Paint Table Saturday: Painting progress and some Kickstarters

Good progress on the Carthaginian war elephants this week and the elephants are now, well on the way to being  finished. They need to be varnished and metal work done but it is cold and damp here today, unfortunately. The next jobs are the howdahs and crew.  The Little Big Men transfers look very good but do not precisely fit the model so some touching up was required.  I found then extremely fiddly One of the small one popped out of my fingers as I was bending it to remove the plastic coating and disappeared completely, lost somewhere in the clutter of my desk.  I am not looking forward to putting the very tiny transfers on the howdahs.  This weekend's job is to get those moved along.  

I have put bases on the Zulus and undercoated them (although somehow I have lost a shield bearing arm but I think I can fix that from the bits box).  I have also based a couple of the Wargods of Olympus figures (see below).  I am now also starting the tedious black bits on the 1864 Danish infantry.  Slowly but surely!  Any way this is what is going to see some attention this weekend.

I seem to have bought rather a lot of art books lately and desperately need shelf space which is currently being taken up by a lot of old wargames magazines.  In addition I have a pile of wargames magazines on the floor.  I have decided to be brutal and get rid of them.  I don't read them again, anyway and usually only find one or two articles in them worth keeping but as they do feature in my occasional Reading Wargames Magazines over Lunch (TM) posts, I won't stop buying them.  Instead, I am going through them and removing any articles I might want to read again and scanning them.  I can then file them in the relevant section of my computer and it makes it much more likely that I will refer to them in the future, as I will know exactly where they are.  So the first one I scanned last night was a Sudan scenario from this month's Miniature Wargames.

Back in 2014, I bought into the Crocodile Games Wargods of Olympus game Kickstarter.  Not because I was interested in the game but because I was interested in the figures for my Jason and the Argonauts project.  There were huge delays on this and I contacted them again recently and they told me they had my parcel all ready to go but they needed my address confirming. Well, they said they had sent me an e-mail asking for it but they hadn't. Anyway a massive box of stuff arrived yesterday and it looks very good.  A huge impact on the lead pile, though!

The figures come on slotta bases, which I hate so I will saw off most of the tab and will mount them on my favourite steel washers from Hurst in Cowes.  The gods and goddesses are a head taller than the rank and file figures, appropriately, and I will start with some of these I think.  In fact the goddess Artemis (above) and the god Dionysus seems as good a place to start as any.

Ewoks, anyone?

I have bought into a number of other Kickstarters and, on the whole, have found them a good experience.  A couple I regretted, like 18mm Forged in Battle ancients (although I like the look of their new Dark Ages Kickstarter) and Mars Attacks (I still have them all somewhere) but usually I find them a good way to pick up new ranges.  Sometimes I change my mind before the Kickstarter ends and cancel, as I did with The Drowned Earth (I really liked the miniatures but reckoned the scenery would cost a fortune).  This week I cancelled another Kickstarter, Freya's Wrath by Bad Squiddo games.  Now I should really want lady Vikings and I have the Foundry ones plus some other odd figures I picked up for a planned Frostgrave Force.  I decided that Frostgrave probably isn't for me, despite buying some figures, as the magic element seemed to make it far too complicated for me to understand and Eric the Shed didn't think much of it when he tried it.  The rules we play at the Shed are usually excellent so I trust his judgement on this. The real issue I had with the Freya's Wrath figures was that I decided that I didn't like the sculpts.   These are squat ladies and suffer from, not only big head syndrome, but also old style Gripping Beast fat calf syndrome (like their Early Imperial Romans).  Life is too short (especially for me) to paint average figures. Now, to be fair, you can't always tell proportions from photos, as the camera often distorts figures but I can always look at them, once they are out, at one of the shows. Instead I put my money into the new John Carter range (something I have wanted since I was about ten).

