Well actually, Woman Down! My wife, Julie has just had a Hip replacement and so I have been confined to domestic and nursing duties. It also means that we are missing both Julie and myself from the business at the moment. Fortunately, Hayley, Rob and Kevin are doing a great job holding the fort and keeping things running whilst I am away. However, I have found some time to sneak off to the garage when Julie has been resting to do some modelling, so some progress has been made with my various projects.
Sarissa Dark Age Stable
I have managed to finish another of the Sarissa Dark Age buildings for the village that will form the centre piece of my scenery when playing Saga. This building is the barn/stable J10, the third building in my collection. I have just one more building that I am keen to finish, the Grain store, although I am in no particular rush to do so. The method used to paint it was of course exactly the same as the previous buildings so that they all blend together.
Sarissa Dark age Grain Store awaiting its coat of daub!
I also have a Sarissa Dark age/Saxon church that I started work on some time ago but never actually completed. As usual, I decided that painting figures should take priority and so the Church was relegated to being in the background of many of my pictures but never quite was finished. Perhaps now is the time to get this project completed as this really will give me a nice little village for my warbands to fight over!
Dark Age Village – work in progress
As I hinted, the lure of painting figures is always a distraction for me and I have already strayed back to my beloved Napoleonics! To be fair, the figures in question were already part finished as I had painted them for an article that will appear in this months Wargames Illustrated ( issue 349 November). The article is entitled, the ‘Perils of Painting Portuguese’ and explains step by step, how I batch paint my Napoleonic infantry units. I was using the Warlord Games Portuguese boxed set and in order to complete the article I actually painted 24 figures to completion to illustrate the main article but also then painted a further 20 in various stages so that the reader could follow the painting process. These figures have been sitting on my work bench queue for some time and I thought that it would be a good idea to get them finished. The other prompt was that I had found some of the old Victrix Portuguese metal figures in the ‘Bring and Buy’ at the recent Derby war games show. There are some really nice Officer, ensign and musician figures, so I will be using these to complete my next Portuguese battalion.
Portuguese 23rd Regiment awaiting final highlight and basing!
As you can see the rank and file are now completed and just require basing. Incidentally, the goats are not mascots but will be living in the dark age barn!
Portuguese Command.
The picture above shows the Victrix Figures that I will be using for the Battalion command. I really like the fifer and it makes a change to have another musician present as well as the drummer. Musicians were of course a key part of the Battalion or Regimental organisation in most Napoleonic armies but the tendency is just to field drummers. Trent Miniatures make some very nice Musicians that will eventually find their way onto my paint table to flesh out my Waterloo collection! As ever, plenty to keep me busy, although, as mentioned above, my hobby time may be slightly curtailed over the next couple of weeks.