My gallant crew... Good morning! - Royal Navy Captains finished

The painting challenge is on it's last days now and finally I managed to finished to miniatures to complete the first bunch of Napoleonic seamen:

When painting those gentlemen I always swayed between the Horatio Hornblower TV series and a recording of H.M.S. Pinafore by Gilbert and Sullivan. Although the play is set in a slightly later period these sturdy officers reminded me of sorely afflicted Captain Corcoran. Simultaneously especially the left chap has the strict but fair look of Robert Lindsay's wonderful recreation of Captain Pellew.

Hart of Oak are our Ships, jolly Tars are our men... - More 28mm sailors

As one of my ridiculously small projects this winter I tackled some British seamen for the Napoleonic era. Six of them were my lousy output for January and some others had to follow until late February when Tactica wargaming show was scheduled. As you see it's late February now and I'm lucky to present more tars now:

Unit from both batches

Altogether there were eight more navymen that I finished during the last weeks. Actually once again lousily few figures but somehow my life hasn't hobby convenient lately. Anyway the following chaps are once again from Brigade Games's excellent range. The sculpts were from Paul Hicks and as usual they are full of character and detail. Although it seems his virtuosity with face increased since he made those figures they are absolutely brilliant and top notch among all other 28mm figures tackling this topic.

In detail those are the men I painted:

Rather a mixed bag of weapons as you would expect from a quickly assembled boarding or landing party. Once again I tried to break uniformity slightly with varying the colours of the trousers. I painted to of the dark blue and used different shades of beige for the other ones.

Anyway there were two very characterful figures I wanted to bring out:

The seasoned one armed veteran and the chap who is wearing a headscarf caught my eye since I started to clean the castings. Thus they acquired striped trousers. No piece of art but I hope you like the touch.

Altogether there are 14 finished sailors now 12 of which hit the board on Tactica wargaming show last weekend. But more on that in a couple of days...

A British tar is a soaring soul... - 28mm seamen

During the last weeks it was rather quiet on my painting desk. Different things kept me away from paint and brushes and somehow I was lacking kind of 'painting mojo'. Last week I was lucky enough to have some free time and started painting a nice set of figures which I ordered last December from US manufacturer Brigade Games. Lon has a very nice of Napoleonic figures for different theatres of war starting with the very early Egypt Campaign but covering the Peninsular War and the War of 1812 as well. However there are some very nice sets of British seamen which were sculpted by master sculptor Paul Hicks. I wanted to have them for our upcoming participation game at Tactica Wargaming Show and of course for the 'Navy' bonus round of the painting challenge. Some more tars on my workbench make sure that I'll not miss the bonus round but after two weeks of absence I though a sign of life in the form of a sestet of those jolly good chaps might be appropriate:

The figures are from different packs of the range but I decided to paint more or less the command figures first. The centrepiece of this bunch are a dashing lieutenant and a seasoned boatswain.

Followed by two young and eager midshipmen:

This first batch is completed by two able seamen accompanying their leaders:

Altogether a nice range of highly detailed sculpts. The poses are very dynamic and realistic. On those chaps I tested the colour combinations and stayed to blue and white more or less. For the other 'common' seamen I'll alter this colour sheme slightly to depict the inconsistency of 19th century navy dress. Since the seamen were responsible for most of their clothing they had a really mixed bag of shirts and trousers. Merely for the jackets I'll stay with a uniform blue tone to create some cohesion in the unit.

However I hope you like the paintjob.