9th Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge.... I'm in!

Nearly a years has passed with no noticebly activity on this blog. So actually there are two possible ways for 2019:

Monty, get off your backside and bring up content again!

or

Desert your colours and delete the whole thing!

To be hontest I've been really undecided what to do. But when I visited Crisis last month I met a couple of the finest wargaming fellows again and was reminded of the circumstances of our acqaintance namely the bloggo-sphere. Thus I realised that I'm not able and willing to throw this all away. 2019 I'll give it another go and try to get back on track.

To support that I decided to throw my hat in the ring of Curt's ingenious yearly painting challenge again:

Last year I skipped the challenge but this time I was lucky enough that Curt reserved a slot for me and welcomed prodigal son with open arms. I enroled with my usual 500 pts and I'm curious whether I'll be able to fulfill that goal. Currently my plans are as follows:

1. Bring forth my ACW project for Tactica 2019 in Hamburg
2. Paint the ships from the Cruel Seas starter set
3. Pass as many bonus rounds as possible

So #1 is already running of course but several pieces of artillery and a couple of command vignettes are to be painted during the AHPC season.

#2 must take its place behind #1 but is seductive beyond comparison. Currently I'm still waiting for my set to arrive but I'm confidant that the postman will drop it on my dorstep today or tomorrow. Additionally the play through video by Warlord Games looks stunning and I cannot wait to lay my hands on those nice little ships and lead them into battle. But our ACW presentation in Hamburg must stay at top priority.

#3 will depend on my progress with #1 and #2. For some topics I'm on a good way but for some I have no idea what to contribute. The ideas:

1. Reconnaissance -- No real idea yet. Maybe a pair of AT-RT-Walker for Star Wars Legion
2. Sport -- Perhaps a six man team for Blitz Bowl
3. Mercenary -- No real idea yet.
4. Water Feature -- Cruel Seas
5. Fellowship -- I have a couple of Holmes/Watson-Sets. Maybe one of those.

That's it for now. I'm looking forward to the AHPC. If you haven't taken notice of it yet please have a look at Curt's page. It's packed with sublime contribution from former years and it'll get lots of new input as soon as the next challenge starts. On midnight of December 21st it's time!

Last but not least the link to the Cruel Seas video I mentioned earlier:

 

It's nearly 80 minutes with designer Richard Carlisle and Warlord Charlie Monaghan playing one of the default scenarios from the basic rulebook. It's packed with explanations and inshore action. Frankly I cannot wait to get my copy.

New header

My friend Holger is a professional and very gifted graphic engineer and during his lunchbreak he seemed to have been rather bored. Luckily he used his free time to experiment with some pictures and somehow a new header for my humble blog came into being:

As you see he took a historical picture of Field Marshal Montgomery, Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Field Marshal Alan Brooke in front of Monty's famous caravan. On the right hand side he included a couple of my Perry plastics for NWF. I'm especially delighted because those are some of my favourite results from last year.

Many thanks to Holger!

I hope you like the new header as well.

Converted Napoleonics WIP

Yesterday evening I had another very pleasant video chat with Dave and Martin during which I kept working on my conversion unit for our Egypt 1801 game at Tactica 2017:

Work in progress

Basically I'm using the Perry Napoleonic British plastics as well as their AWI sets for British and Continental infantry. Those combined give the figures themselves in somehow unusual poses. For our presentation game I wanted to create something special so those and some additional chaps will form a unit which takes a small rest after the exhausting landing at Aboukir. Alan Perry himself inspired me to this conversion project with a Facebook post he published lately.

But a view conversions have to be made to make them credible:

Since the Napoleonic figures have the post-1805 trotter backpack I decided to remove its straps and add a trumpline instead. From my personal point of view that gives them a kind of early war look. Pretty useful for 1801.

Anyway since the cartridge boxes and the water bottles are part of the trotter piece I needed to cut them from the backpack and glue them directly onto the figure.

Luckily the remaining parts of the 1808-1815 figures work rather well because the stovepipie shakos was worn in Egypt as were such trousers or overalls.

On the other hand I didn't want to use 24 trumplines and leave all the AWI troopers without baggage. Thus I decided to make some of the parts I needed by myself. To accomplish this I used an incredible stuff called 'Instant Mold'. Very useful but more on that in another post.

The figures above are pretty much finished but I need to add the shoulder tufts for center companies. Currently I'm not sure how to add flank company soldiers. Most probably I'm not able to sculpt the shoulder wings myself so I'll need to work around that somehow...

A brew that is true...

