Monthly Archives: December 2015

‘Tis The Season To Be Jolly!

Unfortunately, being jolly and the serious work of painting miniatures don’t always go together. Now that doesn’t mean that I’m not cheerful or happy when I’m painting – far from it! It’s just that after a couple of Jack Daniels or a glass of beer, my concentration seems to go along with any ability to paint between the lines! So if the socialising at this time of year gets in the way, so does the logistics of getting ready for Christmas. It seems that we have been on the Christmas countdown since October and things are now reaching crisis point. ‘Oh my God, it’s the 10th of December and we haven’t got our tree yet’ is the latest distraction and it’s difficult to slide off to the garage to do some painting when quite clearly there are more important things to do. Personally, I’d prefer to fit this Christmas malarkey around my hobby rather than the other way around but being a wargaming Grinch isn’t really an option, especially when the wife plays the Granddaughter card!

Napoleons Coach - brass trim added

Napoleons Coach – brass trim added

So the opening paragraph is really my apology for making very little progress with modelling and painting in general and Napoleons coach in particular. You can see from the shaky picture above that I have added the gold trim, painted the lights and the trunk at the rear of the coach. I’ve also repainted the green using Vallejo Reflective green although something has gone wrong with the wheels. Whether it is the different under coat or I’ve just picked up the wrong paint ( Jack Daniels effect), the rear wheels definitely look different to the rest of the coach.

Napoleons coach close up

Napoleons coach close up

So it’s back to the paint table and another coat of green. I’m also very tempted to paint the wooden Chassis green, just leaving the springs and metal work in black. Of course the real difference will come when I start the shading and highlighting. A dry brush over the main colours followed by a light ink wash will help. However, I think that what is really needed, is a good solid session of at least half a day working on the coach rather than the odd 15minutes here and there. On that basis, I cant see Napoleon in his coach this side of Christmas, so the good news is that it may be sometime before the next Coach blog article….

Slow Coach…

With all the time preparing and fighting the Battle of Bitteburg, my painting time has been somewhat curtailed. It’s also that time of year when the pressure is on to get ready for Christmas a month in advance of the actual event! To be fair, some of this is driven by family get togethers, when presents are exchanged early, whilst socialising and catching up. The net result is that very little progress has been made with my various modelling projects.

Horses for Napoleons Coach

Horses for Napoleons Coach

I have made some progress, though. The horses are nearly finished and I’ve started to paint the coach itself. I’ve decided to paint pure white horses for the coach, rather than greys. Just to make life difficult for myself, I’ve been layering the paint on to build depth of colour and highlights rather than my usual technique of ‘paint & wash’. So the horses were undercoated in Black, painted Light Grey, then Sky Grey and then Off White. I have used a Vallejo Light Grey wash over the mane and tail to bring out the texture. I then touched up the horses tack in Black, painted their eyes and decided that I had enough of painting them for the time being!

Off Side Horses

Off Side Horses

There is still much to do though. The hooves are black at the moment and these need to be painted either in a light brown or beige. The metal parts of the tack need to be picked out and the tack will need highlighting with a black grey to show the detail. I also need to do some more work on the faces, to add detail to the muzzles, nostrils & ears. Finally, I might add a bright white highlight to the horses. I’m deliberately going for a very bright stark look to the horses. I realise that they would in reality have muddy hooves & legs and I may yet add this but I wanted the horses to look over exaggerated in their pristine appearance, as though they were specially chosen to pull the Emperors coach.

The coach itself

The coach itself

As for the coach itself, I’ve started to paint this but I’m not happy with the shade of green. I’m using Vallejo flat Green but it looks too bright. I think that I will go back and repaint it in the darker Reflective Green shade. I’ve picked out the interior seats with a Red Black and used Saddle brown for the coach mans seat. The wheels are also painted green although I’ve experimented with a darker green for the front wheels. All this messing around has meant that I’m still a long way from finishing this project. I think that given a good long painting session rather than the odd half hour here and there I could get this done but with even more commitments looming for the Festive season, it will be a couple of weeks before I can even think about basing this project.