

Stupidly I missed a flashline on one of the boys so he has a nasty scar running over his face. Although I was rather angry about my carelessness I presume that it will not attract too much attention when he enters the battlefield with his fellow soldiers...

Next on the workbench will be two sergeants and another two Tommies for WW I. Of course in addition to more riflemen and the Napoleonic vignette...

Paint Table Weekend - Major Baring nearly ready for service

As usual it's sunday and I'm rather late for the painting table saturday...

But first for something else:
Many, many thanks for yiur encouraging and kind congrats to my 100K step. I appreciate it very much!

Back to the painting table:
During last week I finished some further WW 1 Tommies (which I'll present very soon) and put some work into Marshall Ney for the vignette. But this Saturday I feature Major Georg Baring who has been residing on my workbench for too long meanwhile:

Only the older ones among you highly appreciated reader will remember when I started with the KGL riflemen for La Haye Sainte. It was in the dark winter of 2014 when nobody foreboded that 4Ground and Sarissa might publish a huge MDF La Haye Sainte building. Anyway some fellows of mine had the idea to play this part of the battle of Waterloo as detailed scenario with a 1:10 ratio of miniatures. Carelessly I agreed to paint 40 KGL riflemen for this event...

Although I'm pretty much at the beginning with only eight riflemen finished I'm carrying on. Hopefully this weekend three more riflemen as well as Major Bahring himself will join the posse.

Enjoy your weekend !

100.000 Hits on Monty's Caravan !

Last week my humble blog's visitors counter left range of 5 digits and passed the 100K step.

Many thanks for your much appreciated attention !

When I started blogging two and a half years ago I wanted to find a way to keep my mojo alive and get in touch with some like-minded people from time to time. Meanwhile the bloggosphere turned to be an important part of my hobby which I don't want to miss. 

During the 32 months this blog is online now I wrote 203 posts. Some more interesting as others but the most visited articles collected no less then 1.184 visits so far. Some of you will remember the first Bolt Action AAR from 13th November 2012: Somewhere near Anzio.

A lot of you took the invitation to follow this blog and leave comments here which I appreciate very much. Altogether there were 2.279 comments posted mainly by the 211 followers until now. Most of them very encouraging and helpful, indeed. Many thanks for all your support!

During the last months the monthly traffic on this blog increased. Some of you will smile at it but I'm pretty proud of more than 5.000 visits per month during the last half-year. But, chaps, that pressurises me somehow on the other side...

Anyway I looking back to the past two and a half years thankfully. I'm glad to have taken the step into bloggosphere and to have met you kind and helpful people here. As for the 50K step last November I'll prepare a raffle to celebrate this event. It'll have probably three lots of painted and unpainted miniatures or modelling kits.

So stay tuned and don't miss it!

Unveiling the vignette - WIP shots

As you already read in my last Paint Table Saturday post I'm working on a 28mm Napoleonic vignette currently. Actually it was meant to be a birthday present for a dear friend of mine but with the birth of our daughter Anna and all the stuff around that I didn't manage to finish it in time. Anyway he proved understanding and admitted me as much time as I need. Well... Since this preject is a matter of the heart for me I want to paint it as good as possible so it might take some time.

Anyway the first figure is finished and so it's time to lift the veil and present the project. It'll be more or less a straight of the box version of Perry Miniatures' excellent FN1 set. It represents Napoleon surrounded by some guys from his staff: Ney, Soult, Drouot, Colonel Gourgaud and a Hussar officer as ADC.

To begin with I painted the emperor himself. It was an excellent experience to spent simply a lot of time on a single miniature. As usual I used Vallejo Model Colours but didn't use Quickshade this time. Instead I employed the well-known technique with three shades... for some things four:

Next to finish will be Ney although I'm working on the others partly simultaneously. Unfortunately those miniatures are top-noth sculpts and are full of detail. For a humble painter like me they require a lot of attention which I'm not always able to deliver after a long day at the office and some nice but exhausting time with the kids...

Painting Table Satur... Sunday - Vignette WIP preview notice

My apologies that I'm once again late for the Painting Table SATURDAY. The last couple of days were pretty busy because we had to prepare Viktoria's birthday. Actually we're still preparing because the kin will pounce on our home pretty soon.