It's always difficult to start a post with 'now for something completely different'. For that reason I'll avoid this phrase although I'm about to tackle a topic that is not stricly wargaming related. Whereas... Who would argue that beer is something wargaming related? Isn't it all about a great time with friends, beer and brezels? Maybe not all but at least a major part of it so let me share how Monty's Manour turned into a brewery a couple of weeks ago...

Well... It was during those days after Pentecost when precious Mrs Monty took our girl to a North Sea trip and left yours truly behind. The three girls were about to spend a couple of days with my parents in law and I found it unnecessary to spoil their and my holidays likewise. Anyway that left poor old Monty behind and loneliness planted the idea into my mind to invite one of my oldest friends to try some do-it-yourself brewing.

A word, a blow. On Pentecost sunday Auld Nick joined me and first we inspected the ingredients for our brewing day. We decided to make an India Pale Ale (IPA). A kind of beer we both appreciate and which is available in prepared packages with weighted out ingredients:

The ingredients weighted out for about 4 litres of beer.

Tactica show this weekend !

Unbelievable that not only days but once again weeks have passed since my last post. I'm deeply sorry that I was absent for such a long time again but somehow I haven't been able to turn the corner and get myself back to regular blogging. The first weeks of 2016 were simply too stressful at work and too busy at home...

Hobbywise I had a few games that I took pictures of to write some short AARs but even didn't manage to do that. But promised rather soon here'll come some pictures from Star Wars X-Wing and Armada. On the other hands the chaps from the THS club and me were preparing our presentation game for Tactica wargaming show which will take place this very weekend in Hamburg. This time we'll lead our highly appreciated audience to Egypt and show them a battle between French, British and Arabian troops during Napoleon's Egypt campaign. It's a skirmish level struggle for which we use an excellent variant of the Lion Rampant engine. It'll be featured in one of the upcoming Wargames Illustrated but we were lucky enough to do some advance play testing with them. They went really smoothly and allowed us some exciting and joyful beer and prezel matches. Exactly my cup of tea!

Anyway for this game I promised to contribute at least a unit of British tars. You saw six of them in my very last post and six more left the painting table last week. I'll feature them in a later article because they'll have to participate in the naval bonus round of the AHPC (Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge) but here a quick group shot:

Old and new tars

But now I have to get my stuff sorted because we'll head to Hamburg rather early tomorrow and some family duties have to be fulfilled before.

Enjoy your weekend!

Maybe I'll see some of you in Hamburg...

Trip to the past...

Thirty-eight years ago on this very day the humble host of this blog came into this world in Germany's wonderful Rhine Area. Although I don't give too much on celebrating myself I always enjoy this day because it's a nice chance to meet the family and do something unusual. Since both of our children are ill we decided to have dinner at home. My parents will join us and we'll have salmon on herbs, Mediterranean salad and some Riesling from the Palatinate.

But the first highlight of this day was the present dear Mrs Monty gave to me. Literally a trip to the past since I owned more or less the same game about three decades ago:

It's a Stiga table hockey game probably well-known to my Scandinavian and North American readers but in Germany it's a real niche product. But during my younger days I was proud owner of one of those games and spent a many hours with battling friends on this field of honour. Viktoria and me tried it already this morning and I presume I'll need some practise...

Painting cheek by jowl... Gladiators

Last Sunday I had a very pleasant painting session because our elder daughter Viktoria joined me. Overall she's an artistic character. She doesn't play on her own too much but prefers to paint or tinker things. Thus she has a bunch of colouring books and has been fascinated by daddy's figures for a long time. During the last year she started with some old GW archers but always wanted to have "those iron ones". Finally this weekend we unwraped a set of four gladiators by Crusader miniatures that I grapped from a second hand table on Crisis 2014 and started painting them:

So we has three murmillos and one crupellasrius to paint. A perfect topic for her since gladiators are her hobbyhorse since we visited some at Xanten 2014. Maybe unusual for a (nearly) five year old girl but those ancient warriors are still fascinating for her. She's even able to differentiate most of them.

Anyway enough fatherly pride (for now). Here's what we did:

I'm really excited about her results. Upon my word I didn't help her much. Actually I gave her hints where to paint which colour and checked the small gaps and niches afterwards. But by far most of the work was hers. Alas she didn't dare to drybrush the armour because she was afraid of painting over everything. But far most important I enjoyed to spend time with Viktoria. I don't know whether she'll keep the interest in painting miniatures or spending time with me and my miniatures but as long as she does I'll enjoy it. Honestly I will not try to force her into my hobby but at least now she's keen on walking me to our gaming gatherings when she's older...

