Paint Table Saturday: Three projects

It's paint table Sunday and I have realised that it is counter-productive to write blog posts when I could be painting so I am doing this, retrospectively, now that the good light has gone. I get bored painting, very quickly, and given my eye issues I no longer find it relaxing and  can only manage about forty five minutes at a time, now.  To stop myself getting too bored, therefore, I usually have around three active projects on the go at the same time.

I began these warriors of Rohan, for Lord of the Rings, back early last year but have pulled them out again. I have now located their shields and today I finished the base coats of them, So for the next few weeks it will be onto shading.

First completed figures of 2020

This week I finished the Lucid Eye Red Simians and as the factions for this game are only seven figures I dug out another unit I had started. In fact all I had done on these was the flesh base coat. Why do I hate the word 'flesh'? It gives me the shivers and I never use it in spoken English. It's like the American  'panties' or 'tights' or 'offal'. Just nasty, creepy words that make my brain recoil.

Next up, therefore are the Jaguar Tribe who are based, I believe, on some Aztec period Central American people. I haven't looked up how they should look as the historical name of the people is too complicated for me to remember. It was like yesterday when my father in law asked me what antibiotics the Old Bat was on and I couldn't for the life of me remember or pronounce their names. The Bat had a relapse last week and the doctor sent her to Epsom Hospital. They actually put her in a bed in the Covid-19 ward (interestingly, only four people in it) while they did tests. Oddly, they didn't test for the Chinese Virus as they were sure that she had had it. They put her chest pains down to Gastroesophageal reflux and presecribed some pills, They let her out of the hospital and the next day she felt worse. By Friday she couldn't breathe but, fortunately, the local doctor rang up to check on her. She prescribed some antibiotics and I just managed to get them before the pharmacy closed. Just as well as by eight in the evening she couldn't breath or speak (that's how you know the Old Bat is really ill). However the antibiotics kicked in and this morning she is tired but much better. The doctor had rightly diagnosed pneumonia (which a lot of Chinese Virus patients seem to be getting afterwards). So, anyway I moved the Jaguar tribe along yesterday between running errands for the Bat.

Also, as part of the Jaguar faction, there are a couple of, well, Jaguars. I will paint one as black and try to paint the other in its spotted form, although that may be a bit ambitious.

Finally, my third unit under way is another Lucid Eye Savage Core unit, the Atlanteans, who I based and undercoated on today. They are are, basically, Ancient Greeks. I have painted quite a lot of Greeks so should be able to manage these. I need to decide on a colour scheme for them. As they are not historical I can go wild so I think I am going to use the colour scheme I used for Lucius Verus who, in turn, I based on a costume from Cleopatra (1963).

So, these three projects should keep my busy, although I am flat out at work at the moment writing a very long report so can't paint during the day. Maybe I can get a bit done some mornings but the weather is not going to be so bright next week.

I usually drink Lifeboat Tea but have nearly run out so have not opened the last two boxes I have (because if you finish your last boxes you will get the Chinese Virus and die) so am currently drinking Fortnum & Mason's Queen Anne tea which is loose leaf. Now, I used to be a terrible tea snob at university and we all only drank leaf tea. It's years since I have had it at home but it is a bit of a revelation, not least as regards price per mug. The box I have (which was part of a hamper my parents in law were given at Christmas) is £12.95 a tin. But twenty-five teabags of the same stuff is £5.95.  This makes the loose tea much, much better value. I started the tin three weeks ago and have over a third left. twenty-five tea bags, costing nearly half the price of a tin, would have lasted me about three days.  I think it was my slinky lady friend K, at Oxford, who used to drink this. It is certainly fragrant, elegant, warming and, indeed, familiar. There is a Fortnum & Mason shop in the Royal Exchange in the City, so when I can next go to London I might get some more or try Royal Blend, which is the one I used to have.

