Paint Table Saturday, March 5th 2016

My first proper paint Table Saturday post since last August and while the bright whether of the last couple of days did not continue, it was still light enough for me to get some base colours down on my 1864 Danes.  I had painted some colours on one figure previously but realised that the greatcoats needed to be more blue-black than navy blue so have mixed a much darker shade, similar to the one I used for my Victorian policemen.  The officer is the only one displaying his jacket, which was the lighter shade of dark blue and you can just see the difference between the two colours. Unusually, I used a brand new Windsor & Newton Series 7 size one brush to get these colours on, rather than my usual 00 or 000. It sped up the whole process without losing much of the accuracy, which isn't so important at this stage anyway.  Having lost all of my 1864 reference pictures in the great disc crash I spent half an hour searching again for them, although I am still a few short but I think they might be on the Schleswig-Holstein Wars Yahoo group.

The view from my Paint Table earlier this week.  Sadly, not so much light this morning

My reawakening of interest in the period has been due to the fact that North Star are promising to add to their range (lets hope they re-release some of the 1866 Prussians (such as the ones in feldmütze) which are currently our of production).  I actually haven't watched the last two episodes of the TV series yet as I had lost interest in the period but now I need to as my tivo box is filling up because I am not keeping up with my TV watching.  In fact I have just bought the DVD of the series on eBay so I can use it for reference, although the curious colour grading of the show makes it a doubtful source for colour accuracy.

While up to date on  Agent Carter (which I am having to save for Charlotte for when she comes home at  Easter) and Beowulf (it has improved a bit but basically I like the set and Joanne Whalley being assertive) I am way behind on Dickensian, Gotham, Agents of Shield, Jericho and Mr Selfridge.  Having wondered when Indian Summers was returning the question was answered by a poster at Oxshott station this week.

Why does the Legatus prefer fellow Brasenose graduate Olivia Grant to Julie Walters?

Hopefully, it will still feature Brasenose alumna Olivia Grant in slinky thirties dresses (and less) and not so much of Mrs Overall, Julie Walters, an actress whose appeal is lost on me. So that is another series I have to keep up with and The Musketeers must be due back soon, too (I'm very much thinking of picking up En Garde)..

I should really have been listening to Carl Nielsen while painting these figures and writing this post but haven't recovered his symphonies yet in my rebuilding my iTunes library task.  So instead I listened to random Scandianavian symphonies by Alfvén, Stenhammer and Svendsen   The Swedish composers Stenhammer and Alfvén were born too late to be appropriate to the period.  Svendsen, however,while Norwegian, lived for much of his life in Copenhagen and his first symphony dates from 1867. He was not in Copenhagen during the Second Schleswig War, however as he was studying in Leipzig.  Svendsen wrote two (rather good) symphonies but reputedly his wife burned the manuscript of his third in 1883 in a fit of anger (they separated the following year).  Ibsen used a modified version of this incident in his play Hedda Gabler.  Although Svendson didn't have the melodic gifts of his countryman, Grieg, the latter was so impressed with Svendsen's first symphony he withdrew his own symphony, C minor, written two years earlier.