Wargames Illustrated about Russia 1812

Since a couple of days the new issue of Wargames Illustrated is available. Actually nothing too special for a monthly magazine but issue #327 has a very interesting topic: Retreats. Which called some fellows from our wargaming club into play. 

A fascinating topic which is accompanied by a couple of excellent miniatures by now. And as you have noticed during the last years some of us fellows are tied to Napeolon's Russia campaign. Thus Wayne Bollands from WI asced us a couple of months ago whether we would be interested to contribute some content to their January issue which is all about retreats.

Gladly we agreed and worked on an article and a scenario about the battle of Krasnyi which took place in November 1812. While my friend Bernhard was working out a Blackpowder scenario I wrote the article about the events and now our humble work is published.

In case that you've read it I would appreciate your feedback very much.

Anyway many thanks to our friends Heinz and Holger for taking part in playtesting the scenario and helping Bernhard to prepare the photos !

Goodbye 2014 and welcome 2015 !

2014 was a very good year. For me it was a year of hobbyistic and domestic progression. As for my blog it developed much better than I thought:

During 2014 I managed to deliver 92 posts which is 18 posts more than I wrote in 2014. An increase of about 24% which I didn't intend. It just happened when my hobby activities rose.

In 2014 my humble blog collected 77.500 visits which is more attention than it had during the two years before. I'm absolutely stunned by the support my sober work is receiving and cannot say more than "Thank you very much indeed, chaps!"

As in 2012 and 2013 my highly appreciated readers came from all around the world. Especially USA - 26%, Germany - 19%, United Kingdom - 10%, Russian Federation - 8% and France - 6%.

It's fascinating how small our hobby world became with the use of Facebook, blogging and all those other web 2.0 related features...

But what was inside Monty's Caravan last year?

Some impressions... Have a look:

So that was 2014 more or less...

To you all a very happy New Year and all the best for 2015 !

 

I hope you'll stay favourably inclined towards Monty's Caravan.

Many thanks to "Santa Claus" and "Secret Santa" !

This year it was my first time in the "Santa Claus" and "Secret Santa" ventures and thus I was really curious what my counterparts sent me. Luckily both parcels arrived in time and I opened them on Christmas Eve which is the traditional time for handing out the presents in Germany.

And from both gifts I was pleased beyond all measure.

Many, many thanks 

to "Santa Claus" and "Secret Santa" !

"Santa Claus" painted this awesome Royal Horse Artillery howitzer for me:

Crikey! What a gorgeous gift!

The set is a perfect choice for my collection since I have all the other sets I need for a complete battery but didn't own the howitzer until now. And besides that it's extremely well painted. Unfortunately I don't know the generous donor but many, many thanks this way! In case that he (or she) would be willing to reveal his or her identity I would be delighted to get to know the colours which were used to adjust my very own RHA figures.

"Secret Santa" was likewise generous. He or she sent me two sets of Great War Miniatures representing a British WW1 13pdr Mk. I gun and an appropriate crew of 6 men. Really the choice I was hoping for when I presented my wish list a couple of weeks ago. A perfect addition for my WW1 Tommies.

The late war crew I got. (picture from Northstar)

The gun with ammunition wagon and early war crew. (picture from Northstar)

But more important for me was to please my counterparts. Luckily I read on their blogs that they received my gifts in time and that they were rather pleased about them.

Last but not least many, many thanks to the organizers of both projects. To Cath and Ian for "Secret Santa" and to Chris for "Santa Clause". I'm looking forward to 2015 and hope that they'll start the ventures again. I would be delighted to take part again.

Generous Mr Awdry !

Constant readers of Michael Awdry's outstanding blog 28mm Victorian Warfare might have noticed that I was the lucky winner of his 500k hits raffle. Today I realised how incredibly lucky I was because his highly generous gift arrived today. A gorgeous selection of precious items awaited me inside a prudent wrapping:

Crikey! He even added a tea bag to his splendid mug: Newby's Earl Grey tea. Although I didn't know this brand Earl Grey is my favourite flavour. Either Michael guessed right or we share some similar preferences or Earl Grey is simply THE tea for wargamers. Anyway I was really pleased to find it besides the mug and a very witty pair of cufflinks. Another perfect item since I actually prefer shirts with double cuffs. Maybe these are not the set to choose for business but they'll find use during some leisure activities.

Most eye-catching part of the set is maybe the miniature Michael included. A set of two wounded British soldiers from Empress Miniatures' excellent Anglo-Zulu War range painted by the goodman of Awdry Towers in person.

My picutres hardly do justice to this piece of art and it demands to be framed with a collection tackling this theatre of war. Originally I wanted to disregard this conflict but at least a couple of South Wales Borderers will follow sooner or later.

