Another Sunday - Another identical set

Here are the Prussians riding in front of four battalions of British foot which happen to live in the same box as the Prussian Curassiers. To the right are a couple of riflemen sniping some of Boney's officers!

I thought that when I finished the Guard Cavalry (Curassiers - without Curasses - go figure!) I would move on to other sets. But then in the back of my mind a had a niggling idea that there may have been other set in the basement -  a set that I bought when I was living in Hong Kong way back in '92. I went for a hunt on Monday after work and there in a box filled with odds and ends of years of on and off collecting - was a bag of figures of original Esci Prussian Curassiers. And it is these that I present to you now. I painted them as dragoons and according to my daughter they look better than the first ones I did last week.

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 ;)

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.