A few more Argonauts...but painting is slow.

As I recently mentioned on my Romans blog I am having trouble motivating myself to paint at present, despite the sunnier weather of late.  This is odd considering I have lots of new toys to do in the shape of Caesarian and 2nd century AD Romans.  The essence of the problem is that I have just finished quite a lot (for me, anyway) of figures so I have nothing close to completion.  Everything on the workbench is figuratively uphill still.  Now I can't face the Prussians or ACW figures yet as they are each only about half done and there are over twenty of each to do.  To sit down and do some painting and find that all you will have achieved is to shade blanket rolls and backpacks (the next stage on my Prussians) is a not very inspiring thought.  I don't even have any characters well on the way who I could have a go at.  As for my new Romans they are still very much at the preparation stage; with base texturing and undercoating needed on  half the Aventine figures and a lot more assembly on the plastics.  Still, at least I can do these stages in the evening when the light has gone.

I may have another wargame next Monday so really should be getting on with my warlord Chinese cavalry but they are nowhere near finished.  I did do some work on a couple of horses today.

I have finished a few more Argonauts today at least.  These don't photograph very well because of the contrast between the black and the bronze but I am moving along with them anyway.  Maybe some opponents next and starting work on the Argo.  More about them all on my Argonauts blog in due course. 

The next character I have decided to move along is Emperor Lucius Verus who is now based and undercoated.  I am going to get his basic skin colour down in a minute.  I have decided to take an unusually non-historic approach to the figure and paint him in the style of a famous cinematic Roman.  

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L to R: Aventine Praetorian, Warlord plastic legionary, Warlord metal slave girl and Aventine Emperor

I depicted Marcus Aurelius with a centurion but Lucius Verus is going to get the Warlord slave girls as his entourage, as this suits his (allegedly) debauched character.  The ladies are far too tall for the Warlord Romans (who are actually a completely different scale to the Aventine figures) but work very well with the much more strapping Aventine figures.  If the prospect of painting slave girls won't get me started again nothing will!

More useful colour reference from Spartacus

Warlord Games Caesar's Legions and other shopping

I headed down to Orc's Nest this morning, after my morning meeting near Euston, only to find it didn't open until 11.00am.  Given it was 10.30 and absolutely freezing again I went around the corner to Foyles bookshop, which was a mistake.  Three rapid purchases followed in their very good military history section.  

The first, at least, I had intended to buy, which was the Bolt Action British supplement.  Some useful lists although an almost total lack of mention of either Norway or Crete in their focus on the different theatres the British Army saw action in.  Warlord have re-issued the old Mike Owen sculpted BEF early war British with interchangeable heads so I might have to get some more of these.  Much of the book focuses on stats for various vehicles and some theatre specific army lists.  I would really like a 1/56 Matilda!   I need the German one, which they also had in stock, but feel a bit odd buying WW2 German military books.  People might think I was one of those ghastly Nazi apologists they had at Salute a few years back.   Best to order anonymously off the web for delivery in a plain paper cover.

I also picked up a book of American Civil War paintings by Keith Rocco.  I hadn't heard of him before but there are some very nice illustrations in this and they will get me to finish my ACW unit I hope!

Finally, I bought another Peter Hopkirk Back of Beyond book Foreign Devils on the Silk Road which is so fascinatingly readable that I am already well into it.  Some definite scenarios spring to mind around competing treasure hunters from different countries.  I would then have an excuse to buy some Copplestone Castings pack camels!

So, eventually, back to Orc's Nest, and, sadly, no sign of the new Black Powder Hundred Days supplement yet but I did pick up the Rome's Dacian Wars supplement for Hail Caesar.  Since my trip to Romania last year I have had a hankering to do some Dacians and this may well tip me over the edge.  Apart from the usual army lists there are a few tweaks to the rules (allowing Roman archers to shoot over the heads of an infantry unit in front of them, for example) plus new (basic) rules for ship movement and rather more in depth rules for sieges.  There are new skirmish rules included but these are really very small scale as they envisage just six figures a side.  Excellent news for me!  Essentially for one unit in the main rules read one figure.  I might have to try these out.  There are five short skirmish scenarios (lost patrol, the scouts, working party, the lost eagle, the prisoners) all designed for a 2' x 2' board.  Most of the book is made up of nine scenarios for big battles (siege, river crossing, hold the pass etc).  They are big too, with the first one requiring over twenty units of Romans and the same for the Dacians/Samaratians.  They would all equally work as well for any barbarian opponent and I will be using some for my Marcomannic Wars forces (eventually).  Altogether a worthwhile purchase and full of pretty pictures, as ever.