So, finally, what are my annoyances this week? One wargaming and one not. A really major annoyance is that on my new computer keyboard the insert key is next to the backspace key, something I don't remember from my old keyboard. So when I hit the backspace key (which I do a lot) I more often than not hit the insert key. This turns my cursor into a blue block which starts gobbling up text until  I notice. It is not good for my blood pressure!  Argh! It's just done it again while writing this paragraph.  The second annoyance is bases on wargames ships. Now, I have ranted on before as to my inability to comprehend why people put bases on AFV models (they aren't going to fall over!) but the new Warlord Games WW2 ship game (which I might have been interested in) come with the most ludicrous bases I have ever seen on a ship model. They are all stuck on something that looks like a French bread pizza base. Talk about an instant no sale. The models for their Cruel Seas weren't like this! Anyway, these naval games seem to require huge amounts of on board (to coin a phrase) clutter and I don't like tokens and cards next to units.

To go with my Savage Core painting, I am listening to American ambient composer Michael Stearns' atmospheric 1995 album, The Lost World.  It really is a perfect accompaniment!

Today's wallpaper is the accurate if unimaginatively named 'bathers' (1920) by the Belgian painter Théo van Rysselberghe (1862-1926). It was painted toward the end of his life, in the South of France, like most of his nude groups.

It's not Salute!

Today is not Salute! Well, well, hardly any of you (except Eric the Shed) have wondered what has happened to the Legatus blog. It is just over a year since I last posted; easily the longest interval since I began this blog back in April 2006. So why did I stop? There are two reasons, really. Firstly, I am now using Facebook to keep up to date with the hobby more than blogger (Facebook posts can be so much shorter to write or, rather, they are with me) but, secondly, I haven't really been painting anything. I had a good start to 2019 with some Byzantines and Indian Mutiny figures but then I stopped. I did finish one figure since I stopped blogging: a Modiphius John Carter Great White Ape which I finished in August.  

My most recently completed figure (August 2019)

I based the colour scheme on the cover of the Edgar Rice Burroughs paperback I had when I first read the John Carter stories back in the seventies.  I meant to get straight on and paint some more of these very nice figures (not so nice to cut off their sprues and assemble - this figure took me an hour to construct). I really enjoyed painting it but when I went back to some 28mm ones (John Carter himself was supposed to be next) I struggled with the small size and my fluctuating eyesight.  Now my eye consultant is pleased (and I am pleased to have such a slinky eye consultant) with the progress on my eyes following laser treatment and eye injections but I realise that I will never be able to paint like I could ten years ago. Gradually I am coming to terms with this but this is where Facebook is a nightmare because many people on it do the most amazing work (why are so many superb painters Spanish - is it the light?). I just cannot comprehend how they can paint the way they do.  I wouldn't mind if I could paint quickly like Eric the Shed but I can't do that either!

One thing that annoys me with the Facebook groups I am on is when someone posts something obviously utterly brilliant (a Victrix Roman I saw today) and they ask people what they think. Talk about fishing for compliments. Hideous. Even worse is when people post things and other people comment negatively in a 'it should be a darker blue' sort of way.  Of course these people are inevitably foreign. They do not realise that the way to do it in Britain is to quietly deride something you don't like without saying anything!  It is very bad form and very vulgar to say what you actually think. In our second year at university, a Canadian Rhodes Scholar joined our legal year group. After about a week he grabbed one of us and asked: 'why does nobody talk to me, come and visit me (being North American he probably said the annoying "come visit me") or sit with me at lunch?" We all smiled and were non-committal. The answer, of course, was that he was five feet tall, had a voice that made him sound exactly like Mickey Mouse and he kept telling everyone he already had five degrees. "Canadian degrees?, asked one of our year, now a QC.  We should have said you are short, squeaky, Canadian, too pushy and a show off. But we didn't. We just sneered at him behind his back. The proper British way.

Another thing that is annoying me about Facebook pages is people who show their finished figures by holding them in their fingers. Why? Do they not have a flat surface to put them on? I don't want to see your revolting, grimy, paint stained fingers. And the person who uses their hand as a palette! Good grief.

