A figure painting therapy project.

Monday, 4 February 2019

The French are based, onto the British!

I have completed the basing of the French army and must say I'm very pleased with the results, the ugly washers are gone (seemed like a good idea to begin with), buried under filler, stones and static grass. For the record and future reference, the basing method consisted of the following:

50/50 mix of powdered filler and PVA glue in medium sized plastic container.
Two tablespoons of earth shade pigment. Apply to bases by medium brush, fairly thickly.
Once dry, cat litter (ground to fine stone, size to taste), is added in patches and left to dry.
Shake off any loose stones, apply PVA and drop static grass, give it a quick tap, leave for a minute or so (while applying glue to the next base) then turn the base over and tap off any excess.
A watery wash of Burnt Umber is then applied to the stone areas and once dry drybrush with Buff.

I wanted a quite light finish to my bases as I feel it helps the figures to 'pop' a little more, I wanted some of the filler mix to be left showing. The cavalry bases did need a fair bit of building up due to the large bases and the washers, but they turned out well once finished. The units are all of three 30mm bases for a common frontage of 90mm which will require a 100m grid, be it square of hex. The guns are on large frontage bases of 45mm and I'll probably go with two bases per battery on a 90mm frontage once I get more guns. So the French army to date consists of the following in Commands & Colors terms:

3 x mounted generals.

8 x line infantry (12 figures per unit)
1 x Grenadier battalion
2 x light infantry units

2 x lancer light cavalry. (6 per unit)
1 x Chassuer light cavalry
1 x Hussars light cavalry

3 x Dragoons heavy cavalry
1 x Horse Grenadiers (Guard heavy cavalry).

3 guns and crews.

A grand total to date of 195 figures.

British heavy dragoons. Blue Moon 18mm figures as are all the figures.

The Frenchies!

Thursday, 31 January 2019

First bases and my old dice box.

I have now made a start on texturing the bases, having thought long and hard about just how I wanted them to look. The washers were ugly if functional, and detracted from the painting so they had to be covered up. I have gone back to basics here (Old School?) and cut all the bases by hand from 2mm card which was then sealed with PVA before sticking the figures down. A 50/50 mix of powdered filler and PVA was then mixed and colour added from here (click). The result was a light tone that reflected the Spanish earth shade of this region (Valencia). I then applied by brush (not too watery so it does not dry flat), and once dry added a few fine stones from cat litter ground down in my wife's pestle and mortar which made sure I thoroughly cleaned afterwards! This morning I applied static grass sparingly and the result is as you see below. I'm still pondering if I should slightly tone the stones down with sepia ink, but for now I'm not sure. I had in mind when doing this the basing style of Bill Brewer of the Rye Stamp and Hobby Shop, who had on display some of the first 15mm figures I saw with fully textured bases. I was a regular visitor there in my lunch breaks when I worked for IPC Magazines in Southwark and would cycle over to Peckham Rye to buy my Minifigs. he was always painting or basing when not serving, and I enjoyed watching him work.

I'm starting on the French cavalry, which now comprise 48 figures in 8 x 6 figure units, 3 dragoons, 2 lancers, 1 Hussars, 1 Chasseur and 1 Horse Grenadiers, the latter to represent the C&C 'Guard Cavalry' type.

I don't intend to remove casualties, but rather mark them using 6mm micro dice (see below), these are quite non intrusive when placed behind a unit only when a unit takes it's first hit.

On the subject of dice, I thought I would share a couple of pics of my old dice box, 30 years old now and given to me a present by my sister in law for my birthday. The brass plate in inscribed 'Lee's HQ' with my date of birth 19 January 1958, and it holds my collection of dice.

Light Dragoons, 2 x 6 figure units.

Royal Horse Artillery.

A battalion of Guards.

A battalion of foot, possibly the Buffs!

The bases are slightly darker than they appear here.

6mm micro dice - unit reduced to 3 'blocks'.

30 odd years old, dice box.

Thursday, 24 January 2019

At last an update..... 15mm Blue Moon armies.

It's been a long time since I went three weeks between updates to this blog. Fact is that I felt that I needed to post something other than images of small groups of figures representing a weeks painting so have held off until I have something more substantial to add here.

The Blue Moon 15mm Napoleonics continue to be my main focus, and I have been knocking them out around 30 to 40 figures per week, thus the collection has grown to close to 350 painted French and British. This is turn has raised the issue of the need to multi base them and what you see below is the French army based in 4 foot or 2 cavalry on hand cut 30mm square card bases, true old school style! These will all be textured with filler/glue mix before earth colouring and the addition of static grass. I have just started on the British, you can see some Light Dragoons and Guards below.

Unit sizes - these are flexible, but I have organised into units of 12 foot or 6 cavalry for the small table games I intend to play. This gives a better impression of mass I find, maybe 12 figures are not representative of a battalion, but then are 24 figures or even 30 figures? I still intend to use a (subtle) grid as I can't get my head around playing any other way these days, the frontage of the units is 90mm so a 100mm square grid will be required, which leaves plenty of depth for terrain features.

On the subject of terrain, I have now painted the items I ordered from Steve Clay at Battlescale. These are all 10mm scale but fit very will with 15mm figures. I gave them a generic paint job, maybe a touch Ballamory in my choice of render colours but pleasing to my eye. The bridges and artillery earthworks are very nice models too. As said before they are very robust resin castings - survived the journey to Spain in the post with no problems - and there is little if any sign of air bubbles that can spoil the look of a model building. They also remarkably inexpensive in the days of costly MDF kits, excellent as they may be, so well worth a look by any wargamer.

My copy of Bob Cordery's latest book 'The Portable Napoleonic Wargame' arrived yesterday and I hope to start reading it later today. I really like Bob's choice of cover picture as it very evocative of Wargame books of the Seventies and works well with the solid bright red frame.

So next I need to focus on basing and terrain, the end of the beginning is in sight and I'm remaining true to my concept of a small space (portable?) Napoleonic wargame system based on a subtly gridded board, albeit one that has outgrown the original C&C board idea.The board will now be 3' x 4' and sit comfortably on my dining table It's coming together slowly but surely, I don't plan huge armies, just up to 20 elements per side, and with the French and British about done I'm turning my attention next to a Prussian Army using the Blue Moon figures.