Most satisfying buy of the day was, rather to my surprise, the new Warlord Games Caesarian Romans.  I saw the three-ups of these at last year's Salute.  I have got quite a lot of the Foundry Copplestone sculpted ones which was making me hesitate about buying these but, blow me down, they work perfectly together.  You could put them in the same unit with no problem at all.  

Warlord (L) and Foundry (R)

I wasn't convinced by them in photographs as I thought that the chainmail rings were too large and crude but they look fine in reality and are the same size as those on the Foundry figures.  In fact, I think they are actually nicer than the Copplestone figures but it means I can use all the Foundry character and command figures with the Warlord plastics.  The Warlord figure looks bigger but it has a much thicker base.  If I mix in metal Foundry command (although Warlord have released a nice metal command set today) I might put something under the base of the Foundry figures. Unlike some Warlord Romans they don't come with shield transfers but you can get them separately.  The only bad thing is that now I am going to be building Roman units from three separate periods at the same time.  I'm turning into Big Red Bat!  They should be quick to paint too!  The most exciting plastics since Pamela Anderson in the opening of Barb Wire!  Simple but effective (just like Pammy!).  

Anyway I know exactly what to drink while putting them together (separate heads and right arms) as last year I bought a few bottles of a delicious Spanish wine called Legio from the Bierzo region which actually has a Roman shield (albeit a standard bearer's, by the look of it) on the label.  I Have a bottle already to go!

I also managed to pick up last month's Playboy which, again, demonstrates a marked improvement in cover design over the frantically busy and uninspiring covers of the last few years.  There have been just over 700 issues and I have about 580 of them.  They take up a lot more room than model soldiers though, bearing in mind that, as an example, for the seventies (for which I have all 120 copies) they take up 20 box files ( I only have 56 box files full of soldiers).  I only need six more from the sixties to complete that decade too. I need a bigger study!  I must stop putting half dressed women in my posts or someone will label it an objectionable blog. 

Speaking of which, following all this retail activity (I did work pretty much all day Easter Monday) I then had a long lunch at the National Gallery with the lovely D who, disappointingly was not wearing one of her usual low cut tops.  Curse this weather!  D is, rather dubiously, the friend of one of an ex colleague's daughter so is less than half my age.  Never mind, she keeps me young and we had a lively debate about tablets (not the sort I need to take, as she cruelly pointed out), social media and the Cloud.  "We should be in the Natural History Museum, you'd be much more at home there!" she said in exasperation at one point.  How rude!

Well I have just put together a short Roman playlist on iTunes (Respighi's I pini della Via Appia, the Triumphal March from Quo Vadis and quite a lot of bits of Ben Hur) so I need to start clipping Romans off the sprue (although I gather that the sprue is only the thickest parts off the whole thing).  

New quarter, new figures.

So, I have completed a few more figures to get the second quarter of the year off to a good start. A strange mixture of Argonauts, Romans and a Back of Beyond Russian.  All of these I class as characters rather than rank and file and so, in theory, I should spend more time on them. I'm now aiming to get as many figures done in the first six months of this year as I did in the whole of 2012.  Next up I want to finish my unit of Chinese warlord cavalry.  At the same time I want to base and undercoat my Aventine Praetorians; the next shipment is already en route from Northern Ireland!  Then I really must finish either the Prussians or the ACW Federal troops.

Copplestone castings Bolshevik girly

The warlord cavalry are a bit dull, colour-wise, so I need something bright to paint at the same time so am going to do Marcus Aurelius' co-emperor, Lucius Verus.  He liked a good time (unlike the philosophising Marcus Aurelius) so maybe that is the excuse I need to paint the Warlord slave girls who are far too tall for the Warlord soldiers but would look OK with the Aventine figures.

Accurate colour reference is so important, even for slave girls.