On Thursday I also pledged for Dark Fable's bunny girls Kickstarter.  I have no idea what these will be used for but they are sculpted by Brother Vinni and he does the best 28mm women on the planet. I have bought most of Dark Fable's Egyptian harem girls and even painted some, so I know these will be excellent and they were fully funded in a couple of days.  Fortunately, I have just the right reference book for the figures: Osprey's  Playboy Bunny Girls in Urban America 1960-1988

Well, no, of course, but I do have this in my extensive Playboy library so that will help with research, enormously.  I did once have a notion to do a (perhaps) Black Ops style fight in the sort of nightclub you used to get in Alias, using the excellent Sally 4th Terra-Block bar.  Now I could build a miniature Playboy club! Hmm. 

Winterhalter - Florinda (1852)

Talking of scantily clad ladies, today's wallpaper is Florinda by Queen Victoria's favourite painter Franz Xaver Winterhalter (1805-1873).  I saw this painting in Osborne House on the Isle of Wight this summer and it featured in the most recent episode of BBC4's enjoyable series Art, Passion and Power: the Story of the Royal Collection.  At the time, this would have been something of a daring painting for a woman to purchase and a rather surprising birthday present, as it was, from Queen Victoria to Prince Albert. It must have been a favourite of both as they had it hanging over their adjoining desks in the Queen's Sitting Room in Osborne House, where it remains to this day.  In her diaries, Victoria bemoaned the fact that it couldn't be a secret gift (perhaps she was conscious of its  perceived raciness as a gift from the monarch) as it had to appear in the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition that year.  Likewise it looked like Winterhalter hadn't expected it to sell quite so quickly as he had to rapidly paint a copy (now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York) for the Paris Salon the following year.

Bernardo Blanco -King Rodrigo before his defeat by the Moors at the battle of Guadalete in 711 (1871)

The subject is based on an old Spanish/Portuguese/Arab story.  Florinda was the daughter (or wife, depending on the version of the story) of Count Julian governor of Cueta for the Visigothic King Rodrigo in the 8th century.    Illustrated in Winterhalter's painting is one version, where King Rodrigo (just visible in the bushes at the far left) spies on Florinda and her lady companions as they prepare to bathe in the River Tajo, near Toledo castle. Instantly falling in lust (not surprisingly given, Winterhalter's lustrous treatment of flesh) Kind Rodrigo either seduced her and she became his lover or he abducted and raped her ('falls violently in love' as the Royal Collection euphemistically calls it).  Some versions of the story have Florinda as the seducer, however. Whatever, her father/husband Julian is none too pleased so colludes with the leader of the Ummayad Caliphate, Musa Ibn Nusayr, then running riot in North Africa, to invade Spain and kick out King Rodrigo and the Visigoths. This of course they did, leading to the death of King Rodrigo at the battle of Guadalete, centuries of Moorish conquest, flamenco music, a heroic crusade to oust the Moors, a Hollywood epic feature film with a wonderful soundtrack by Miklós Rózsa and a Warhammer Ancient Battles supplement.  That's a lot of stuff caused by one naked woman. In some versions of the legend, despite the rocky start to their relationship, Florinda, distraught at the death of her lover Rodrigo, commits suicide by jumping into the river where she was first spied upon by the King.  Her spirit, embarrassed at the terrible fate she had caused to befall Spain, would haunt the area ever after, especially if you have consumed too much Manchego and La Mancha wine, no doubt.

Winterhalter - Leonilla, Princess Sayn Wittgenstein (1843)

It was a popular story in the mid-nineteenth century (less so now) and indeed Queen Victoria, with Albert, had attended the world premier of the opera by Swiss composer Sigismond Thalberg, Florinda, ou Les Maures en Espagne, the year before she bought the painting, so was well aware of the legend.  The bodies in Winterhalter's painting would have been professional models but many of the faces were that of Leonilla, Princess of Sayn Wittgenstein, as Queen Victoria noted in her diaries. The Russian Princess Wittgenstein had been painted by Winterhalter in Paris in 1843 in a remarkably sensuous, for the time, odalisque style, portrait. She was famous for her intellect and her beauty and in 1860, when she was in her mid-forties, Queen Victoria noted that she was 'still very handsome'.  Born the year after the battle of Waterloo, she died in 1918, at the age of a hundred and one.

