Meanwhile, in the background, this chap has been lurking waiting to be worked on towards the end of a few painting sessions where the right paint on the palette needs to be used up.
I really do like Mr Hicks' sculpting of this range and I hope that he will add to the number of mounted figures. Purists may moan that the harness around the saddle is not quite correct but some greenstuff around the strap over the horse's chest would change this into a bandolier and a sharp knife can easily remove the strap that goes around the horse's tail. It is good to see some clutter on the saddle. A Woodbine Wolseley headswap will allow these figures to serve in the Middle East.
190 figures painted up in the Mesopotamia project. Various scratchbuilds and conversions. But why? Why all this effort since December last year? The answer will be revealed at COLOURS 2016, Newbury Racecourse, Saturday 10th September.
The 190 figures painted up for this demonstration game will also be augmented by many many more and gunboats! All this is the brainchild of Adrian Shepherd. A Great War anniversary game to follow on from the excellent "Raid on Suez" put on at Vapnartak in 2015. I would like to thank Adrian for the inspiration that working on this project has given me. Although not a gamer myself, Adrian has dragooned me in to taking part at Colours. I had no choice, really, as Newbury is just a short hop down the A34! My inner-child is looking forward to seeing all the toys on the excellent table that Adrian has created. I have even bought an India Pattern sun helmet specifically to wear in the harsh conditions of tabletop Mespot.
These chaps are the WW1 Turkish cavalry produced by Forgotton Front Miniatures (found on the Miniature Figurines website). They are meant to be Lancers wearing arabic head dress, but here the right arms have been bent in and/or down and they will represent Ottoman "Dragoons". These are a bit of a "speed paint"as time is short and I need to wrap up the Mesopotamian painting so I can complete some early war German Infantry before the summer ends.
The horses for these chaps are being painted elsewhere.
The other three mounted packs will follow in due course.
Eagle-eyed regular visitors may notice a couple of subtle differences in these three figures. I have changed my palette for white european flesh. Having used the Foundry Expert Flesh set for a number of years I found it was time to replenish the three darkest shades. At £3.50 a pot plus shipping, the Foundry Paints are a bit steep price wise. So I thought it was time for a change. These chaps are done with the Scale 75 Scale Color (sic) flesh set. The Scale 75s taste different. Having had a major reorganisation of the painting station (or "studio" as a friend was kind enough to refer to it) most of my Foundry Paints have been retired to a storage drawer with the exception of a few trusty triads. I don't expect to be replacing these when they run out.
The re-organised painting station. I recently found an offcut of a piece of marble kitchen worktop in a skip. I asked nicely if I could have it and it now sits under the foam block. I now have a wipe clean surface to work on... that is a first.
I have also started NOT to paint eyes on certain figures. These WW2 Perry figures are some of the ranges onto which I will no longer paint eyes. I have had difficulty with some of the these recently, much to my own frustration, and I will be looking carefully at the quality of facial sculpting of other miniatures in future. My eyesight may be part of the issue here as well as some stiffness in the joints of my right hand. This has made me look around for pointers on how others paint faces and I must recommend the YouTube tutorials on the "Wargames, Soldiers and Strategy" YouTube Channel.
I have also started to use a wet palette. I think it gives a much smoother end result.
