Got to have bad painting days ...Painting Challenge WIP (3)

To appreciate good ones! Well the picture really does sum it up for me today. Had a great day at the club on Sunday could not get my act together at all yesterday and today all that I am working at is going to slime. Ahh well sometimes it just happens. No big mistakes but lots of little ones.

20mm Vehicle for the Painting challenge bonus round is looking rougher than barbwire underpants I only got it on Sunday and Now I am going to have to strip it back and start again..... Not that I am a perfectionist but it is seriously rough at the moment and needs to be started again.

15mm PBI Halftracks now they are slowly getting there but I realise just how much extra work I need to do on them so they are not going to be ready this week. But at least the base green looks OK at this stage.

10mm The Sudan/Marhdist figures ran out of white primer while spraying these, I'll get some more tomorrow. Which means that only one side of them is primed. 10mm Samurai two of the figures have come off the base and pulled all the filler/texture with them and it then crumbled. They can and will be salvaged but it has put them back a day.

So all in all nothing to share today as everything I attempt is going wrong. Like I said nothing major but lots of little things. Stiull I am enjoying all the little cock ups today and I hope I can get them all out of the way in one go and then just crack on tomorrow!

I think I shall leave it for the rest of the day and go and do something constructive, like watching "Day of the Triffids" on DVD.

Thanks for popping by, all the best and feel free to laugh at me! (I am laughing at myself and not taking it seriously! Just one of those days.)

Cheers Clint

More Camel Riders.

I know you like to see a picture with the whole force and when I get to that stage I will show one. Today however I am not there. I will be picking up the next batch of figures for the planned Arab revolt game this afternoon. So until I get them prepped and painted here are the next 12, which doubles my force to 24 at the moment.

The Figures are  IT miniatures (link) and 20mm or 1/72nd scale. So for recreating the filmic (if not totally accurate) attack on the port of Aquaba they will very much look the part. There is a variety of different camel colours all with different saddle blankets and differently clothed Arabs. As I have only found 5 different poses of Arabs and 2 different Camel the diversity of clothing and blankets helps to give an irregular feel to the troops. Historically many of the riders would have been clad in the same colours but as a game I think it works better this way as I do not want them to look like a uniformed army.  We can see that more recently in the Arab spring a couple of years ago now. Many of the people involved were wearing jeans or tracksuit trousers and yet they all look individual and not in uniform. I daresay in the future someone will wargame the Arab Spring and in doing so will arrive at the same conclusion with regard to clothing as I have for the Arab Revolt of 1916-1918. But with "Technicals" as opposed to Camels!

So other than these I have started work on a few other things for Curt's painting Challenge. On Monday I shall start on my entry for the "Vehicle" Bonus round. I have had a couple of false starts on this already and decided yesterday to go in a slightly different direction. As such I have already started five 15mm US Halftracks for PBI. These will get done soon, but seem to be taking an age to do as well as needing 3 coats (so far) of paint. I am applying them thinly so as to preserve as much surface detail as possible.

I also have another unit of 10mm Samurai started and am re-basing my 10mm British colonials. There are only 10 bases of these so it will not take long, but as I am not painting anything they will not be submitted to the painting challenge.


Anyway folks have a great Sunday. I am off to the Club in a couple of hours so I should get an AAR out in the next few days. So until then stay warm, don't kick the dog and take care of yourselves. All the best Clint

More Villains.

 Well here are the things that I started for the Villains bonus round, but did not finish in time. No excuses I dithered and procrastinated and just did not get them done in time. So I finished them and sent the Pictures to Curt anyway a day after. Points wise It has made no difference as I did get the bonus points from the challenge for the Mexican Bandits. But these extra Villains are now finished so no point in not sharing them here.

First off we have an Artizan Designs Mexican Bandit. From the same pack as the other two (Banditos II). As the sculptor had given the figure frayed trousers I decided that he was not the most successful of bandits so gave him simple hat and trousers. I wanted to try out a new Green paint and for no other reason that became his shirt colour. I think he probably stole it from some where. The light blue scarf around his neck is mostly to inject a spot of brightness. I did consider a red scarf but went for the blue as it lifts the figure somewhat.


 Of all three bandits he really was the most fun to paint and has turned out to be my favourite by far. I am sure he will get some table top action in the near future.