Thalberg's opera, Florinda has never been recorded and these days he is best known as a pianist who was a bitter rival to Liszt and who produced a number of piano arrangements of other composer's opera music.  So to keep the theme I am listening to the monumental soundtrack of El Cid, by Miklós Rózsa, in the truly excellent re-recording of the complete score (all 150 minutes of it) by The City of Prague Philharmonic.  

Paint Table Saturday: Elephants, Danes, Afghans and Zulus!

It was a little brighter this morning, so I told the Old Bat that our Saturday morning 'run' (well, more a sort of jog with fast walking bits) would have to be postponed until this afternoon.  The light went at about two, which meant we had to go out in the rain but (and I would never admit it to the Bat) I do feel a bit healthier now that I have returned.  We actually cut our time for our normal route from 38 minutes to 37 minutes today.  I wish I had a giant crumpet to celebrate. 

Guy gets some political tips from Miss Lewinsky

Speaking of celebrations, both the children passed their exams at the end of last term. Guy got a first in his politics paper so perhaps Monica Lewinsky gave him some top tips.  Or perhaps not.  Charlotte was so ill when she did her exam that the invigilator asked her if she wanted to leave, she had to finish early and had to delay her return from Edinburgh at Christmas as she was too ill to pack and get to the airport.  She didn't get home until 23rd December.  However, amazingly, she told us yesterday she had passed.  Miracle.  She was so ill she could barely stand up for over a week. She bought herself a toy Porg from Star Wars The Last Jedi to celebrate.  She is a nerd.  The Old Bat was not impressed.

I was actually able to get a couple of hours painting done this morning; the most for months.  Now, of course, I am supposed to be concentrating on my Victrix Carthaginian war elephants but that would be far too focussed.  Given I was already painting two elephants I thought it was a good opportunity to paint one of my Copplestone ones for Darkest Africa too, so that is now base coated.  I have, at last, after two previous attempts, got the colour right on my Danish 1864 infantry;  a very, very dark gray which is almost, but not quite, black.  In the background you can see the horses for the Danish dragoons which I picked up in North Star's end of year sale.  I am struggling to find uniform details for them however. I also did a little bit on a pack of Perry Afghan tribesmen I picked up at Salute.  This lot will keep me going for months.

At the front right are five of the new Perry Miniatures plastic Zulus which came out this week.  I actually have 72 painted Zulus and a lot more under way (Wargames Factory, Warlord, Empress, Foundry) but these are anatomically, as you would expect, by far the best.  They are, however, a right fiddle to put together, as they have a lot of parts, as you can see on my post over at my Zulu blog.  The arm/shoulder joints will need some filling too but mould lines on them are almost invisible.  Now, how about some plastic Afghan tribesmen?

The elephants are moving along now and I only have to finish their eyes, varnish them and do the metal tusk caps.  Then it will be the dreaded Little Big Men transfers.  I am amused by these elephants as although they are, rightly, smaller than the equivalent bush elephants (Loxodonta africana), being the extinct North African Forest elephant (Loxodonta africana pharaoensis), they do remind me of the old Britains baby elephant (Loxodonta plastica).  

Inspired by Terence Wise's use of these for Carthaginian war elephants in An Introduction to Battle Gaming, when I was about ten I stole my sister's baby elephant and made it a cardboard (I had no access to plasticard as that would have necessitated a trip to Teddington Model Shop) howdah, to hold a couple of Airfix Red Indians for my Carthaginian army.  I asked my mother for a piece of ribbon but she looked horrified and said she didn't do needlework.  My mother did buy me for Christmas, at about this time, a metal 25mm Carthaginian elephant from Under Two Flags, a model soldier ship in St Christopher's Place in London.   She actually made a trip up to London specially. It was a Miniature Figurines one I think and I did paint it, although I have no idea where it ended up.  It is nice, 48 years later, to be working on another one.