I have to thank Alastair for showing me how to stop my Facebook notifications being swamped by dozens of posts a day from the Star Wars Legion and Lord of the Rings groups. I now have turned opff notifications from all groups so I only see posts from friends )hopefully).

Brexit has seen me delete many Facebook 'friends'. I see lots of people say 'we can agree to disagree'. How feeble! If you disagree with me you are wrong and I don't want anything to do with you. I didn't speak to my best friend for six weeks following a 'discussion' about Brexit, so if you are an ephemeral Facebook friend you have no chance!  I have also started getting friend requests from people who, when you look at their page, have no content on it. I am not interested in chasing friends for the sake of it. If you have no content I have no interest in you (exception to Eric the Shed as I appreciate his Facebook stance) and he is a proper acquaintance I know in real life.

The other reason that I haven't done any painting is that the Old Bat doesn't like it.  One of my lady friends opined that I shouldn't keep calling her the Old Bat (even though her sister does) so sometimes I will refer to her as the Bag for Life instead. The Bat for Life has no hobbies. She does not do leisure time. Her entire life is an endless list of jobs to be done. She thinks I should be spending my time doing jobs too. It gets her really mad if I am painting because she says I should be mowing the lawn (a constant cri de coeur), or sweeping up leaves (a more pointless activity I cannot imagine) or fixing the tiles in the bathroom that have fallen off etc. The problem is that I have dyspraxia and I just can't do the more complex DIY tasks she requires (or even the easy ones - the number of time I have mown over the mower cord). I can't do them to her standard, anyway, If I try she berates me for being useless. So now I absolutely refuse to do anything if I know she can do a better job. Which she invariably can. I pay for your life, I say, so you can do domestic jobs. This was all well and good until several big contracts we had got delayed. All our work is for overseas governments and we are often tripped up by their budgeting cycle, so the work I was supposed to do in Botswana in the Autumn and Egypt in January and February has been delayed. These two jobs would have, essentially, paid for my life for a year but no contracts no money. "You should be finding a better job", cackles the Bat. So if I even looked like I was moving unpainted figures around I got barked at and told to get a job in Sainsburys, if I had that much spare time. I applied once, years ago and they turned me down. Then,  of course, came the Chinese Virus and all of our work was postponed indefinitely (I am supposed to be in Cairo at present).  Fortunately, a piece of work for the UK government in Nigeria has appeared and I can do that from home, so now I am allowed to paint again (a bit). I am certainly not like these people who have spent the last few weeks just painting while being paid by their employers. I manage the odd hour here and there if the light is good.  I tried a bit yesterday but it was raining and hopeless even with two daylight bulbs on but today was better and I am enjoying it again.

Then, of course, it appeared that the Bat caught the virus. She had many of the symptoms (her sister is a former GP and was convinced she had it) and was bedridden for a week and I had to sleep downstairs on the floor (as Guy had been sent home early from Exeter University and filled the spare room with junk). I went to bed early as I was tired too but actually enjoyed reading in bed, which I can't when I am in with the Bag for Life. I am reading Sax Rohmer's The Insidious Dr Fu Manchu which is all about the evil Chinese bringing a mysterious virus to London. Hmm. The poor virus didn't stand a chance when pitted against the Bat, however, and she was soon up and about and nagging again in no time. Charlotte and I rued the end of our quiet civilised time together, discussing dinosaurs, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings and the Isle of Wight heritage Facebook page.  All of us had some symptoms and all of us feel very fatigued but we could have had some other bug, for all we know.  Given I have some high risk factors (underlying health issues is the trendy term) I have to be especially careful.  "If you get it you will definitely die", said the Bat, delightedly. 

So what other things have happened to the Legatus in the last twelve months? Don't worry there is not now going to be 24 paragraphs of tedium. In fact, one of the good things about it being a year is that I can justify not going into any great detail as it has been so long, so:

Charlotte and the very Old Bat on the terrace of our hotel. Charlotte was allowed a Bellini but I had to have water.

