Starting them young!

Some may recall that Grandson Oscar (Ozzy) had a brush in his hand aged two and this weekend one of his older sisters Lilly aged six stayed over so of course she wanted to paint something too! I prepared a plastic Warlord horse, squeezed some colours onto the wet palette and then just let Lilly do her thing. She decided on a Rainbow theme and once dry I got out the grass tufts etc to decorate the base. I must say it was a most enjoyable hour for both of us and Lilly has now taken her creation home for display.

Possibly a little heavy on the grass tufts :)

Finished another ECW batch for Graham and now onto some 2mm's for Geoff and 1/72nd Strelets Polish Winged Hussars for Old John alongside finishing off another Union brigade box for Noel.

As mentioned previously I now have a dedicated Facebook page for Advance the Colours, my commission painting service and would appreciate it if you could give it a like if you are a FB user (and I know lots of hobby friends steer clear of it!). I'm only using it to feature painted figures from over the years that get lost in the blog pages. To be honest I have as much work as I can comfortably handle now for probably the rest of the year so I'm not touting for more, rather just showing off stuff I'm proud of.

Advance the Colours.

Cheers,

Lee.

Back to some metals and DBA Hoplite army.

It's been a funny couple of weeks, really struggling to find any enthusiasm for the gaming side of the hobby whilst still enjoying the ability to paint lots of soldiers for those who do enjoy it! I really don't know what I would do if I wasn't able to paint. 

On the plus side though I have completed the 3mm Greeks army for DBA. A solid 8 elements of Hoplites plus 2 Psiloi (light archers and slingers) and 2 cavalry. I find the dense blocks of 'spears' really impressive, even in this scale and tried my best to represent some Greek shield designs.

I laid out the three Magister Militum armies together to see progress so far. I have two more on the go, Ancient Spanish (CeltIberian) and also a Gallic army for which I have been refurbishing the lovely chariots given to me by David Blair some time back. I really like the slightly 'larger' MM sculpts and the Gauls will feature lots of their lovely Warband figures so detailed that you can even see the horned helmets! This said I won't now be keeping the two armies by Osmy Odzial of Poland, fine little figures but smaller (!) than MM and will gradually replace them. 

On the commission front I'm quoting on a really interesting new project, something I really fancy taking on because it's not something I have painted before but was always interested in doing. I won't say too much beyond this as it's not confirmed at the moment but fingers crossed.

The big Gettysburg game planned in NZ for June has now been pushed back to September  so I will now be able to complete the full commission which was for 44 infantry battalions each of 60 figures and 21 guns and crews. I had been due to post what was completed this month but will now continue to paint a further four monthly batches of 300 figures.

For the next three weeks it's back to good old metal soldiers in four scales for Geoff, Graham, Simon and of course 'Old John'. I was very sad to be informed by John that the sculptor of the 1/72nd plastic Strelets range - who are of a course a Ukrainian company - had been killed fighting to defend his country. Having painted many hundreds of his sculpts I can only say what a huge talent has been lost to the hobby.