Paint Table Sunday: Some progress on the ACW

My painting hasn't gone so well the last week or so as I have had to deal with a family bereavement  (which I won't expand upon or it will sound like one of those ghastly, maudlin posts you get on The Miniatures Page) and this has put my work on the back burner too, so I am having to work to catch up in my 'spare time'. I was grateful to be able to get the opportunity to go out and meet the Uber Geek himself, for dinner at the beginning of the month.  I was probably not very sparkling company, given the circumstances, so apologise if I was a bit dull but it did make me feel better in a very trying week.  So thanks for your company and, indeed, dinner!

I tried to get some painting done yesterday but the light was just awful.  I took this picture out of my window at about three pm.  Hopeless!  One good thing it shows is that we have taken down the children's trampoline, at last, which means the garden looks more open once more. 

So, not much progress but some, at least, on my plastic ACW project (the Uber Geek's enthusiasm for ACW was infectious).  This is my first unit, of Texans, with the three companies required by Terence Wise's rules, in different stages (this evening I put the Freshwater Bay sand on the figures on the right, so I can undercoat them tomorrow).  In the background the Union Cavalry have not moved on very much, although the blankets (horse blankets and troopers') on the saddles are now under way and all the colour research is done.

I have a new undercoated unit which is a totally unnecessary, metal add-on and is the fault of a picture caption, appropriately, from Terence Wise's An Introduction to Battle Gaming.  In his Battle of Centerville the cavalry fight as cavalry but that runs contrary to this caption.  It is a line that came back to me as soon as I started my cavalry, even before I looked at the book again.

As a result, I bought two packs of metal Perry dismounted cavalry which I will paint at the same time as the plastic riders.  Now, or course, I am thinking about horse holders!

Although I have been focussing on the ACW figures, Eric the Shed (his awe-inspiring blog has just passed it's fifth birthday and he has a year-end round up, here) is organising a Zulu Wars game next month and I am going to see if I can find some Zulus which I know I have started, to add to the forty I have already painted. You can never have enough Zulus!

Anders Zorn (1860-1920) The Hinds (1908)

Today's wallpaper distraction is one of Swedish painter Anders Zorn's lovely al fresco nudes, which I mentioned last time.  Zorn, a notorious womaniser, would sail the coast of Sweden in the summer with a 'crew' of models who he would get to pose by the water and in the woods along the rocky shore.   This seems like a good way to spend the summer to me, as long as you don't have to eat pickled herring. Prawn cocktail, yes. Herring, no.  

Today's music is one I have played a number of times over the last week.  It is my favourite piece by Brahms and the LP (above) I had, before I got the CD version, was one of the earlier records in my classical collection which I bought shortly after it came out, in 1974.  It's very nostalgic, for a number of reasons, and I have found it very calming over the last stressful week or so.