• We all went to Venice for the Old Bat's sixtieth birthday (it was too hot). 
• Guy got his BA from Oxford Brookes and started a masters at Exeter University. This is costing a fortune, which hasn't helped the finances at all, as he doesn't get a student loan for the academic fees and we have to pay his third term's accommodation of £2500, even though he won't be going back.  Grr!
• Charlotte slept a lot and lately has been growing plants and re-learning the recorder. So she tootles away playing Cantina Band, Harry Potter and Jurassic Park.
• I went to Warsaw (again) and Beirut (for the first time) (it was too hot).  I really liked Beirut with nice food, superb wine and many lovely ladies, especially in and around the Parliament which is where I was based.

What a hoot!

• I had an owl stuck in my study and we had to call animal rescue to rescue it. They filmed it all and wanted to put it on TV but the Old Bat had a sudden panic and rang them up to ask them not to show it as she had her old clothes on and hadn't tidied the house.

• My sister got married for the first time and I had to give her away. Her husband is an otherwise estimable chap so I am not sure why he wanted to take my sister on but he has transformed her into a happy, jolly person who is rather less frightening than she used to be. 
• I had my sixtieth birthday and the very next day, on my way down to Cowes, was called an OAP by the girl in the ferry ticket office. No party or presents though, due to the finances, having had to just pay £8000 towards Guys fees and accommodation..

Warriors of Rohan are currently under way

So, (he said, to annoy John Treadaway who hates that) what about wargaming? It is a long, long time since I had a wargame at Eric the Shed's but I am still buying the magazines and looking greedily at all the lovely new figures. How many times have I said that I have to rationalise? But I really do. A lot of figures are going to have to go. The key issue is space in my room. I don't have any and have random boxes all over the floor.  None of this has stopped me looking at more stuff, though.  I keep looking at all these new dark ages style fantasy plastics but think they are pointless for me given how many LotR figures I have. I am intrigued by Victrix's 12mm WW2 but will wait until they do, perhaps, North Africa as a lot less scenery is needed than for NW Europe. One thing I might give another whirl is Frostgrave, as they have released some solo scenarios for it and I picked up that and the rule book for free as a download. The magic aspect might be too complex for my simple mind though. Solo has got to be the way forward for me from now on, I think, so I am also looking at Rangers of Shadow Deep which has a solo play option, especially if I can use some of my LotR figures for it.

I bought into West Wind's War and Empire Dark Ages Kickstarter even though these are 15mm as I have started some tentative use of washes on my figures for the first time in fifty years of painting figures; notably on the Lord of the Rings figures I painted at the end of 2018,  It's still cheating, though.  I also used it a little on some Fireforge Byzantine archers which I had to finish before I went to Salute last year or I could not justify buying any more figures!

I have several Kickstartes still to arrive and at least one looks like it never will (Black Hallows townsfolk) but hope Jurassic World and Pirates of the Dread Sea will materialise. The worst one is Acheson creations Kongo Africa. I sent my survey in in December 2017 and haven't received a single thing. I will certainly never buy anything from them again. To me, now, they are the Chinese of the wargames world. I quite like some of the new plastic fauns and centaurs from Wargames Atlantic (to be fair they are not technically their figures) but they are made in China and I am now boycotting Chinese goods. 

I think that is enough rambling for what should have been one of my most enjoyable days of the year (and yes, as you may gather, I do blame the Chinese).  Having got this post out the way I hope to do some more increasingly blotchy painting and more blogging going forward.

As I am painting Lord of the Rings figures, today's music has to be Howard Shore's soundtrack music. My iTunes playlist of this is 21 hours and 35 minutes!

Bare back on a bearskin 

Today's wallpaper is by Delphin Enjolras (1857-1945) who originally started as a landscape painter before focussing almost exclusively on his favourite subject of women, usually depicted naked and lit in interesting ways.  All of his work was done in pastel rather than paint.