So just a small pic of the figures I've been working on recently. Probably you'll recognise this fellow and there's nothing more to say about the set he belongs to.

Enjoy your sunday !

Paintbrush and dipper bottle racks assembled

For some time I was thinking about how to organise my present workplace. Especially with the presentation of the paints I wasn't lucky at all but the racks and stands I discovered so far were either not to my taste or simply too expensive. Building my own didn't come into question since I judged me too clumsy and the task too time consuming. Finally a few weeks ago I stumpled onto Loki's longship and read his interesting posts about how he re-organised his workbench. From the moment I saw them I was fascinated by of the racks and dropped Diane from Warbases an email whether they could and would offer them for sale as well.

She was as kind and helpful as ever and for shipping reasons recommended a smaller layout than Andrew has. However 45 bottles seemed fine to me and I ordered three of the racks promptly. Just a week later I they arrived and I'm satisfied beyond words. Indeed Diane and Martin are excellent craftsmen as well as incredibly nice and helpful people.

Anyway the rack comes in six parts. Four sides and two sheets with holes to hold the dipper bottles. In case that you order more than one of them make sure not to mix up the sheets. The holes for the bottles themselves are slightly larger than those for the caps. Well-conceived but a but difficult if the builder is too eager. Nevertheless all the parts fitted perfectly and I didn't need more than a drop of PVA glue to assemble them:

The paint bottle rack.. Assembly time about 10 minutes.

Additionally I needed a new solution to store my brushes. For the last months I had them lying in an old plastic pot but I wanted to have them tidier, better sorted, nicer presented... Something like that. So I explained Diane my idea of a rack to store the brushes horizontically and sent her a picture of a comparable rack. My idea was the kind of racks that are used for Japanese swords. As usual no problem for Diane and Martin. They took the rack into production and for £3.00 one of the first ones was mine. I was pretty curious how it would look because I didn't have a picture of the finished prototype so far but what reached me on tuesday was exactly what I though of:

Paintbrush Rack for six or more brushes... Assembly time about 2 minutes.

So finally after two evenings I had my workbench sorted and the colours nicely presented. Last step will be to label the bottoms of the bottles to have an instant view on the numbers of the colours. I think for my purposes that works better than labelling the racks because I want to keep the chance to re-organise the bottles if necessary without having to re-label all the racks.

My workplace in inactive state and ready for action.

Well that's it. Let me finish this post with many thanks to Andrew for the inpiration his blog gave and especially to Diane and Martin for their kind assistance and the excellent items they produce. I'm looking forward to meeting them on Crisis this November hopefully !

Retreat 1812 - French Cuirassiers

During the last weeks it was rather quite on my workbench but nevertheless I wasn't completely idle:

These six chaps are part of the 1er Régiment de Cuirassiers which accompanied Napoleon on his Russia campaign in 1812. They suffered heavily during the battle of Borodino and lost many horses during the retreat from Moscow. Nevertheless the remaining few of them gathered at the western bank of Berezina river after the crossing and participated in a desperate cavalry charge to dispers the Jäger units Admiral Tschitschagow sent to seal off the French bridge head. Employing the last ounces of their strength they enforced a corridor to allow further retreat for the remainders of the Grande Armée.

The miniatures are from the excellent plastic box by Perry miniatures. They are easy to assemble and a real joy to paint. Only the faces are slightly better at the metal miniatures.

For the beginning I put together five troopers and an officer leading them. Somehow a trumpeter and an eagle bearer seemed too much for such a small unit. Additionally they most likely didn't have an eagle during the battle at Berezina river since the emperor ordered to burn them earlier.

As usual I painted them with Vallejo Model Colors. I primed them with my airbrush gun and applied the base colours - especially on the horses. Then usual, old-fashioned brushwork followed.

 

Special feature are the bases which I created exchangable. Therefore I cut and sanded the horses directly beneath the hooves and attached some small neodymium magnets there. These stick very well on the metal bases I mounted the horses on. Unfortunately I forgot to take of photo of the exchangable bases and now the figures are in the works of a friend whom I lended them. Anyway I'll hand some in later.

Please excuse the bad quality of the pictures this time. Somehow I didn't recognise their blurriness before I saw them on the screen this very morning...