Saturday update.

Unfortunately I have nothing I can show you painting wise today. I should be submitting another few figures to Curt's Analogue challenge tomorrow so with luck they should be available to view by Monday, when I am due to blog again.

I have now finished the figure for the entry fee to the painting challenge. But to show that before Curt gets to see it would of course be very wrong. I have been painting figures for the planned Arab Revolt game. Hence the picture of the book I have finished reading. The next background reading will either be the osprey book of the Ottoman army 1914-1919, or "a line in the sand". So as you can see I am moving this project forward. I will email pictures of these Arab Revolt figures to Curt tomorrow, as I am just finishing the bases now.

Instead let me give you an update of what I have started for the painting challenge. I have bitten the bullet and now started painting 60 Fuzzy Wuzzys and 14 Ansar on Camels. Don't get to excited they are 10mm (1/200ths Scale) so not too detailed and eye candy like. Until mid-day yesterday they were not in my painting queue. I had bought them about 5 years ago and they had sat in the blister pack ever since. As regular readers will know I have wanted to do some colonial wargames for a while and this just seemed to be an opportunity to kick start this old stalled project. They are coming on great guns and I would hope to have them finished by Friday if not sooner. I will then look to get the rest of the foot Ansar I have done.

At the same time I will need to paint up something for his "Villains" category. I have a stand by figure but I do plan a shopping trip on Monday to the local wargames store and do so hope I can find something more suitable for a Villain than what I have as a stand by. In an ideal world a Werewolf might be purchased or a vampire or some such nasty!

That's it for today as I am trying to get these Arab Revolt figures finished and sent off.

Sorry there is nothing so much to look at today. Trust me you never want to see my painting desk, it is in a continual stat of wreckage! So Until Monday take care, have fun and keep Painting away.

Cheers Clint

10mm Peasants Samurai Period

 This was my latest addition the Curt's Analogue Painting challenge. 32 Peasant archers. 16 for the Red army and 16 for the blue army. Which doubles my Peasant archers for both armies. Unless I get any more as a gift I cannot see me buying any more of them as I want the battles I have in my head to be more about Samurai and Ashigaru. That said I may get some other peasant figures maybe with polearms or hand weapons, perhaps even Arquibus but not with bows.

Anyway from the challenge point of view this has taken me to 144 points out of my target of 600 so about 1/4 of the way there in about 10 days. That being the case I am considering raising my total. I will hold fire on that just yet, and see how things go along. But you heard it hear first. I have already submitted my next entry, although I do not think it will gain very many points as it is just a single 28mm figure. But every little helps and as it is the Wild Bunch entry fee it did need to be done sooner rather than later.

On the Christmas pressie front I did not fair all that well unless you count socks in which case it was fantastic but for wargames, not so much. I did get three books and 3 decent paint brushes so it could have been much worse. So definitely no complaints. I am now going to crack on with painting my next entry with a view to submitting it on Friday.

Next update should be on Saturday. So until then take care have fun and maybe treat yourself in the Boxing-day Sales if Santa has not delivered exactly what you wanted. All the best Clint

Post Script: On Christmas Day I noticed that we clipped the 50k page views. So a big thank you to everyone for popping by. I do appreciate every page view and every comment form every member or lurker.

Non Combatants

 Christmas Eve, ahhh and relax. Well not quite, I will continue to paint and potter about, I have sent Curt my next entry to the challenge. In the meantime before he publishes them here is what I entered into the "Non-Combatant" bonus round.
The other entries can be found here (LINK) and I am the first to admit there are some exceptional entries. So good that I am staggered by the quality. Treat yourself and have a look you will not be disappointed!



Still I am sure they will be covered on their blogs and as you are good enough to be reading mine here is my entry. As you can see they are 3 Astronauts by Crooked Dice Miniatures. These three are unarmed and now having completed them I would be happy to paint some armed Astronauts. I think I have 6 or 9 hidden away in a box somewhere.







The base boards and buggies have appeared on my blog previously so I won't need to discuss them at this stage. If you want to know how to make the boards Click for link. Let's assume you don't want to know how to make a huge messy white elephant of a terrain board. But at least if you do want to know it is now in a handy place.









Anyway I decided to paint these three in white suits. I am not saying it was a mistake to do so but it did lead to a lot of photography issues. The white kept bleeding out into the background if a flash was used and was out of focus if no flash due to long exposure times. Still here are the best of the bunch. In the end I used a brown cardboard box as a background not glamorous but it did do the job.

I have put American flags on the sleeves (no not all the stripes and stars as my brushes and eyesight is not that good). If I do the armed ones I will introduce a few other nations as well. I will go for the most easy ones to paint just for simplicity but am open to suggestions.

I do find it interesting that one astronaut has removed her helmet while on the moon. I don't want you all to point out any "Capricorn One" conspiracy theories, I just went with how the figures were. So nothing underhand is implied.




I have used 4 colours of off white/grey and a highlight of pure white in order to get the correct feel to the fabric. Less layers just did not look right, I know others would have used more tones and some less this is just the level I was happy with. Black boots and Packs are very different from NASA who's are white, but white boots packs and belts did not look dramatic enough for the wargames table. Again the belts were not noticed if painted white so a nice dark red was used to make them pop out. The helmets might also have been white but I wanted yellow to contrast the blue of the visors.







Overall I am happy with how they have come out despite the issues mentioned with photography and will be willing to do the armed versions in the same way.  If you want me to paint the armed ones up as part of the challenge let me know and I will try to make it happen/fit them in. I make no garantees of course, but it is an option as I already have the figures. So making it happen is not too daunting a task , it will just mean a later start of another game idea.





 That is it for today, thanks for looking. I strongly hope that Santa brings you something that you want and that you and your family stay safe and warm. Take care all the best Clint

Seasons greetings

I would like to wish all the blog members as well as casual Browsers a Merry Christmas and a Happy New year. I would like to extend that greeting to all who are close to you as well.

The Picture to the right made me chuckle so I hope it puts a smile on your face as well. And let's all hope this does not happen to Santa!

Right That's the non wargaming bit done, now onto the important stuff. I am still painting away for Curt's Challenge and will be sending a few pics in today for his "Non Combatants" bonus round in the desperate attempt to get an extra 50 points. Needless to say until he publishes them on his blog I am reluctant to put any piccies up here.

Oh Ok just one and not one I will be sending him then.

It's a wide shot so you can't see any detail at all really. But at least you will get some strange idea. The buggy and the landscape have both been seen on this blog before so we are only really looking at the 2 Crooked Dice Astronauts in the foreground. They were a joy to paint and I thoroughly enjoyed doing them even if it was mostly shades of off white. (5 in all, but you can't tell with my photography!) In fact I must say they were a right pain to photograph as the white tended to bleed out no matter what type of background I put them on.
Elsewhere on the painting table I have some more 10mm Samurai figures which just need basing. No Pictures of them until they are ready but I will try to get them finished and set out to Curt by this time tomorrow. Only 32 this time, but it is still a substantial amount of points......well 32 points to be fair.

After that I am not sure what I will tackle next, Maybe some Arabs but not totally sure. Talking of Arabs lest time I posted I mentioned a hankering for some colonial wargaming. Well it would make sense to me to use these Arabs and do some Rif War or Earlier Beau Jest type colonial wargaming. I have already got the terrain in both 1/300th and 1/72nd scale so it kind of makes sense to me. Still enough of this waffling on the brushes are calling. So until next time, take care and see you all soon.

Best wishes Clint