Paint Table Sunday and a Martian

It's Paint Table Easter Sunday and, thankfully, the family have gone down to Hampshire for the usual family Easter Egg Hunt, leaving me in peace. I couldn't go this year as I had some work to do and there wasn't a seat for me in the car, for reasons too complex and tedious to go into. So, apart from the work, which I am having to spend hours on ever day of the holiday weekend because the World Bank have brought a report deadline forward, I have been getting some painting done. The original Paint Table Saturday was first a blog and then a Google+ group originally set up by a lady in Belgium. It really helped me focus on my painting for a while but now, with Google removing Google+, it has disappeared so I don't need to keep to a Paint Table Saturday and Sunday is actually a better day for this so it will be Paint Table Sunday from now on and I hope to post a bit more often.

Having finished a figure this week (see below) it was time to reassess my next unit and I decided to put the Napoleonic British aside for a while as it is a 25 man (and a horse) unit and so I got the 1864 Danes out again as there are only 12 of them, Hopefully, I can move these along a bit over the next ten days and get them finished for the end of April which will bring me back to a unit a month this year.

The one figure I finished this weekend was this Modiphius John Carter Thark. This has taken a long time to do as I wasn't quite sure how to handle it but it turned out OK, helped by the fact that it is a nice big figure.  I need to have another look at the rules but they are very much a Role Playing Game which will need other players and a games master so I may try and adapt some other rules for it. Lord of the Rings might work, I think, Next up will be the Giant White Ape and, if I am brave, Dejah Thoris. Plenty to be getting on with anyway, helped a lot by the lighter evenings.

Now what I should be doing is getting rid of surplus figures but instead I have bought quite a lot lately, including some more Star Wars figures at 25% off and the Lord of the Rings made to order deal. With this you have a week to place an order and they will then cast (in metal) just the number that are ordered. I ordered the whole lot on the basis that I can always sell on any I don't want (or, maybe, already have!).  I can sort of justify this because I have at least painted  a lot of LoTR figures in the last few months.

This weekend I have been on Facebook four years.  If you had asked me I would probably have said two years but time flies by when you are plummeting towards death and everything in life happened 40% longer ago than you think. Although you wouldn't guess it from the number of pictures of food and Martinis I post, I did it solely for wargames purposes, as I found that manufacturers were posting news of new releases on Facebook long before they appeared on websites.  I have around 250 'friends' and some I have even met in real life (if there is such a thing).  I do cull those who bang on about politics and try only to link up with those who post wargames material too. I also have ditched people who post too often. There was nice lady who did fantasy maps but she was posting about ten times a day and it clogged up my feed so, however interesting, it was stopping me seeing the hobby posts I wanted to see.  She was like the dreaded Tango01 from The Miniature Page!  Other things annoy me on Facebook but then that is no different from everything else in this so called life. The worst, however; even worse than people who bang on about politics, even worse than people who post brilliant painting and then fish for compliments, even worse than people who post pictures of Minions, even worse than people who post cute homilies (all Americans), even worse than people who write in that big colour background sign style (how do they do that?), even worse than people who say 'hey guys' or call themselves 'a noob', the absolute worse and the thing that sends my blood boiling are people who post gifs of faces reacting to things.  It's far, far worse than emojis, which are, at least small. Presumably there must be websites of these horrors somewhere. I was going to find one to illustrate the point but when I searched for gifs in my windows explorer all I got were a few pictures of naked ladies running along the beach (thanks Sophie) which would not be appropriate, however delightful.

Anyway, speaking of naked ladies, today's wallpaper is this superbly tactile painting by Earl Moran, which I found in my pin-up section of my PC when looking for a suitable Easter picture for my Facebook page yesterday. Moran (1893-1984) discovered a young lady named Norma Jean Dougherty and she modelled for him for four years from 1949. They remained friends even after she became Marilyn Monroe. Already an established pin-up artist, he had been doing calendars for Brown & Bigelow since 1932 and a 1940 Life feature on him made him a huge star. In those days, in a calendar of 12 pictures, the publishers would allow the artist to include onc nude a year and Moran's were more sensual than any others.  Later in his life he concentrated solely on nudes and this one comes from that period, dating from around 1970.  Nearly all of his work was in pastels, amazingly.

