Recent painting

I enjoy Easter and the Easter Season. I enjoy the worship services of Holy Week and I find them quite meaningful. I do get tired because there is a lot to do and plan for during this time. So I don't paint much and what I do goes slowly.

I did get to paint a little lately. I even finished a long term project of some 25mm ACW troops. I had made an order from RAFM in Cambridge, ON. That's really quite local. They brought the figs to Hot Lead, a convention for Southwestern Ontario, and made good very quickly on a small mistake they made. I like the figures and many of their other ranges are quite fine as well.

My latest rendition of the 54th Pennsylvania Volunteer Regiment
They were recruited in and around Lehigh County in Pennsylvania. The town band I played with for 16 years -
The Macungie Band - had volunteered as the band of this regiment at the beginning of the war for a 6 month enlistment.

The command stand including an officer, a First Sergeant with the national flag, a soldier
with the regimental flag, and a drummer.

A better view of the flags.
I had intended to use my computer's printer to make better flags, but the coloured ink has crapped out and  printed
red as a sort of pink. The flags that are included in the box of Perry Zouaves is not correct. The national flag only has
eleven stripes! So I fell back to painting my own flags by hand.

Flags and troopers

All the figures are RAFM. They are nicely moulded and the firing figure and the kneeling figure
without the pack have separate heads. The ARE true 25's and so look a bit smaller next to some others.

I use commercial acrylic paints and ink the finished figs with a watered down ink.
I think the colours - with certain exceptions - are quite true. The blue of the coats is
called "Blue Velvet" and is very, very dark, far darker that the same company's "Navy Blue."

The group I play with is converting our rather large personal stocks of ACW 25's to Black Powder basing. We'd been doing a "home-brewed" skirmish game with singly mounted figs. I worked slowly, one base at a time. Probably not the best way, but what I could do under the time constraints.

Another short term and amusing project involved some Peter Pig ACW 15's I've had in back-stock for a long time.

Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln

The finished couple

After I took the photo, I touched up the spots where the primer coat showed through.
I don't generally ink my 15's, but a little might help Mary look a little less ghostly.

The 54th PA on a photo trestle.

More to come before too long. Quite a few things have been going on.

Some Christmas events and gifts

December was a busy month for me. Advent and the Christmas season can be over-whelming in a number of ways. We also had some really cold weather with the associated travel issues. In any event, I survived and here I am, wanting to blog again.

I took some mediocre photos of some of the things I've been painting and I thought I'd share them. (This is the blog equivalent of dumping my virtual trash basket into your living room. Still, you'd do it to me.)

We ran into a company in the UK called Bad Squddo Games, which specializes in "realistic" female miniature figurines, marketed by a number of manufacturers. Chain mail bikinis and skin-tight cat suits are not to be found there. Both my wife, Beth and my daughter, Katie - both gamers - thought some of those would be great. My son, Rob also got some female Vikings, some of whom bear a great resemblance to the female characters in the TV show "Vikings." They're on his painting table now.

First, a gift for my wife, one half of Star Trek: TNG's Duras Sisters, Lursa and B'Etor.

And the other half.

And a body guard with a bat'leth. Much more classic than the disruptors carried by the other figures.

These were fun figures to paint and turned out pretty well. Beth made suggestions
as to the painting schemes. The figures even depicted the famous (or infamous)
"Klingon Kleavage."

Katie's figures were WWII female Soviet snipers. The standing set of snipers was
not completed in time for the photo session. There's a shooter and a spotter in each set,
both in camouflage cape and pilotka forage cap.

The Mosin-Nagant scoped rifle really does look rather nice.
The figures are smaller than male figures but are not overly petite.

I also -selfishly- painted some figures for myself.

One of my Christmas presents was a box of Gripping Beast Plastic Late Roman figures.
I opted to paint them as legionaries, but a white tunic paint job would be right for Auxila.
They are quite nice and glue together very nicely.

The legionary spearman of  Legion palatinae Pannoniciani seniores.
(Pray pardon me if my Latin is off.)

A bucinator of the same unit.

Lastly, a centurio or officer of that legion.
I hope to make a Saga warband  of these because I've heard that rules are coming out for that.

WWII Polish cavalry bugler by Warlord Miniatures.
Their use in the Polish campaign as mounted infantry is a minor fascination for me.

Then some older figures I've gotten around to painting.

A werewolf.
I don't know where I got him, which manufacturer made him, or what I'm going to do with him,
but I've painted him and he looks seriously troubled.

A regiment of the Union Iron Brigade of the West for the ACW.
15mm Old Glory figures.
I haven't decided what unit they are yet. I've got to check what I've already painted.
However, the garage is REALLY cold right now.

The regimental command stand.

Regiment Royal Pologne for my small French SYW contingent.
Essex miniatures obtained at a bring-and-buy...
... where bargains go to die.

Finally, my son, Rob and his dog, Atlas.
They live up in London, but were here for Christmas weekend.
A serious case of "puppy love."