They are more Spartacus the TV series than anything remotely historic so I will paint them as such.    In fact, this serves to highlight the greatest enemy of historical accuracy in films.  It's not the director, it's the costume designer.  I seem to remember the costume designer for Spartacus said that they made the crowd in the arena's clothes very colourful as plain old white and natural linens were too dull.  The producers of the recent (and not very good -except for Jenna Louise Coleman who was just gorgeous) TV Titanic mini-series explained how she chose a particular palette for the costumes so they looked harmonious.  Grrr!  Stop being arty!  I know it makes your job more interesting but how about just trying to recreate costumes as they were in the period?  Don't design the clothes so as they make the sets look good or, worse, reflect the characters personalities.  

One thing I am struggling with at present is finding a good metallic gold paint.  The Citadel acrylics I have been using are horrible and don't dry brush at all well (the "grey" metallics, oddly, are fine)  The Vallejo bronze I use for my ancients is a bit better but maybe it's time to look at the good old Humbrol range as in days of yore.  Anyone else know of any good gold metallic paints?

Off to London tomorrow so maybe a trip to the banana coloured bunker that is Orc's Nest is called for.  On my list is the Hail Caesar Dacian Wars supplement, the new Albion Triumphant 2 - The Hundred Days Black Powder supplement and the plastic Caesarian Romans. 

Medea

I have had a pretty successful long weekend's painting, having finished the Darkest Africa askaris on Saturday. I got back to it yesterday afternoon and today and have a few more figures close to completion. Today, however, I completed the Wargames Foundry Medea for my Argonauts project which I hadn't even undercoated until Friday. 

I had got a rare pot of acrylic (how do people paint with this stuff? It's awful!) out to paint Marcus Aurelius' cloak so decided to give Medea a purple cloak too. She doesn't appear to be wearing anything else except some jewellery but then she is the world's first femme fatale I suppose.  The flash photos don't really do the nice Citadel purple justice but maybe I'll have another go at a photograph in the daylight tomorrow.  

I have another lady nearly finished for the Back of Beyond, five more Argonauts and the first two figures for  my new second century Roman army.  I've already ordered another  load of these from Aventine as they are so nice.  Hopefully, I can get all these done tomorrow which gives me a good start for April.  I got 27 figures done in March which means that in the first quarter of the year I have painted more than half the number I did in the whole of 2012!

Happy Easter

Cheryl Vincent, Playboy Chicago Club, August 1964

The Legatus is not allowed chocolate so likes to celebrate Easter with something else instead.  May the Easter bunny give you what you want.  We would quite happily settle for popping a cork or two with Miss Vincent here. 

Resisting Temptation 3

Well, I was contemplating four days of painting when I ran out of white paint on Thursday.  Never mind, I'm sure I would have some spare tins in my paint pile, built up from the time it looked like Humbrol were going bust and I bought ten pots of each of my favourite colours.  (Does anyone else choose their lottery numbers by the numbers of their favourite Humbrol paints?  Probably not.) But no!  None at all!  Disaster!  So off I go to Addlestone Model Centre; the nearest place I can get Humbrol paints.  Now I have been going to Addlestone Model Shop (as it used to be called) for years.  In fact, I have been going there so long that I not only remember the previous building it was in but the one before that.  I probably first went there in about 1970.

I get the impression that it mainly specialises in radio control planes and cars but they have Scalextric and Hornby, Games Workshop and lots of plastic kits including a very good selection of 20mm figures and vehicles including some of the more obscure ones.  They really do manage to pack a lot into quite a small shop.  Now I buy a lot of paints and other model supplies in there but occasionally (well, quite often) I go in there to buy a tube of model filler and end up with a 1/48th Hawker Hurricane, or some such.  I have stopped this on the whole, partly because I can no longer remember which models I have bought.  However, yesterday they had the newly reissued Airfix Dambusters Lancaster in there and I was wavering.  I have never built a Lancaster and I was very impressed when one of my fellow lawyers at college built one in the law library once (he was slightly eccentric).  It just looked so chunky!  My daughter Charlotte has actually been in the cockpit of the one from the Battle of Britain Memorial flight and so she was encouraging me like mad.  But then she is always encouraging me to buy model kits which she wants me to build for her room but I never do as I always feel I should be using hobby time to paint figures.  Still, I thought, I did have four days over Easter.  No, I resisted.  Then I saw the Tamiya 1/48th one.  "It's only £99!" says Charlotte, in little red Devil mode.  "Yes but it's two feet across!  Where will I put it?  Mummy will have a wicket!"  I resist.  Again.