Today's wallpaper is a rather languid rendition of Venus by French Painter Henri-Pierre Picou (1824-1895).  Picou came rather later to classical and mythological subjects, so this was probably painted in the 1870s or 1880s. He was a great friend of Jean-Léon Gérôme and, although largely forgotten today, he was probably the most fashionable French painter of the eighteen fifties and sixties.  This depiction of Venus in her shell is unusual compared with the more usual, Botticelli style, upright pose.  Painted from this angle it is much more redolent of the vulva, which it symbolised in ancient times (hence why Venus was born from one).  I don't like much seafood but I do enjoy a nice plump scallop, as did Picou, obviously.

Today's music is my most successful music purchase for some time.  My friend Angela introduced me to the Danish String Quartet and their two remarkable albums Wood Works and Last Leaf.  I don't usually like chamber music (I always think that it is more fun for musicians to play than for audiences to listen to) but this is so good I have played it 12 times since I bought it last week. It is modern but not atonal, folk song based without being 'folky' and is minimalist but tuneful.  It's also quite addictive and doesn't sound like any other music I have in my collection.

Victrix War Elephant Part 1

I have decided to have a Christmas painting project, so ordered the Victrix war elephant for my Carthaginian army.  It arrived today and I have started constructing it.  You can see how far I got on my long neglected Punic Wars blog here.

Paint table Sunday...back from my travels

I have lost the last four weekends to travelling but am now back home with, thankfully, nowhere to go to until well into the new year, hopefully.  The process of going through airports is now so ghastly and stressful I wish I never had to travel again anywhere.  I have done ten flights in under three weeks which is like the bad old days.

I have, at last, finished my North West Frontier Sikh artillery crew and gun.  This completes my initial force for The Men Who Would be Kings rules.  Initially, I painted the Sikhs with a red turban but someone on the TMWWBK Facebook page suggested that they would probably have had khaki turbans (or dastaars, to be more precise) at this time, so I repainted them, even though they look less striking,

So here is the full force (with artillery still with red turbans).  I now need to complete a force of Afghan tribesmen although, at present, I am slightly hampered by the lack of any suitable Afghan cavalry, although the Perry brothers are reputed to be planning some (they seem to have given up on the workbench section of their website) but I still have quite a few infantry to complete.

I have been buying the wargames magazines but increasingly I am finding it difficult to read them as they insist on using grey print in a really tiny font.  I had another eye injection last week but I have begun to realise that I will never be able to paint properly again,  The finish on the Sikhs is very blotchy and things I could paint with no trouble, like collar trim, earlier in the year are just impossible for me now.  There are a couple of things I am looking at on the wargaming front including Footsore Miniatures new Gangs of Rome range, although the figures for this skirmish game are an eye watering £8 each!

More immediately interesting, is the issue of the Games Workshop Lord of the Rings Battle Companies  rule book (for a surprisingly cheap £25).  I collected the rules for this many years ago from White Dwarf but this is the first time they have been published in a book.  Guy, Charlotte and I enjoyed our games of this a lot in the past and the new rules also have companies for the Hobbit which is useful as collecting enough figures for a bigger battle for the Hobbit would be ludicrously expensive.

My only issue is that I was gradually tending more to skirmish gaming but now my eyesight is so bad I am thinking that mass units may be better as painting quality is less critical for en masse figures.  Painting a GW LotR figure now would really be beyond me.  At least I have some Battle Companies already painted, like this Isengard one from 2010.

One thing about subscribing to some of the rule specific wargames pages on Facebook is that I spot things that otherwise would have passed me by, like the new campaign supplement for Congo which features the adventures of a lady explorer.  I haven't played Congo yet, as I missed the one game played at the Shed but I think I would enjoy it.  I ordered mine from Foundry which came with  a number of figures representing the key characters in it.  Maybe I will do some Darkest Africa figures next as I was in Africa earlier in the month.

It is typical that I hadn't had any overseas trips for over a year and then two came along in successive weeks.  First off, I was back to Botswana in a trip which had been rescheduled from earlier in the year.  A horrid little plane from Johannesburg didn't help and then we had 41 degrees centigrade.  Even the locals were complaining about the heat.  We had to wear suits and ties, of course, as that is what the locals in business wear.  It was a successful trip and we will probably be going back for a couple of weeks early next year (or June, given Botswanan urgency).

