Paint Table Saturday: Danes and an off the wall SF project

I haven't posted for six weeks or so as I hadn't painted anything but this has changed this week when I finished my 1864 2nd Schleswig War Danish infantry, so I can have another Paint Table Saturday post today. 

Not surprisingly, given my glacial painting rate, I started these twelve figures in October 2015 but had real trouble finding uniform information about them. I started off painting them dark blue until a helpful Danish reader pointed out that actually only the jackets were blue and they were all wearing greatcoats which were almost black. I took this to mean very, very dark  blue but, in fact, the coats were very, very dark grey. Having painted them all blue I gave up on them for a bit and only sporadically went back to them. Over the last few months they have had much more attention and I finished them on Tuesday.  The backdrop, which enhances them considerably, is a painting by the nineteenth century Danish painter LA Ring, who painted some wonderful Danish landscapes.

The Little Hornblowerr in Hans Christian Andersen Boulevard, Copenhagen

These are a set of figures that I bought when they first came out, before I had seen the TV series 1864, which inspired them, of course. There is rather more information about the uniforms now, so that I could even do an accurate company flag. Unfortunately, North Star have temporarily taken the range off their website while they are running at a reduced staff level but I hope they get some more soon. They are even promising more figures for the range and I do have some Danish dragoons started. I used to travel to Copenhagen quite regularly (to the extent that I acquired a lady friend from the Danish Treasury) and remember a statue of a soldier in this uniform near to the Tivoli Gardens and Dansk Industri, where I was working at the time.

I also had a distant member of the family's Swedish branch, Lieutenant Johann Frederik Nielsen (1831-1886), who was in the Danish army at the time of the 1864 war.  One think I vacillated over for years was how to paint the bases. The beginning of the war took place in cold, snowy weather but by the end of the war the weather was unseasonably bright and sunny. Having read lots of depressing stuff about all the ways doing snowy bases didn't work. I abandoned my plans to have snow bases (which would meant a snow board too, of course) and went for mud with the sort of yellow grass you get after the snow has melted and a semi-frosty effect on the earth.

So what are my current three projects, now? Well I have put the Romans on the back burner again as they are going to take forever. Doing the black undercoat for the metal armour on the figures will take an age but every time I use some black I will paint one. So the next ones I work on will be the Lucid Eye Savage Core Atlanteans. 

I had started the seven figures they do but then spotted a new one I hand't got. I added some more character figures frm the range which were relatively new so then had a group of five extra on order. These are lovely figures to paint so I will keep them to hand. I have now based the extra Atlantean so need to get him to the same initial stage as the other figures and then I can do all eight together.

In the second row are five figures I said I wouldn't get because they are made in China (it looks like the poor Old Bat may not fully recover from the Chinese Virus, according to her doctors). Unfortunately, I caved in and am delighted I did, as the new Wargames Atlantic Afghans are lovely. It still took me over an hour to construct five, however, although they fit together very nicely. Somewhere I have some Perry metal Aghan figures I have undercoated so I will move these along together.

I had several girlfriends who were reptiloids underneath

The third group of figures is one of those insane impulse purchases I sometimes go in for. I am on the 7TV Facebook group (for some reason) even though I don't play the game (I may have the rules, somewhere) and someone showed some photos of some characters from the eighties TV miniseries V.  Now, I remember watching this in the summer of 1984 when ITV ran it against the opening of the Los Angeles Olympics, which the BBC had exclusive rights to.  Lo and behold, there it was on Amazon prime. I watched it again and quite enjoyed it. I noted a number of things. The special effects were pretty poor (but probably good for a TV show at the time). The accuracy of the aliens' blasters make Galactic Stormtroopers look like Stalingrad snipers (you would have to make it throw a one to hit). At this time, American actors had normal coloured teeth and not fluorescent white ones. Despite being resistance fighters, living in a series of secret bolt holes, they all had access to hairdressers able to blow dry their hair (even the men). Michael Ironside played a character appropriately called Ham. The best thing about it, of course, was Jane Badler in a cardboard scenery chewing performance as Diana; one of the best female SF villains ever (up there with Jacqueline Pearce's Servalan in Blakes Seven). So to find I could get a little model of her was enough for me to order all eight figures Crooked Dice make. They are promising more fairly shortly. More on this bizarre project as it develops but my initial main concern is finding the right shade of burnt orange! I am now watching the 2009 reboot but it is rather dreary so far, despite the presence of the luminous Morena Baccarin and, frankly, the special effects hadn't come on as much as they should have. At least the hair was more under control.

So, what has been making me grumpy? Well, everything in the news, so I won't talk about that (several more people unfriended on Facebook in the last six weeks or so). Mainly, though, lack of social distancing in supermarkets. Rules vary, so Tesco are very strict (move in one direction, no overtaking and one queue for checkouts). If the person in front takes five minutes to decide what soup to buy everyone has to stop moving.  Get a move on!  Pea and ham or Lentil and bacon. That's it! Move! Move! Move! Don't stop! Cattle prods!