Scanning down you will also notice the very last (at least for now) of my Wild West Zombies. These with the others have been very simple to paint. Just base colours and a couple of dark washes. In this case a heavy grey was and a dark brown was. Then just pick out a few details and they are all done.  Honestly they really have been that simple. I was surprised at the fact that people seemed to prefer them to the bandit, as they really were just so easy to paint and that I spent more time on the Mexican than all 4 of those put together. Still it is not my place to decide what others like or dislike and I was happy with each and every comment.

The analogue-hobbies painting challenge has been a fantastic incentive to get things done. It has meant I have spent at least an hour each and every day (except strangely Yesterday) painting prepping and basing figures. The results from all over the globe are impressive so I would recommend checking it regularly as there are several new posts each day.

That is where I will leave it today, thanks for popping by and I hope to see you again soon.

All the best Clint

Villains Bonus round

 Well the second bonus round has come and gone on the painting challenge. With some breath taking entries. which can be found HERE LINK. If you have not seen them I would seriously check them out and feel free to vote if you so choose.

I struggled to come up with a good Villain and did have a few option. I finally settled on two Mexican Bandits. I have since sent pics to Curt of 5 more Villains and they should be seen here soon. Well with luck.

Anyway these two miscreants are by Artizan from the Banditos II pack which I bought at Broadside in June last year.

I have the intention of passing the figure on the right to Fran ( Angry Lurker) as he was the first of the 600 club to break the target. I have yet to clear 400 points so jolly well done to him. But it does make me wonder if he should have set himself a higher target. Only time will tell as maybe he will do no more painting until the end of the challenge now.

Anyway 2 more in the wild west box and on to the next part of painting challenge. The next bonus round is of course "Vehicles" and Long time members will know that I have prepped some 15mm vehicles already for my PBI armies.

Ok that's it for today. Thanks for looking/reading at this and more again soon. I say soon as I am reliant on Curt putting things on his blog and then have to wait at least 24 hours. But I intend to blog again on Friday or Saturday at the very latest. So until then, take care and look after yourself.

All the best Clint

10mm Sudan Camel riders

 These 10mm Pendraken Camel Riders were submitted as part of the painting challenge and as such if you are following the challenge you will have already seen them. They have the same base frontage as they Fuzzy Wuzzy's I showed  2 days ago. One figure is on a round base. This one will act as a scout in "Patrols In the Sudan" and thus will be sent to discover any hidden forces in different terrain.  It allowed me to use all 15 figures in a pack with none spare.

The flag was the result of a quick Google search and then reduced in size and printed off. I think it adds to the troop quite dramatically.

I will be doing a load more 10mm Colonial troops over the coming months as I have really gotten into this project. That said I have submitted some 28mm figures for the latest painting round so I will be showing those next time. Elsewhere on the painting table I have the next batch of 20mm Arab revolt figures some 10mm Mounted Samurai and 7 more 28mm figures, some of which might be for one of the other bonus rounds.

The next bonus round is "vehicles" and I have some US 1/2 Tracks in 15mm prepped for this round and wanted for my PBI Games.

That's it for today, Thanks for popping by. Hope you found something of interest and with luck I should see you in a couple of day. Take care, have fun and look after those close to you.

All the best Clint

10mm Fuzzies!!

 And today hot from Curt's Painting challenge http://analogue-hobbies.blogspot.co.uk/ are my 10mm  Sudan Fuzzy Wuzzy's . There will be no mention of "liking it up 'em" or "not liking it up 'em" Unless you want to say it. For me it's to obvious and we all know as soon as they hit the wargames table some "Bright" spark will have to say it..... and on every other outing they get as well. Not that I mind anyone saying it of course.

Anyway there are 57 in all including the guy with the flag. (I have found the other missing 3 they were in the wrong bag). A very simple painting scheme, base colour, dark black/brown wash and a highlight on each. At 10mm that really is all they need as you rely on the mass of troops effect rather than picking out individuals. Overall I am happy with the results and as mentioned a few days ago a set of figures purchased about 5 years ago are now done based and ready for a game.

I still have about 115 Ansar on foot to do. Give me a little time and they will take a lick of paint. They will require slightly more work as I will have to add coloured patches to their clothes for the Mahdist effect! But that's in the future.

Coming up next in the painting challenge are 15 Camel riders for this project as well. So I will post them next time out.