I was back in the UK for less than a day and then it was off to Houston, on my way to EL Salvador.  I met up with my particular friend, S, there and we had a very enjoyable dinner in the Hotel Zaza (nothing as exciting as Eland and goat which I had in Gaborone for the first time ) but which included the best steak I have ever had in America; really first class and perfectly cooked (i.e, hardly at all).  While in Houston, the firm I was working for (not my usual one) sent me the FCO travel advice for El Salvador.  'There are no safe areas in El Salvador' it began, worryingly and then spent  a page talking about bandits, muggers and kidnappers.

"I'll look after you!" said S, doing a few kickboxing kicks in my room.  Apart from the fact that I didn't know she was planning to come with me, I pointed out that you weren't supposed to fight back.  "No-one is taking my Rolex!" she said, fiercely.  In fact, San Salvador was a pleasant, if slightly ramshackle city, built beneath an active volcano.  "Don't worry it hasn't erupted for a hundred years!"  I was told.  "And a hundred years before that!"  This was starting to sound like a sequence to me but I was assured that the country (the 70th I have visited) had top notch volcanologists to predict such things.

Anyway, the most offensive thing about El Salvador was the fact that they had all their Christmas decorations up, even though it was mid November.  We bravely went out to a restaurant too (it did have armed guards outside) and they were playing Christmas music there!  Fortunately, not Andy Williams Christmas Album.

Ana and Ana!

I had two very helpful assistants to look after me while I was there, make sure I didn't go to the wrong places and help translate (although El Salvadorean Spanish is very clear and I understood about 60% of it).  "Why don't you ever get ugly male assistants?" asked S.  Because it's Latin America!

I flew there and back on United Airlines (actually very good, long haul) and you could pay a few hundred dollars for extra legroom on the Houston/London legs which was well worth it, even though I paid myself and can't claim it back.  So I arrived back home in a better state than usual, only to discover the Old Bat fulminating over her new car.  I won't go into all the issues she has with it (some of which are valid, like no spare tyre and nowhere to put one) but they all, basically come down to baffling technology.  This car (from 2011) is theoretically the same car as her old one (from 2005) but is a completely new model and, in the interim, technology has exploded in cars.  We have no idea what most of the myriad buttons ("I don't want buttons I like knobs!" she says) are for and it has lots of things we will never use like Bluetooth and satnav ("by the time you work out how to programme it you will be where you want to go by using a map!").  We still don't know how to operate the climate control or programme the radio and there are all sorts of buttons on the steering wheel which are equally baffling.  "Just more stuff to go wrong!" she says.  The biggest bugbear was the rear view mirror that automatically darkens to reduce glare from car headlights at night.  She said she couldn't see a thing behind her as a result but she solved the issue by sticking a blob of Blu Tack over the sensor.  When the garage who sold it to her rang after a few days to see how she liked it she harangued them for half an hour about how useless it is and wanted her old car back, except they had already sold it.  The Old Bat doesn't like change and she hates technology even more than me, which is saying something.

I was back just a few days and then it was up to Edinburgh to see Charlotte in the flat that is costing me £8,500 a year! "It's very nice," she says, with its en suite bathroom, central heating and her own kitchen,  Grr!  Students are supposed to suffer!  Luckily for her she is my dear little kitten so gets anything she wants!  Edinburgh was freezing.  Three degrees but the windchill was horrific.  I had had two weeks where the temperature was never less than 29C!  We walked miles and had to have tea in the John Lewis cafe to warm up.  I nearly bought a TV in the Black Friday Sale but I object to Black Friday on principle as it is an unwelcome American import, like grey squirrels, trick or treating, baseball caps and saying 'mac and cheese'.  I didn't buy the TV as it had no Scart sockets which my DVD player requires.

On the last morning, Charlotte took us to the fossil shop and I got a pair of trilobite cufflinks on the basis I like the idea of walking around with something half a billion years old on my cuffs.  Cheaper than a new TV, anyway and I also got an excellent ankylosaurus model there too!  Coming down from the shop, and walking through Grassmarket, the Old Bat pointed out a man dressed as a Viking and asked Charlotte if she knew him.  She did (most of Charlotte's friends in Edinburgh appear to be Dark Ages re-enactors).  He was selling mead, a drink I had never had (I suspect it may not be very diabetic friendly) but he gave me some and it was very good indeed.  Pricey, though at about £20 a bottle.