Then I go around the corner and they have a model kit that is so big it won't even go on the shelves.  Forget your 1/350 Tamiya USS Enterprise, that is only 105cm long. This is Trumpeter's 1/200 Bismarck which measures in at 126cm.  That's over four feet!  And it's the Bismarck!  The first model ship I built!  "Daddy it's only £79 more than the Lancaster and you get a lot more kit for your money!" says the little Devil.  No, I am not going to buy it.  It's 1700 pieces for a start.  You would need the sort of focus that is just not my strong point.   I escape unscathed and vow not to buy another model kit until I finish my 1/48 Spitfire Mk1.  

I did buy the Airfix Model World Scale Modelling supplement though, as my model making skills are still stuck in the seventies and it really does have some useful tips in it.  I might have a look at my Spitfire again tomorrow, now I have actually located it under the pile of junk that was in the corner of my room.  I have to say that the standard of finish top plastic model kit makers achieve now is just staggeringly awesome.  I'm an OK figure painter (I would give myself 5/10 - 6/10 on a good day) but the level at which these model makers are working is just way beyond my wildest dreams; I'd be about 2/10 on that scale.  Oh, well.  I just want to have a couple of model planes hanging from my ceiling!

Today I've had my best day's painting today for months, if not years.  The family were out and I started at nine and finished at about five thirty.  It was helped a lot by the good light today.  I got on really well with my latest Darkest Africa unit (it will be finished tomorrow!), I did a bit more on some of the Foundry Argonauts and I have based and undercoated some Romans.  Speaking of which, I bought some Aventine Romans for the Marcomannic War and while looking at the selection of shield transfers by Little Big Men Studios I noticed that they had a shield for Legio II Augusta.  Grr!  If only they did those for the Warlord plastics I might overcome my distaste for their dwarfiness and actually build some units to take on my Ancient Britains.  I wanted Leg II as that was the unit commanded by Vespasian as featured in the early  (and best - I never felt the books were as good after they left Britain) Simon Scarrow novels.  On the off chance, I dropped an email to Steve at LBMS.  Would the Aventine transfers work on the Warlord shields?  He came straight back and said that they would be far too big but would I like him to re-scale them to fit?  A brief e-mail exchange followed and less than 24 hour later I had eight packs of EIR Legio II August transfers for my Warlord plastics - the only ones in the world!  Well, probably not by now as no doubt he will put them up for sale shortly.  This really was exceptional service from someone who has transformed the look of wargames figures more than anyone else.  Except now I am starting to build two Roman armies at the same time!

Anyway, tomorrow, as Scarlett O'Hara said, is another day and hopefully a day with as much painting in it!.

My favourite shelves...

My computer has been out of action for some days but it is now fixed, thank goodness.  Given I couldn't do any blog entries I took to tidying up my study as it had turned into a complete tip since Christmas.  There is still some way to go but I can at least now have unobstructed views of my shelves which allows me to post an entry inspired by one I saw on someone else's blog a little while ago.  This was of his favourite bookshelves which struck me as a very good idea so I thought I'd have a go.

I've always been a great collector of stuff.  My wife for example, has no books, CDs or DVDs.  She doesn't spend money on things (except lights and wacky ornaments for the house).  Some people I know spend a lot of money on foreign holidays, for example.  As I spend a lot of time abroad  I am completely uninterested in foreign holidays.  Bad luck on the family, they can go to our house on the Isle of White again!  No, I like buying stuff: primarily books, music and DVDs.  The problem is that all of this stuff needs to be stored.  I admit to buying most of my music on iTunes now even though my friend Bill says the sound reproduction is lousy.  But, then, I listen to my music on an iPod or through my computer speakers (today it's Jerry Goldsmith's score for The 13th Warrior) not a £25,000 stereo like Bill so I can't hear the difference.  Incidentally, isn't it strange how audiophiles bang on about the quality of a recording of a particular piece of music with no regard for the quality of the music itself.  This certainly explains a lot about Bill's "music" collection.  My friend from Bath, whose stereo cost even more than Bill's, uses records on a turntable because of the better sound.  All very well the first few plays, when they are new and fresh but over the years they inevitably deteriorate (bit like women, really) and the listening experience is ruined by random clicks and pops.  I recently bought a CD version of a record I had owned for many years and was actually annoyed by the lack of a certain click I remember from one of the movements on my LP version.