As well as those miniatures the mug found instant entry into my household. Here you see it besides my other two favourite mugs:

Last but not least Michael topped the set off with a very nice Christmas card and best wishes from him and his dear wife.

Honestly I don't want to over-egg the pudding but I cannot thank him enough for this generous present which really made my day.

Finally I sat down to finish my set of miniatures for the first bonus round of Curt's painting challenge. Of course I had to employ my new mug to hold a sip of Michael's tea and added a slice of Christstollen a traditional German fruit cake which my mother baked:

What else can I say?

Exactly my cup of tea.

Back with news...

My honest apologies that I was lost for the last weeks without notice. Fortunately there are no bad news connected to this. There was simply no time to get anything sorted for the blog because the last weeks were an extraordinary labour. We spent two weekends with trips and in between our younger daughter had to go to the hospital which of course didn't make things easier. Paired with flu and middle ear inflammation which haunted our family free time was short. Anyhow the last weekend with friends in Bavaria gave us the chance to clear our minds and catch some energy. Thus I'm optimistic that things'll go more orderly again...

So I'll keep marching on with the blog now !

With a tow, row, row, row, row, row, to the British Grenadiers. - A photo a friend of mine took of my minis.

But as the title promises there are some news to be published.

• In two weeks there'll be Crisis 2014 in Antwerp taking place. The THS is preparing a presentation game dealing with the French intervention in Mexico during the 1860s. Especially our fellow Kalle but a lot of efforts in the project and we'll be happy to welcome any visitors at our table.
  More about the game itself and some pictures will follow this or next week.
  
• For this year's "Secret Santa" and "Santa Clause" ventures the sails are set. I'll happily look for some nice things in Antwerp...
  
• Currently I'm working on an article for a rather large wargaming magazine so the time with brushed and paints is very limited. Please excuse that you'll not see much progress during the next two weeks.
  
• In the pipeline there are two AARs and two museum reviews. The pictures are more or less prepared so rather soon I'll be able to finish those.
  
• I haven't forgot the announced raffle for my 100K step at Monty's Caravan. It'll take place soon...

During the next days I'll try to work off all your blogs. Be sure that I'll try to visit each of them but I'll not post comments everywhere.

The hurly-burly's done...

Luckily the weather forecast kept its promise and the weekend was pleasant. So I was able to hold two long airbrushing sessions.

The first one on friday with a lot of stuff to prime. After about one and a half hours of constant spraying 43 horses, six riders and 33 foot soldiers had a nice even coat of black primer. As usual I used my favourit: Vallejo Surface Primer Black. It works perfectly with my 0.5mm nozzle and there's no need to thin it down. On the other hand the nozzle is large enough to prime the models without wasting too much paint.

At least if you already have some airbrush equipment I think priming this way is even the cheapest way to get the models prepared. For all the stuff above I needed about 30ml of paint. Applied with a brush I would have used much more (thicker layers of paint...) and with spray cans? I'm not sure but at least half a can if not more.

Since the friendly weather continued on sunday I arranged the equipment for another session then.This time most of the stuff I primed two days earlier had to get some coulour. On that account I thinned down some Vallejo Model Colors which is always a bit tricky. Based on earlier experience between 2:1 and 1:1 (colour : thinner) works best depending on the colour and of course the nozzle of the airbrush gun. As usual I achieved rather different results but altogether I'm rather satisfied:

For the horses on the right which belong to a Saga warband of steppe warriors I chose different shades of brown to have a mixed and disordered look for the wilde horde. And by the way they'll work as guinea pigs for some new colour ideas I had...

For the lancers' / hussars' horses in the middle I chose a much more average coluor. Flat Brown for all of them. Although I thought of dappling some other shades of brown into the formation I didn't dare to disturb the disciplined look of British cavalry. By the way trumpeters in the 1880s didn't still use greys, did they?

The Normans / Crusaders and their horses were an easy choice as well. Different brown horses and a coat of dark metal on the chainmail of the knights.

For the infantry I used Khaki Grey which shall serve as base colour for the British Sudan / NWF uniforms for the 2nd Anglo-Afghan War. On the picture they look slightly more greenish than personally.

Last but not least two terrain pieces or at least some parts of them. In the foreground a part of the roof of another Dark Ages building by Stronghold, namely the Pit House I've been working on for some weeks. In the background the major part of Sarissa's awesome Pegasus Bridge. I'm not sure when I'll have that finished finally. I took several months until now and it'll take several more months. Above all I have no idea how to store or showcase the finished piece but I think it was too much work to store it disassembled in a box somewhere...