Now, the Legatus hates Christmas but Edinburgh does Christmas really, really well and after wandering around the huge Christams market, seeing all the lights and decorations on the shops and visiting the ice sculpture exhibition (the advertised minus ten temperature didn't feel much colder than the streets outside) even I was starting to feel a bit Christmassy.  Horrors!

Desnudo de mujer (1902)

Today's wallpaper is by Spanish impressionist Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida (1863-1923) who was best known for his bright sunlit landscapes and beach scenes.  He studied in Madrid and Rome and had a great success at the Paris Universal Exposition of 1900.  A very productive painter, he was financially very successful.  His widow left many paintings to the Spanish state and they are exhibited in his old home in Madrid.  This is a full on boudoir effort, very different from some of his social themed pieces and atypical in many ways but, none the less, magnificent in its handling of pink satin.

Today's music is Howard Shore's Lord of the Rings Symphony, an interesting reworking of the main themes from his three films.  Recorded live (although you wouldn't know it) in Switzerland in 2011 the orchestra isn't a patch on the RPO but still does a pretty good job.  My iTunes LotR playlist lasts 21 hours so there will be plenty of music to paint by!

Happy Halloween!

It's Halloween today, although, for the first time in many years, there will be no pumpkins to attract greedy children in our house, as Charlotte is up in Edinburgh.  Here, on our Wargames Ladies Blog, is an appropriate cartoon by Angus McBride from his pre-Osprey days.

Paint Table Saturday: Rocks and Sikhs

This week I had to go to Epsom hospital and have an injection in my eyeball which, I have to say, I was not looking forward to.  This is because the laser treatment I have had around the edge of my eye can't be done in the centre of the eye. I have noticed a real deterioration in my vision in my left eye since June, to the extent that not only couldn't I paint figures but I was having trouble using the PC if there was bright light out in the garden backlighting the screen. .  I had to shut my left eye to be able to see clearly and couldn't paint figures as I had lost my ability to judge distance.  Well the two nurses at Epsom looked after me very well indeed and after some anaesthetic drops all I felt, as they had explained, was a slight pressure on my eyeball for a second.  I did not need, as I thought I might, a piratical eye patch and the only inconvenience is the ointment I need to apply to the eye every three hours, which makes it a bit blurred and gummy feeling.

Today, for the first time since June, I had a good half day's painting (my vision is certainly improved) and got on with the Sikh artillery, to the extent that I may be able to finish them tomorrow.  They are not brilliant but they will do for me.  I am, at least, now contemplating getting back to finishing the next batch of ACW confederates. 

I have also got two coats of grey onto my aquarium rocks for Savage Core and The Lost World.  I reckon they need another two shades of paler grey before they are done and then I will add some follidge with the hot glue gun.  I really like the cave in the one at front left and need to work out some sort of dicing table for what will spring out of there to take on my explorers or whoever; ape men? velociraptors? saber tooth tiger? under-dressed cavegirl?  Unfortunately, I am going abroad next weekend for the first of two consecutive trips and by the time I get back and then go up to see Charlotte in Edinburgh it will be well on the way to Christmas!

My friend Bill suggested we go and see Blade Runner 2049 this week which we did at Esher cinema, which has recently been turned into an Everyman.  I don't go to the cinema very often (I haven't been to Esher since Titanic!) and as soon as I got in I realised why.  The entrance hall is now a full on restaurant and you get your tickets at what looks like (and is) a bar.  Inside, the seats are large and comfortable but they all had little side tables attached and everyone was eating.  They had (very pretty) waitresses bringing hot food into the cinema auditorium.  This is disgusting.  The noise is bad enough but the smell!  People who eat in cinemas should be killed and their bodies used for organ donation.  I didn't really enjoy the film either as I am getting sick of the unremitting trend for gritty and dark in visual entertainment.  In addition, there were a number of foreign actors in the film and I had trouble understanding what they were saying.  Despite superior special effects, I didn't think the production captured the feeling of a teeming, multi-ethnic city like the original did.  There was too much space.  I won't bother with the DVD and the music was awful.

