Whilst I am still very much involved with producing my own Medieval Naval force, It’s good to have a break in between projects. For me, this involves painting something from the ‘Lead pile’. Regular readers will know that I am somewhat obsessed with reducing the number of unpainted figures in the ‘heap’ and the one minor benefit of the recent lock downs has been that I have made some progress.
So whilst I was in a nautical mood, I decided to have a go at painting a small diorama that I had acquired years ago. It is the Moments in Miniature model of the Death of Nelson issued by Wargames Illustrated Magazine. It’s a lovely piece, well sculpted and includes a nice resin base. A deep dive into my back issues of Wargames Illustrated and I found the original article that accompanied the release of this piece. I simply copied the pictures that accompanied the article. Well, up to a point. The article was by the master painter, Matt Parkes and showed how to paint the model as though it was illuminated by yellow lantern light. That was too fancy for me. I just wanted to paint the piece for my cabinet!
I’m fairly pleased with the result, although I have received a number of comments regarding how ill Nelson looks. I guess the clue is in the name. Poor Nelson is not going to recover from his wounds!
I have also been steadily working through the Battlegames in Middle Earth magazine figures and I have now reached issue 23, having completed the Men of Gondor and Gimli, the Dwarf.
Which brings me back to the lead pile. I have decided that my lead pile consists of three categories of models.
- Models that I have acquired from friends who didn’t want them or through the business. They might come in useful one day but I had no real reason for having them other than I didn’t want to throw them away and I was too greedy/polite to refuse them.
- Models that are just excess to requirements. You know, you buy a box of 60 Infantry and only use 24 of them for a particular project and the rest go onto the pile.
- Models that I really liked and wanted to paint but didn’t fit into the particular project that I was working on at the time. Perhaps one day I would sit down and paint them.
Well, my focus now is on Category three. I’m not going to worry about category one any more, other than to sort them and either get rid of them or put them into deep storage. As for category two, it’s just an inevitable part of the hobby. You will always have spares and bits. They are now sorted by category and if I need a type of figure for a project, I’ll check my stash before I buy but I’m not going to worry about painting these until I need them.
So, Category three will get my attention. That is in between the painting and modelling that I need to do to complete my latest project. And when it comes to my latest project, I have resolved only to buy what I need and can paint in a reasonable time scale. In other words rather than buy a whole army that then sits there whilst I summon up the energy to get on with it, I’m just buying one or two units at a time and painting them before buying anything else.
Meanwhile, as you can see, my Medieval fleet is still growing, I’m going to add at least one more cog and some smaller row boats for support.
Which reminds me, I might just scratch build a great ship to lead my fleet in action…
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