In Waitrose, however, it is almost a free for all, with people taking no notice of the distance rules and shopping in couples or families. Why does it take two people to do the shopping? You both write a list and then one person does it. It's not a social activity, unless you are very, very sad. If you see an unmissable offer on Brain's faggots then ring up your wife (who is probably called Vera or Mavis) and ask how many packs you need to stock up on. Well, you won't see them in Waitrose as they don't sell them, of course. Iceland, Asda or Budgens, probably. Actually I'm surprised the perpetually offended haven't objected to the name yet. Also.keep to the edge of the aisle so people can pass you (if allowed) if your brain is so small that you cannot decide what soup to buy. Do not block the centre of the aisle!

Victrix 12mm WW2

My wargaming related grump relates to Mr Non Sequitur. They appear in every manufacturer's model release thread. Proud wargames company with excellent new product says 'here are our lovely new 12mm WW2 tanks'. They want them to be admired. They want people to talk about what other 12mm WW2 will be coming out. No. Mr Non Sequitur says "What about the Persians?" or "Why don't you make Samurai?" No! That is not what we are talking about! Or. proud manufacturer with new 28mm range they have spent ages developing says 'Here are our lovely new 28 mm figures'. Mr Non Sequitur. 'Can you do them in 15mm?' No! No! No! 15 mm is for people who eat Brain's faggots and have wives called Mavis. They are for people with no appreciation of the proportions of the human body! They are, with very few exceptions (Copplestone Barbarica range) aesthetically offensive. Do not even get me onto 10mm and 6mm. Hello, we have made figures where their heads are the equivalent of two feet tall. I expressed an interest in the 12mm figures on the Victrix Facebook page and all these people appeared saying 'wish they had been 15mm'. No, they are not, so Victrix can sell more figures and tanks not supplement already existing collections. Then all these people popped up saying 'buy these lovely metal 15mm equivalents instead.' Guess what? They all had really weird proportions like most 15mm metals.

Another rant, about plastics companies asking customers for what they want released, will be in the next post.

Keeping it Baltic, today's music is Swedish Composer Lars-Erik Larsson's (1908-1986) enjoyable symphonies one (1927) and two (1936). Larsson is little listened to outside of Sweden, which is a shame as he wrote some fine, melodic music.

Today's wallpaper is Erigone: daughter of Icarius by the French painter Georges-Marie-Julien Giradot (1856-1914). He quite often employed this tight framing on his subjects rather than a more distant full figure view. Apart from his mythological studies he produced many paintings of village life. In a complex plot, even by Greek mythological standards, Erigone ends up being deceived by Dionysus who seduced her after disguising himself as a bunch of grapes. Hmm. Anyway Erigone is Virgo of the Zodiac.

School Daze and not being nice

Facebook occasionally sends you odd bits of information about your 'friends' and today it notified me that Mr Nick Futter (proprietor of Boot Hill Miniatures, whose lovely Mexicans decorate the top of my page) went to the same school, Hampton, that I did.  I haven't met Mr Futter, although it is not beyond the realm of possibility in the future, as I believe Eric the Shed is a mutual friend.  Anyway, I dug out some more of his Mexicans to have a look at and may try to get some paint on them shortly.  This will also give me the excuse to update another of my neglected blogs, Americas Wargaming.

Looking up my school on Google, to find a picture of it for this Post, I discovered that Daniel Pemberton, composer of the soundtrack to Prehistoric Park, which I featured in yesterday's post on music I listen to while painting prehistoric figures, also went to my school!  The school produced a number of quite well known musicians, including Paul Samwell-Smith, who, the year after leaving the school, formed The Yardbirds with another Hampton pupil, Jim McCarty.  Murray (One Night in Bangkok) Head was also a pupil as was Brian May of Queen.  On the classical side, renowned harpsichord player Thurston Dart also went to Hampton and he must have been there at about the same time as my Uncle Wally in the thirties. Swashbuckling actor Tyrone Power's father (also called Tyrone Power and also an actor) also went to Hampton.

This picture of the school was taken in 1949, just over ten years after it was built.  The previous school building was down by the Thames but in 1938, when my uncle was there, they moved to this new building just over a mile away.  No need for removal firms, they made the boys carry all the furniture from one site to the other,  The depressing thing is that this picture was taken much closer to the time when I started there (1971) than any of the modern shots of the buildings I looked at.  This is almost exactly how it was when I went there (another floor for the library had been added over the one story library at bottom right) whereas today there have been a  huge number of large additions.  The air raid shelters in the bottom right of the grounds (bottom centre) were still there when I started although they were later demolished to make way for some tennis courts when I was there.  The school my daughter attended is just out of shot to the right.