Today's music is an old favourite, Carmina Burana, which I haven't played for some time.  I first heard this when the German TV version, by opera director Jean-Pierre Ponnelle, appeared one Saturday night on the BBC in October 1976.  What on earth is this, I asked myself at the bizarre mixture of musical and visual styles in the TV version (prepared in co-operation with Carl Orff, who always saw it as much a theatrical as an orchestral piece).  Recently, I saw another German TV version from 1996 by Hohlfeld which was better photographed, slightly racier and less straight to video looking but didn't have such a strong orchestra or singing cast.  On CD I prefer the Previn version, which is very good indeed. 

Kiss of the sun (1907)

Today's wallpaper is by the Polish painter Jan Ciągliński (1858-1913). Although born in Poland, he spent most of his career, other than a brief time in Paris. based in St Petersburg. In his will, however, he bequeathed most of his works to Poland and many of them were on exhibition in Warsaw over the last few months. He visited North Africa and the Middle East and painted a number of orientalist pictures, of the realistic, rather than the harem fantasy, type. He taught at the Imperial Academy in St Petersburg and became a professor there in 1911; teaching many well known Russian painters.  

Paint Table Sunday: Rocks 2

A brief entry this week as I have had no time to do hobby stuff, lately, and am trying to evade potential oversea trips.  Nigeria has been postponed (hooray) and I shifted Saudi onto a colleague (double hooray - at least Nigeria has beer and statuesque women to look at) but still have two week long trips in November (I get back from one on Saturday and have to fly to the next on Sunday).  In fact we are going to see Charlotte again in Edinburgh that month, so I will have to do 10 flights in November.  I hate flying and will probably expire on one of these trips.  At least my blood pressure is down, thanks to my glamorous new doctor.  190 over 100 not so good, 130 over 83, much better.

Yesterday, I did get a bit of paint on my Savage Core/Lost World rock formations.  I have three big aquarium pieces and will add some smaller CD and MDF based ones to scatter around them.   I still haven't tried painting any figures lately but have to have an eye operation next week (I don't even want to think about it).

I haven't bought much hobby stuff, either, although I did succumb to this Star Wars kit on the basis that I will probably get Star Wars Legion when it comes out next year.  This AT-ST is, it seems, exactly the right scale for the 32mm figures.  It's a long time since I made a complex model kit (Renedra buildings apart) so I am not sure how this will go, given my dodgy eyesight.  I'm not going to give up trying yet, though.

I have had several requests to become friends on Facebook lately but when I have looked at the person's page they are usually full of the standard political drivel so I don't bother with them.  Facebook can be useful, though, and recently there was a post on the Death in the Dark Continent players page which highlighted the fact that the old BBC series, The Search for The Nile, from 1971, had been put on DVD at last.  I saw this when it first came out and have been hoping it would appear at some point but it disappeared.  Great to see it again now.  Shot on location in Africa and with James Mason narrating I can't wait until mine comes from Amazon!  There seemed to be a feeling that the BBC wouldn't release it given they regarded it now as politically incorrect.  Interestingly it is labelled as "as seen on the BBC" not an actual BBC disc.  Should be good African inspiration anyway.

I need to clear out some old figures and rules of periods I am never going to realistically paint or play.  First up is Frostgrave where I have some of the books and a few figures.  Eric the Shed played a game or two and was not impressed with the rules mechanism which he found a bit blunt (especially combat).  I found all the descriptions of how magic worked totally confusing and well beyond my poor brain.  As a fantasy world I would rather stick to Lord of the Rings, especially with the news that the Battle Companies rules (which only ever appeared in White Dwarf, some years ago) are coming back.

