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 ;)

Wet weather

The howitzer

12 pounder plus Guard Chasseur figure

Comparison of Italieri and Del Prado 

For the first time I painted a leopard blanket on a figure! Pretty cool really.

I managed to get the majority of my project finished over a couple of days. The weather in North Otago has been pretty patchy this year and this has resulted in quite a few hours at the dinner table in my mum's kitchen painting. None of the figures are display quality but I really had fun painting them and listening to documentaries on Youtube. Next job is to base the figures and do the final gluing of the equipment. 1/32 painting is really quite fun and actually quite a lot different from the massed ranks painting that I usually do. Who knows maybe I will do some more!

Work continues apace

I managed to torpedo our bike trip to Palmerston today by burning my front bicycle tyre on the exhaust of the van. Instead I ended up painting more of my artillery and having a walk to Moeraki with the girls. Here are some pictures of the progress so far. I am off to Dunedin today to take Josie to the airport. She is up to Auckland for a week to attend a computer programming camp at AUT. It will just be Tori,me and Nana for a week. Looks like I'll get a bit of painting done.

New Year - New Project

This year I have decided to do something a little different. Over the last few years I have painted 1/72  figures but this year things are going to change- at least in scale! This year I am going to embark on a project of painting 1/32 scale figures.

I have a couple of Italieri boxes of artillery which seem like might be within my meagre painting talent range. I am planning to base them as well - perhaps with a plastic casing for each model?

So here are the first batch of photos after a quick spray painting.  It was a pretty cursory paint just to help the main undercoat to adhere and to give the figures some better definition. I am planning to take these very slowly over the coming weeks. With Mari off to an Ashram in India for a month and me looking after the girls as well as getting back to work I don't think I'll have a lot of time. Still we will see how it goes.

Victor Nelson's

There are two toy shops in Oamaru which dominated my life when I was a kid. In the days when I collected 1/32 Airfix both of these shops stocked them. This was way back in the 1970 when one box cost a princely sum of $3.15. That sort of cash was far out of my league in those days so I had to wait for birthdays or Christmas before I could hope to get a box. It didn't stop me looking though. I can remember that every time we needed to head up to Oamaru (usually for Christmas provisions because we had a crib (bach for you NIers) in Hampden) I had to make a visit to both shops just to stare at the bounty which was out of my economic reach. Victor Nelson's especially used to have about 2 stacks of Airfic boxes behind the counter so that children without the cash had to stare and drool without being allowed to contact the boxes with their grubby hands.

Just this week I was back in Oamaru again, picking up Christmas provisions for my family and on a whim I ducked in to Victor Nelson's again.  It was like stepping back in time.  Bikes lined the aisles and there was a smell of new bike tyres and oil. Toys of all shapes and sizes lines the walls and off to the side was a sizable collection of  ----- model soldiers! I wandered over and found that they had obviously not been top sellers.  The sunlight had faded the front of them and the declining prices that they had been offered for sale dotted the boxes.  They had initially ranged from $50 for the 1/32 boxes and $17 for the 1//72 (unfortunately they were Italieri not Airfix!!!) Now they were all $5. I wondered what the 6 year old me would have thought if he had walked in to the shop and seen such a treasure.  Of course even at that price I would not have been able to buy any of them. Well, in memory of the little version of myself I bought his entire stock. I now have a piece of Victor Nelson's sitting up in Hampden at the crib probably never to be opened but stacked up just as they were when I was a poppet. I guess a lot of my motivation in life comes from actual and percieved deficits I had as a child but no matter what Freud would have said for me this was a victory at Christmas.

Arrival of the Del Prado Collection

Waiting for me at home when I got back from the office was my Christmas present! The courier company had performed wonders and had got my massive and gravitationally challenged box all the way from Whangarei (across the straight even with the Aratere out from the loss of a propeller!!) and down to Dunedin in the space of a day.

I do give myself a little credit for being a bit of a bargain spotter when it comes to auctions and I certainly wasn't disappointed by my latest purchase. The Del Prado Napoleon at War collection was 99.99% mint with only one figure missing part of a sabre.  Apparently, it had belonged to a Napoleonic enthusiast in Britain who had died and bequeathed it to the seller who was not such an enthusiast but had paid for it to be shipped to NZ. It had languished in this chap's house for years until his wife gave the order for it to be sold. Luckily for me he listed it on Trademe under a category which probably wouldn't have attracted the most views so I ended up being the only bidder.

So here I am with a lighter wallet yet a very heavy box full of figures and books. I thought I would photograph all of the figures but it seems someone has already done the job for me. Also in the box there were a few figures from the Napoleonic Cavalry range (something that I had not expected) I will now be on the lookout for this collection as well - although it is 120 figures and nearly double the price of the non-mounted range. I can wait for these. Half the fun of fishing is the wait!

Del Prado Napoleonic Figures

Well since I haven't been blogging for a while I thought I should announce that I am due to get a few Del Prado figures of the Napoleon at War series (Actually I bought the whole Series). When they arrive in a few weeks I'll blog about them. I think there are about 100 books coming with the series as well. I think these are based on the Osprey Men at Arms series so I should be able to give some comparisons as well..