After that we have the "Villains" bonus round and It will be a couple of Mexican Bandits. All Wild west games need Mexican Banditos. One of which will be given to the first of the 600 club to reach their goal. Looking link Angry Lurker Fran at this stage as he is less than 20 points away.

That's it fortoday, Need to do the finishing touches on the bandits and to get them photographed and sent to Curt on the hurry up.

All the best and take care chaps catch you all later.

WIP (2) Curt's Challenge.

 As my Fuzzy Wuzzy's have not been on Curt's blog http://analogue-hobbies.blogspot.co.uk/ for very long it would be wrong to show them just yet. feel free to click the link above and check them out, or wait a couple of days and I'll put them on here.

In the mean time here are a couple of work in progress shots to let you know what's coming up next. As ever I will work on what takes my fancy when I sit at the painting desk, so these may come in any order.

• 10mm Madist Camel riders
• 10mm Mounted Samurai with bows
• 28mm Mexican Bandits (Villains)
• 28mm Eotd Grave robbers (Villains)

It has struck me that in a wild west filmic setting Mexicans get a rough deal. They are either the victims or the Villains. With the exception of Zorro and Manolito from the High Chaparral there have been very few Mexican characters shown in a good light. So Mexican Bandits may well be the way I go for the Villain Bonus round on The Analogue Painting Challenge. Due on Sunday.

The alternative is of course to go for Burke and Hare the infamous Grave robbers, but I may save those for a later round when "Dead" are needed and they could make a nice little Vignette. Or maybe finish the last few Wild West Zombies!

Coming soon I will have to start my Deadzone figures as there will be a game soon and as yet I have only assembled one of the blighters, let alone wave a paintbrush anywhere near him! I am slipping behind. I also want to continue with the 10mm frenzy and get my Ansar and last few Samurai finished off.

So until next update. Cheers Guys and I hope this year is treating you as well as you deserve so far. All the best Clint.

Arab Revolt 1916-18 (1)

 Here are my first troops for the planned Arab Revolt game for Broadside in June 2014. It was clear as a club that we wanted to do something related to WW1 due to the centenary and also because Tim one of the club members has IT miniatures which makes 20mm WW1 figures. As a club we wanted to stay clear of the typical WW1 trench warfare. As I already had some 20mm scale boards for Afghanistan it was logical that we do something middle eastern based. The Terrain and architecture being similar if not exactly the same. Which is how we came by the idea of doing the Arab Revolt.

So here are the first few Arabs mounted on Camels. As mentioned above We will be using IT miniatures as much as possible partially for convenience and partly to help promote Tim's business. I have tried a practice run a few weeks ago of painting camels so this is my first production run. there are 10 mounted Arabs on 10 camels which should help to reinforce the basic look of the conflict. I will need to paint a minimum of 36 of these in total and maybe as many as 50 in order to get the correct impression of an Arab war party.  I have photographed them on one of the Afghanistan boards so that you may see them insitu and I suspect give a greater feel for how I want the game to turn out.

Here are the first batch though. They were painted as part of Curt's analogue Hobbies painting challenge and as such have earned me 80 points. I will be prepping and priming the next 12 later today. I will also be finishing the bases for the 57 Fuzzy Wuzzy's in 10mm  (I thought I had 60 but it turns out I can't count! or maybe 3 have wandered away and will return later.

In addition to these I may prep some Ansar again in 10mm. Without counting it look like I have about 100 of these and As I suspect they will be very straight forward to paint they might find themselves hurried up the painting queue. And Finally I was going to paint some Mexican gunfighters in 28mm for Curt's next Bonus round. Which is the Villain bonus round. I settled originally on Mexicans because other than Zorro I could not think of any heroic character in western films with them being either Bandits or peasants. Yesterday however I braved the rain and storms and visited Rochester and the independent wargames shop there. (I had run out of a certain paint colour). While there I also purchased a West Wind Empire of the Dead pack of figures that are suitably villainous, especially considering what I will use for the bonus round of dead figures! Nudge nudge wink wink.

That's it for today I should have blogged yesterday but these had not had sufficient resting time on Curt's blog so I am a day out! Enjoy today and have a great new year and I strongly hope that 2014 turns out to be a brilliant and fantastic year for you all.

Happy New Year Clint

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