Not a bad weeks painting, 12 Hanoverian cavalry and 34 Turkish Janissaries all for Old John. Starting next on more of JBM's gas mask wearing Prussians - even the Uhlan horses are wearing them! - and Denzil Holles Regiment of Foot for Graham. Then it's back to more for John, more Ottomans mostly before I get started on the follow up box.
I still have quite a number of AB Napoleonic 18mm figures left in the drawer so as a means of using them I have decided to paint up British, French and Portuguese armies for use on the Commands & Colors game board with 1 figure replacing each block. I have absolutely no intention of painting up full units, entirely pointless, but I still like the idea of a game of commands & Colors now and then and the figures are perfect for it being very robust. In order to enable single figure handling I'm going to use a couple of coats of gloss varnish to get a more toy soldier style. A few examples below, note the bare round bases with colour coded edges, again gloss varnished. Not going to rush this, just a background project over the next couple of months or so and who knows, if I'm happy with it I may even go on and do the Prussians. I have no interest any longer in laying out big tables with lots of scenery but I do fancy having some shiny soldiers to use straight on the game board with just the terrain tiles supplied.
EDIT: Once again useful to view the photos large, slight scratch on the right shoulder of one of the spearmen corrected, also tidied up the tops of the officers turbans.
Those Ottomans are excellent and you’ve made a cracking job on matching the Officer. Lee you have a gaming itch 😁 this little side project may just satisfy it and is an excellent compromise and will bring some nice colour to the game system even 1 figure to a block is going to look nice
ReplyDeleteThanks Graham. I think you are right, there is just a small part of me that would still like to push a few shiny soldiers around a board so this could be it :)
DeleteThe Turkish officers are spot on. I imagine that painting a small set of napoleonics for C&C with the AB will spark some interest from others who may want to commission you to do the same for them ….. a possible painters side-line!
ReplyDeleteWell, you never know Norm and I'm quite keen to see how this will look, shiny AB's on that nice green board.
DeleteTurks are fantastic, nice work. How are you getting those saturated colours?
ReplyDeleteCheers FMB. I'm building up my colours, so for example the spearmen are Cavalry Brown (dark rich red) over the black undercoat, then flat red mixed about 50/50 with the CB and then a bit of Aramanth mixed into that and finally pure Aramanth. I'm sort of painting at speed so wet into wet which means the colours blend well.
DeleteIt is a good match... apart from the boots/shoes which are yellow on the original, I believe I read somewhere that yellow footwear was quite a Turkish 'thing' and that others (Poles, Muscovites, etc.) would because of that avoid that colour for footwear.
ReplyDeleteHi there Rob. Well you do have a valid point :) I had noticed the yellow shoes on some references that John supplied but had not realised it was kind of a national characteristic as you suggest. Upshot is I have been out with the WW2 Japanese Uniform again!
DeleteWOW!!!!! Ottoman officers as sample, are absolutely spot on, many thanks, Jannissieres look superb love the turbaned officers , wonderful painting, Ral Partha figures great addition to Ottoman army for Vienna 1683, now think i have more Ottomans than were at Vienna !!!compliments on Naps too, cheers and thanks, Old John
ReplyDeleteHeading your way on Monday John :) many thanks for all your support.
DeleteLee.
Painting for others means you get to work on periods and scales that you may not have considered if you were just doing it for yourself - though I still detect the faint glow of gaming embers waiting to be reignited. The complete faff of setting up a 6x4 table nearly put me off gaming, though as you know I’ve pretty much conquered that by recently going 2mm. These days my 15/18mm lads feel like giants. Not much faff to be had in setting up a 2ft square board…lol. Maybe you just need the right scale and the right level of involvement for you…and maybe you haven’t found that yet?
ReplyDeleteThis really suits me JBM, I'm addicted to painting soldiers so may as well paint for friends. There was a time (probably back in the 80's) when I had an 8 x 4 table consisting of 2' square plywood boards that had all the scenery kind of built in, roads, streams, hills, rolling ground, took me weeks to make and must have used a ton of filler, glue and sawdust, I remember finishing it and laying it all out and feeling an incredible sense of achievement. Problem is that nothing else since came close to that for me! No way would I have the enthusiasm to do something like that again. I can't wait to see what you do with the 2mm project.
DeleteSplendid looking Ottomans and lovely to see you doing Napoleonics again!
ReplyDeleteBest Iain