Anyway, here are my favourite shelves which are the ones in my study.  You can tell a lot about someone from their books, music and film collection.  My sister, for example, has lots of books about the KGB...

These are the shelves facing my desk as I sit in my "playroom" as the family call it.  

Top row left: Unread paperbacks (there are many more behind the visible books) 

Top row centre: Girly books 

Top row right: Darkest Africa books

Second row left:  a German WW1 pickelhaube, my unfinished model paddle boat, some model palm trees, a German incendiary bomb tail, an unfinished 1/48 Lockheed Lightning, a model Buick, a nearly completed Great War Miniatures WW1 British tank, a part completed 1/24th Airfix Hurricane engine, a mortar tail and a reproduction Zulu Wars helmet which I bought for a fancy dress evening at Guy's school.  There are no books on this shelf because the fastenings are weak and too much weight would cause it to fall off the wall, as it nearly did a few years ago.

Second row centre:  Small art books and film books; especially on Hammer Films.

Second row right: Zulu War books

Third  row left and centre:  Crimean War, World War 1, Back of Beyond and World War 2 period books.

Third row right:  Some books on James Bond and a few oddments which I have moved from my other shelves to make more room: Helen of Troy, Gerry Anderson and Titanic all feature.

Fourth row left: File boxes with unpainted figures (three more are invisible to the right) More unpainted and part painted figures on the shelf.

Fourth row centre: Unread hardbacks (with another layer behind)

Fourth row right: Books on (mainly) space exploration and Egyptian art.

Bottom row left: boxes of plastic figures, and a couple of volumes of Miniature Wargames.

Bottom row centre: My main lead pile in plastic drawers - about forty figures to a drawer.  I recently found two more of these little units in the loft so am now decanting the last 12 months worth of purchases into them.   Up until now thay have been sitting in cardboard boxes in front of my shelves. Grand Manner Argo in front.

Bottom row right: Wargames Illustrated (the ones I don't have on CD)

The filing cabinets below contain at least three drawers worth of wargames and modelling magazines.  One drawer contains my spare paint mine, all my aerosol cans and things like static grass and pva glue.  Another holds all my shield and flag transfers, more wargames rules and other mainly wargaming stuff.  At the bottom left is my 1906 Lincoln-Jeffries air rifle which I have just had serviced and can still punch a hole through  a garden fence.  It's a good job we only have fields at the back!  Guy is in the school shooting team and often pops away at his targets with this although his normal shooting distance at Bisley is 800 yards!  Also bottom left is a 1916 British 18 pounder shell case which I use to keep my umbrella in if it is wet.

These are the shelves to the right of my chair where I keep most of my military books.

Top shelf: Various oversize books on African exploration, The Trigan Empire, James Bond films, Hammer films and more girly books.

Left hand book shelf:

Top row:  DVDs (they have to have been watched to go here)

Second row:  Lord of the Rings, James Bond and oversize military books.

Third row: More large military books and transport

Fourth row: More DVDs

Fifth row: Mostly fantasy and SF graphic art books.

Bottom row:  Mostly ships and Ancient Egypt

Right hand book shelf:

Top Row: Trojans to Carthaginian Wars

Second row: Rome to Dark ages

Third row: Crusades to War of 1812

Fourth row: Napoleonic

Fifth row: Indian Mutiny to the Sudan.

Bottom row: Wargames rules

Big art books and Playboy books

I have another bookshelf which just contains art books and three more book shelves full of DVDs.  Basically, I have run out of room and need to get rid of stuff.  The DVDs take up a lot of space and I am contemplating buying some of those big albums designed to store just the discs and their covers so you can lose all the plastic boxes.  A friend of mine has done this and freed up a huge amount of space.

I have had to put a lot of books up into the loft: all my read paperbacks, books on things I look at less often, such as cars of the thirties, wine regions, Start Trek, Star Wars and Renaissance art.  The loft is now full as well so I need to do something drastic which means getting rid of some books.  Horrors!  However, am I really going to read Edgar Rice Burroughs Martian books again?  Or any of those techno thrillers I bought in the eighties and nineties?  I must have over 250 novels I haven't read yet and new ones come out all the time.  Not so very long ago period military novels were few and far between; Napoleonic naval, Sharpe, Kilworth's Crimean series and then you started to run out.  Now there are dozens of series covering all sorts of periods.  I can't keep up!