This shot gives an idea of the size of the playing fields (shaped like a number one).  If you were too uncoordinated for football and rugby, like I was, you did cross-country, which involved running around the perimeter of the field,which was just about a mile.  A very easy option for the non-sporty ,although this was about three quarters of a mile further than I liked to run (I ended up, to my surprise, a Southern Counties ranked 400m runner). Inevitably, bringing up the rear during cross-country would be myself and my friend Brookbank, walking and talking about wargaming the Western Front with our Airfix figures.  

I have visited the school a couple of times fairly recently, as my daughter had careers evenings there when she was at the school.  Oh how she laughed at the pictures of me in the school photos from 1972 and 1977, still on display in the corridors.  This shot of the school today shows the English department on the left which was built in the last year I was there and the language department (white bit) built as a second floor a few years before that.  I often had French lessons in the dark and depressing Upper Tower Room with my nemesis at the school, Boyo, the French teacher.  He wasn't really called Boyo, of course, but he was Welsh and I couldn't understand his English let alone his French.  I hated French, even more than I hated Maths and Physics and that is saying something.  To this day I cannot understand how on earth anyone can learn a foreign language.  It just seems impossible to me unless you are very, very young.  I am afraid I (unfashionably) genuinely believe that some people process certain subjects better than others because of the way their brains work. Maths, languages, art and music need some innate gift, I think.  I have always been able to draw from a very young age, for example. I have no problem in drawing a proportional representation of a figure from memory but I just can't learn languages. I was top of the year in History and English and second from bottom in French.. Just looking at the pictures of the tower bring back all the horror of French verbs.  I suppose that one of the things that held me back was that in the trendy early seventies we weren't taught English grammar so learning foreign grammar was impossible.  What on earth is a past participle, anyway?

Baffled

I do wonder if it is the same part of my brain that fails to comprehend languages that means I cannot understand or remember wargames rules. Or maybe it's the bit that controls Maths.  Someone on The Miniatures Page (I think) was asking the other day if being good at maths helped you win at wargames.  Some people claimed it did.  But anyway, my actuary friend Bill would say that there is a big difference between maths and arithmetic.  Maybe it's incipient dementia.  All the tests for dementia are not, as you might thing, memory tests but are non verbal reasoning tests.  Gaming, it seems to me, is non-verbal reasoning and I am not a reasonable person.  This is why I hate boardgames as I can't understand the appeal of games with no figures!

Nothing can make maths fun

I have recently discovered a waste of time website called Quora which winds me up nearly as much as The Miniatures Page.  People post (usually inane) questions and forum members attempt to answer them.  The other week someone asked how they can get their children to enjoy maths and I posted to the effect that you can't and it's a horrible subject anyway.  Now, Quora works on a voting up or down system and I had noticed that most of my answers got one or two upvotes (not that I care) at most, while other people's got dozens, hundreds or even thousands.  My Maths answer got no upvotes so I assumed there were lots of mathematicians looking at the question (as you would expect).  I then posted an answer on another subject that got hundreds of upvotes. What was the difference?  I realised that Quora users like positive, happy answers.  "Hey, that's cool you want your children to learn about maths! Here are some games") etc.  I began to realise that I am not a positive, happy person.  This is also a discussion lurking around in the edges of the Brexit debate. "Hey, let's all just be nice to each other!"

I hate, happy, positive people because I think most of them are fake.  I have always been grumpy, because I  realised, at an early age (probably when I was at school), that most other people are self-centred and horrible (even if they pretend to be nice) and will do you down if given a chance.  This may be a variant of my pessimistic/optimistic personality.  Always assume something will go wrong because in the remote event it doesn't, it will cheer you up (at least, until the next disaster!)

No one looks happy at the American masters - probably because they realise that all their opponents are horrible

Again, on TMP this week, an American was giving his report on having been to his first UK wargames show (one of those northern ones, I think).  This brought forth a discussion on the differences between US and UK shows as regards participation games, with the Americans wanting to go to shows to play games.  I can't think of anything I would hate more than playing a game (where I wouldn't be able to understand the rules) with people I don't know (who are probably horrible, of course).

Speaking of games, I am sick of my favourite TV programmes (like last weekend's The Musketeers) being cancelled for football.  I also can't have my dinner with Eggheads today as Guy is watching the football.  I hate football nearly as much as I hate Maths.  It is just completely soporific most of the time and the whole culture around it is just ghastly.  I read an article once, at a time when football hooliganism in Britain was even worse than it is now, by an American psychologist saying that they had less crowd trouble in US sports because there are more opportunities for cathartic moments (i.e. points scoring) and that if you play a game for ninety minutes and no one scores of course the crowd are going to be wound up.

So, I have decided to keep posting negative things in the happy, world of Quora just to wind people up.  They need regular doses of realism amongst all the supportive, positive, lets be nice to each other hogwash.