Having been working my way through Martian themed music, today's music is the expanded soundtrack to Total Recall (1990) by Jerry Goldsmith which has some striking 'alien' sounding cues and is one of his best scores, with an excellent blend of orchestral and electronic music.

The Old Bat was out at  a friend's 60th birthday party last night, so I watched Diamonds are Forever (1971) hence we have Jill St John on Legatus 'Wargames Ladies here.

Paint Table Sunday: Back to Napoleonics and on to US Infantry

Even though I didn't think it was a classic Salute this year it has got me energised about my painting again. Having finished the Byzantine archers just before I left for Excel last Saturday it was time to get going on another unit. So far this year I have completed three units. Not quite one a month, partly because I was in Botswana for ten days, so I should really have picked some figures for April which I could get on quickly with. 

So last week I decided to get started on assembling some of the new Perry Miniatures WW2 American infantry. These have a pretty simple colour scheme so I thought maybe I could get some done, start to finish, in a couple of weeks.  Oh dear.  Now I often read about wargamers who refuse to do plastic figures because they don't like assembling them and I have some bad memories of some Victrix Napoleonic French from years ago. I have always found the Perry figures easy to do, however. Not these!  To cement six pairs of arms to the bodies took me 38 minutes. Argh,  I thought. as yet another arm fell off as I tried to position it. The real problem is the arm poses that require two arms holding a rifle. The left hand is attached to the rifle so there are three gluing points: the two shoulders and the wrist of the left hand. As soon as you get one arm in place and try to attach the other you end up pushing the first arm out of place When you try and get the wrists in the right place for the hand on the rifle, one or other of the shoulders (or both) go out of place. All the time you are trying to manoeuvre the parts into place the glue is drying. The whole process is really, really stressful and not part of what should be a relaxing hobby! Some of them still aren't quite right and the shoulder joints will require some filling. Also, the Perries themselves say that not all arms will fit on every body but there is no information in the instructions to show which ones go with which, Very much the least enjoyable half an hour with model soldiers I have had for many years. I was going to build and paint a section of 12 men but don't think I can bear to build the next six for a while!

Before I could even build them I had another crisis as I was about to build the first figures but found that I couldn't get any glue out of all three of my tubes of Revell cement. It seems to be like Games Workshop liquid Greenstuff; you open it to use it once but the next time you want to use it it has all set. Fortunately, the people of the Painting, modelling and gaming Facebook group came to the rescue. After well meaning suggestions such as use a lighter to heat the metal tube, use a gas cooker lighter and use a guitar string (?) someone said any flame would do, given I didn't have any of the three things suggested. I actually didn't have any matches, either, so had to go to Tesco but using a candle flame soon had them unblocked, miraculously. I would have just gone out and bought another tube of glue but couldn't as it was ten o'clock at night. I am just hopelessly impractical!

 One figure missing, which I found after I took the picture, thank goodness

Instead, inspired by the three-ups of the Perry French Napoleonic infantry I saw at Salute I got my British 87th Foot out to work on. I put these to one side as I had a nasty attack of strap phobia but yesterday confined myself to shading the flesh and the trousers. This is a big unit, for me, of 24 foot and a mounted officer so they will take some time to finish. Now, too, of course, I realise that I have the stress of the arms to do, as I am painting them without arms so I can access the front of the uniform. Looking at the arms on the sprue I can't work out which arms will give which pose so that is more stress to worry about. Good job the doctor has just doubled the dose of my blood pressure pills.

