It seems this gentleman doth paint too often...

Another lovely weekend in Eastern Otago. The weather packed up a little on Sunday but I did get the lawns mowed and the shopping done. I also managed to paint early war Prussian cuirassiers all the way to finished basing. Now apart from a box of French Infantry and Cavalry I really am out of Napoleonics to paint. I do have a box of Northern ACW artillery which I could have a go at...

Out in the sun porch which I call our Wintergarten because it sounds cooler! The camera picked up the box pretty well but not the figures.

A better version. Not sure if they are the prettiest figures which I have painted but still quite pleasing.

OMG Three Years Ago Today...

The Google NZ homepage had a little poppy at the bottom (which I thought had something to do with the 100 anniversary of WW1) but it marks 3 years since the Christchurch earthquake. Wow time flies.

I haven't been up to Christchurch since the earthquake (I was there the day before at an NZQA conference) so I am sure any future visit would be pretty spooky since most of the buildings in the centre of the city were torn down due to weakening. It is great how the South has recovered though. Canterbury house prices are rocketing and the rebuild is injecting millions into the economy. All up we are going far better than anyone would have expected.

Saturday Morning

No more to say....

Painting Italieri Mamelukes

For the past few weeks I have been painting a batch of Napoleonic Marmalukes,  I have seen the set around for a while but have avoided painting them because they do not fit well with the 1/72 scale although they purport to be of that scale. The only other set of Mamalukes out there on the market were from Hat and since they were some of their earlier products they weren't of the best quality. Anyway I sat down a few weeks ago and started the new project with a little trepidation.

One of the first problems I had was the lack of a clear painting guide. I trawled through my own resources first and found a reasonable if not a little too short description of the two versions of Mamelukes uniforms in Osprey's Napoleon's Guard Cavalry. After hunting online, I found that Osprey does indeed have a book which focuses on the Mamelukes - so that book will be on my birthday list.  In the end , I decided on a pre-1808 version of a uniform with a few changes of my own thrown in to reflect the vagaries of uniforms in the field. The end result? Well ,actually I was quite pleased although they are bigger they are also quite beautiful (IMHO).

2 Views of the new figures in their storage box. I counted last night and I have 23 such boxes tucked away around the house!

In terms of scale they seem to fit well with the Italieri British Hussars ----since they are both slightly over-scale! I have a few Esci Polish lancers and some Zvezda Imperial guard quartered with 92nd Rifles and AWI British light Cavalry.

Here they are in all their glory. These figures were really fun to paint!

My next project? Prussian heavy cavalry of the 1806 campaign seem to be calling me....  Maybe even some more 1/32 scale ;)