J interviews the Legatus

Speaking of Lord of the Rings, Guy, who is on the Oxford Union Committee this term, was a bit miffed that Liv Tyler cancelled at the last minute but this week he met JJ Abrams (which made Charlotte jealous).  I used to enjoy his Alias (although I still haven't watched the final series, where Jennifer Garner was pregnant and Rachel Nichols came in to do the action stuff).  One of my past lady friends, J, a kickboxing infrastructure journalist was the motion capture body double for Jennifer Garner for the Playstation Alias game, which is why it is the only computer game I own.

Now we live in pretty much equidistant from three supermarkets (Tesco, Sainsbury and Waitrose) so I don't get over to Morrisons in Weybridge very often any more, now Guy isn't rowing but I went there earlier in the week to take some books to the charity bookshop (most charity shops won't take books any more and the price you can get for them on eBay makes it not worth the effort of selling them).  Anyway I was staggered to see that Morrison's sells Cloudy Bay sauvignon blanc (the best sauvignon blanc on the planet - well, it used to be).  I had to buy some.  I had the very first vintage of this wine when I visited their sister vineyard in Western Australia, Cape Mentelle, in 1987.  I tried to get it back in the UK but it wasn't imported then.  The initial run was very small, not like the 100,000 cases plus they produce now, now that they are owned by LVMH.   In fact it was the Cape Mentelle, Australian team that chose the name, against the wishes of the New Zealand winemakers who wanted to call it Tua Marina.

I might have some time this afternoon to do some painting so might see if I can do a bit on my Sikh artillery which I really want to finish as it will complete my TMWWBK's British force.  So far it looks bright this morning.

It's all a bit Austrian this week (my family on my mother's side was Austro-Hungarian) and today's wallpaper is a painting by Austrian artist Franz Eybl (1806-1880) who by the age of ten had already entered the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna.  Most of his paintings were landscapes or portraits so this lovely nude, from about 1860, is unusual.  Portraying an everyday scene, rather than a classical or mythical story, was somewhat unusual and daring for the time.  Her figure (especially her posterior) is very reminiscent of J, the computer game body double, I realise.  I did do some drawings of J rather like this.  I wonder where they are? Viennese bakers, in this period, were famous all over Europe and the croissant (as seen on the bottom left), as we would call it now, was very much an Austrian not a French creation (the modern croissant was created by a former Austrian artillery officer (inserts desperate military reference) who set up a Viennese bakery in Paris in the late eighteen thirties).

Austrian music too, in the long and expensive form of the complete Mozart symphonies by Jaap Schröder, Christopher Hogwood and the Academy of Ancient Music, using period instruments.  I remember going along to Blackwells Music Shop in Oxford, when the first boxed set (not box set, pig ignorant Millennials), came out in 1980 and finding that they had all sold out in four hours.  It has taken me 37 years to buy them and discover the complexity and controversy over authorship of these symphonies.  Being a late romantic aficionado I have always had a rather schizophrenic relationship with Mozart (50% hack, 50% genius) but they certainly make calming background music when writing reports on US education models.

Mirabel machine made

Now, Mozart also reminds me of the world's most sickly chocolate: the Mozartkugeln, a disgusting amalgam of chocolate and praline marzipan which has also been the subject of bitter legal battles in the cut throat world of European chocolate.  The originals are hand produced by Fuerst but other firms, notably the better marketed Mirabel, are allowed to produce their versions under slightly different names.

Fuerst, hand made

I discovered these hideous chocolates in Switzerland in the mid nineteen eighties when I had a girlfriend who was just about perfect (39D-23-36), apart from her penchant for sickly food and drink  (she loved Bailey's Irish cream. embarrassingly) products.  My mother always wanted me to marry her and, indeed, invited her to dinner the night before I married the Old Bat, as a sort of 'you've made a big mistake' gesture.  S would do anything (literally) for Mozartkugeln and so in the (we shamefully admit) four year intersection between her and the Old Bat (Plastic Woman, the Old Bat called her, on account of her wearing, shock, horror, makeup) I plundered the duty free shops of Europe to feed her insatiable appetite for these stomach churning treats. The complete Mozart symphonies is, I admit, a sort of aural box of Mozartkugeln and there is only so much you can listen to without feeling queasy.