2016  - 22

2017 - 17

2018 - 13

2019 -  12

I have enjoyed reading everyone else's Salute posts and looking at the pictures of all the games I missed. When I went round I thought that there was less, WW2, Napoleonic and ACW games than usual but it my be I just missed them.  Other people have said that the Blogger meet up was smaller this year (it was an hour earlier than usual) so I have decided to apply some science by digging out pictures from the last four years. Now, of course, people come and go ,so this is a only a point in time sample. The trend is down, however.  I don't post on my blog as often as I used to, so perhaps if there was a wargames Facebook meet up there might be more people but who knows?

My forces overrun the kraal and send the British scarpering

One thing I posted on my Facebook page but haven't mentioned here was another enjoyable Zulu ward game at Eric the Shed's.  This was a recreation of the Battle of Khambula held just a few days shy of the 140th anniversary.  We had five players: two for the British and three for the Zulus. I took control of the Zulu right wing and was immediately in trouble because I couldn't remember anything about the Black Powder rules; in particular how to activate my forces, so spent the first two moves immobile, waiting to see what everyone else did. In the end the game was something of a draw but miraculously I didn't lose a unit, unlike everyone else.

Eric's table was simple but effective and the battlefield layout was instantly recognisable from the central fortified British position on the hill. Eric's account and some excellent pictures is here.  What I really need to do is read up on the rules before I play a game so I have at least a vague idea of what is likely to be going on. Unfortunately, I play so rarely (this was my first game for a year) that I always forget the rules completely.

Another issue is that,all of my wargames rules are trapped behind a giant pile in my study consisting of cardboard boxes (mainly used to send Charlotte things to Edinburgh which she has forgotten), seven file boxes of unpainted figures and almost the entire output of Penthouse magazine from the nineteen eighties.  All need to be relocated so I can actually read my rules before a game!

I went off to MG day at Brooklands with Guy today, as his grandfather wants to buy him an MG (the Old Bat is resisting of course but then she resists anything which isn't her idea).  There were hundreds of MG's of every sort there but I really liked this one!

Back home for lunch and the light was quite good. I meant to get on with the Peninsular British but caught the end of John Carter (2012) on TV last night so did a couple of hours on this Modiphius Thark. There is still a lot to do on him but he is probably more than half finished now.. It's so nice to paint such a large figure. Maybe I should get some Victrix 54mm Napoleonics!

Last week I went to the Bonnard exhibition with my particular friend K, who used to model for me at Oxford, Not in the bath, though, as you would need hot water to keep the lady comfortable but the steam wouldn't be good for the paper.  Also, I remember the BBC drama on the Pre-Raphaelites where poor Lizzie Siddell had to spend days in the bath while Millais painted her for his Ophelia, As a result of being in the cold water she got very ill and her father, fifty medical bills later, demanded that Millais pay up for her treatment, which he did, fortunately. Interestingly, the landscape part of Millais'  picture was painted from the Hogsmill River in Ewell, not that far from where I live.  No such worries for Bonnard, who largely painted in the South of France, so his naked ladies (usually his wife and the occasional mistress) would not have been too cold, hopefully. This one, Nu dans le bain, was quite a late one, painted in 1936.  I first learned about Bonnard from an art book in our school library and I had several postcards of his paintings on my wall at college. 

Today's music is the soundtrack from John Carter (2012) by Michael Giacchino, which I had to buy, at great expense, off eBay not long ago as it is no loner available. I've played it a couple of times now and it's definitely growing on me, with some strong themes although some of it is quite remiscent of Howard Shore's Lord of the Rings and David Arnold's Stargate scores but that is a good thing!

Anna Gaël, the latest addition to Legatus' Wargmes Ladies

Finally, some of you (quite a few by the number of hits!) have noticed a few posts on Legatus Wargames Ladies this last week from Italy's Playmen magazine. It was designed as an Italian copy of Playboy from a time (1967) when Playboy was banned in Italy, Unlike Hugh Hefner at Playboy, Bob Guccione at Penthouse, Larry Flynt at Hustler and Paul Raymond at Men Only and Club, Playmen was very much the brainchild of a woman, Adelino Tattilo, who ran the magazine for over thirty years; choosing the centrefolds, cover pictures and championed its left wing, reforming written content. The effect that Playmen had on the social attitudes, fashions and culture of Italy cannot be underestimated. Tattilo was very interested in the cinema and there were regular pictorials from the sets of films being shot and virtually every young Continental actress happily stripped off for its pages, thankfully. We will be featuring some of these on Legatus Wargames Ladies over the next few months, as we have shamefully neglected it!