The stage is set

Yesterday evening I spent two hours with glueing figures onto bases. Actually preparations for my aribrushing plans for this weekend.

Here are all the results together:

In total these are 43 horses, six riders and 35 foot soldiers which I want to prime this afternoon. I have no idea how long this will take or whether I have enough primer left but anyway I'll give it a try.

Second step will be the base colours:

- different shades of brown and grey for the horses

- metal for the knights

- brownish for the British

If I don't manage to finish that today then maybe I'll get another time slot on sunday when Mrs Monty and the girls are out for a children's birthday party...

Heavy-duty miniature cleaning - Brutal final for (maybe) the last arbrushing session...

For the remainder of the week we have a really good weater forecast and so I hope to have the chance to hold another airbrushing session on the balcony. Maybe the last one before autumn which means maybe the last one this year.

Therefore I spent part of the weekend as well as the last evenings with deflashing and cleaning miniatures. The result is a bowl with about 50 horses and more than 30 foot soldiers. The plan is to prime them on Saturday and hopefully apply the base colour as well.

Additionally I prepared a miniature for a conversion. More precisely a staff officer from Prince Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar's staff shall become Major Edmund L'Estrange who was Sir Dennis Pack's ADC during the battle of Waterloo. He and the general himself will represent the command of my incarnation of the British 9th brigade of the prementioned battle. 

Anyway preparation in this case means a lot of milling. As soon as I added some green stuff I'll present my humble work.

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!

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 !

I'm back !

Many apologies for my long absence !

For the last three weeks I had a holiday and was busier than I thought. Although it was a great, enjoyable and precious time with Mrs Monty and our the family kept me on the run.

So there's a lot of stuff to work off during the next weeks:

- read the new posts on my favourite blogs

- prepare two AARs

- sent some pictures of the few miniatures I finished lately

- ponder about a 100K raffle which might be within arm's reach rather soon

Anyway yesterday I had finally the chance to spend some time with my tin men. So I installed my mavble airbrush cabin on the balcony and prepared figures and paints:

My ersatz-airbrush booth

A couple of friends made me a present of a box of WWI Tommies for my birthday lately and it was time to start painting them. To make things easier I wanted to prime and partly paint them with my reliable airbrush gun.

So after two hours of constant blowing I had about fifty Tommies primed and pre-coloured as well as three Normans and their horses. To be honest such a long airbrushing session is somehow exhausting but it saved me a lot of time I presume...

Monty's Caravan with a new livery !

You might have noticed that I changed the layout of this humble blog slightly. Honestly I've been pondering about the old colour sheme. Finally I found it too dark and too plain. So I experimented with some of the other blogger layout sheme and decided to try this brighter one.

Actually I was thinking about the dynamic layouts as well but didn't dare to make such a large change in one step. At the end I didn't want to mix up the complete blog.

Next I'll have to fix the header. Actually I want a nice picture there but I'm unsure, what to combine...

Please let me know whether you like the new design or not.

New Painting Table

Unfortunately the last weeks were rather quite at my painting table and blog. I tried to follows your blogs as constantly as ever but I didn't find the time to paint or build. This week I was even too late for the Saturday Painting Table post. But at least with a good reason since we had moving day on saturday. Although we didn't move completely we had to vacate the most overfilled room of our flat to make room for our future family member. So the last weeks were occupied with sorting things out, packing cardboard boxes and taking down shelves. On saturday two friends of our approached and we rearranged everything in our corridor and unpacked most of the boxes.

Anyway because I lost my man cave lumber room thing I was in desperate need of a new place to paint. Finally saintly Mrs Monty and I agreed to look for a nice fall front desk for our living room where I could store the stuff I need for the  more or less daily painting session. After disappointing visits at local furniture and second-hand shops we found a small ad of a nice Colombian woman who wanted to sell some furniture because she'll be moving to Eastern Germany soon. So for a fair price I got a Biedermeier fall front desk and a suitable chair. Probably it's not original but a reproduction but actually I don't care. It's in a very good conadition, fairly priced and I like the way it looks:

My new painting desk...

To improve it I'll have to prepare some paint bottle holders for the rack bays. Just a kind of tray with holes to locate the painting bottles. Maybe movement trays work with a little conversion...

In addition I'll need a larger desk to save the leather cover from accidents with water or paint.

But nevertheless I spent some time at the desk yesterday and proceeded to paint some SAGA Viking Levies as well as the rude Scotsmen I've been working on for the last weeks. At least those are nearly finished now although the mobile phone picture is rather bad:

 

Next weekend we'll have to paint the new nursery but I hope to have more time for painting afterwards...