A very short visit to Salute

So (I have to start my post with 'so' beacuse John Treadhead hates it), it was something of a lightning visit to Salute this year and I was there for just under two hours, although my feet feel like I have been there all day. I arrived at about 11.20 and there was no queue, unlike tat he craft show opposite. I nearly had a nasty moment when the Old Bat discovered that this was on, as she was seriously contemplating coming along. It is important to keep different parts of your life separate I think; particularly mine at present. 

Anyway, thankfully Batless, the show did seem as busy and the light as bad when I got inside. I haven't even looked at the free figure (actually I think there were two this year) because it is some post apocalypse thing. This, along with zombies (are they subsets of each other?) are just two genres I am not interested in but there were plenty of such games on display today, it seemed.  Not so much World War 2 and very little Napoleonic or ACW too, I think.

Right inside the main entrance was Big Red Bat's splendid Romans versus Celts game and I had a look at the new plastic Celts on the Victrix stand but was good and didn't buy any. Unlike Eric the Shed, who bought a year's worth of Romans and Celts for this year's project.  I am looking forward to seeing these but I will be interested to see how he gets on speed painting Celts! Stripes! Plaid! Check!  Chariots!  Argh!

The next game I liked the look of was of the Wiliamite Wars in Ireland from a period I am just starting to get interested in.  This recreation of the Battle of Aughrim (1691) had a very nice look to it.

Next up was a striking recreation of Moonbase from Gerry Anderson's UFO, although I didn't see any ladies with purple wigs, sadly.  I have no idea about the actual game but then I am more interested in the look of the thing. Not far away was a game of Warlord's new Cruel Seas but it is one of those games where the table is covered in counters and worse (printed cards by the look of it, under each model) which completely detracts from the effort you might have put into painting ships.

Another of my 'one day if I ever retire' periods is the Thirty Years War and there was a good looking game of the battle of Lutzen, I always like a game which had windmills in it!, This had a very natural coloured base and some properly in-scale trees, as most wargames table trees seem to be about twenty feet high.

These, however, were pretty much the only games I appreciated. I didn't think there was a showstopper this year and I think stunning scenery was less in evidence too.  The far end of the hall seemed emptier this year with a whole bank of former trade stands not there with just the stalls around the far wall in the concrete wasteland.

I certainly bought the least ever at Salute, with no metal figures at all and just the box of the plastic US WW2 infantry from the Perries. I also bought an M10 tank destroyer from Rubicon one of my favourite WW2 AFVs.  The other impulse buy was these four hills as I looked at them and immediately thought 'Barsoom'!

I had intended to get some more Iron Duke Indian Mutiny figures from Empress but it was one of those stands that you just couldn't get near tom so I didn't bother.  I don't do waiting or queuing!

The three up preview plastics on the Perry miniatures stand were for Napoleonic French Infantry 1807-1814.  These I will get when I get back to my Peninsula War British.

I turned up at the Bloggers meet but there were less people this year, I think, but did chat to Alastair and Eric the Shed for some time and Big Lee, Tamsin, Postie and Ray briefly. Also it was nice to see Miles again, across from America at his first Salute, and hopefully we can meet up on his next trip in May (if I am not in St Petersburg, which I might be).. He had bought US WW2 infantry as well!

So I didn't think it was a classic Salute this year and two hours was about right for me. I didn't actually buy enough to make the postage saving worthwhile, unlike some years. It has got me enthused again about painting, though, and having finished my Byzantine archers this morning (I had told myself I wasn't allowed to buy anything if they weren't painted) I have to decide on the next unit to work on.