Ottomans, Villages and Bears

Some weekend painting was squeezed in between gardening and other such duties. More progress on the Ottomans, a Normandy farm complex in 6mm, and some 1/1200 planes for use in Shipwreck games.

Ottomans - starting to look the business

The General and his drummer

Spahis

1/1200 Su27, a Shackleton, Nimrod, Victor and others

Early Warning and a Bear

Normandy farm complex

Ottomans in Progress

Some time ago, (several years), I won a Venexia DBA Ottoman army in competition. The Venexia figures were originally supplied by Vexillia in the UK. (A plug here, Martin who runs Vexillia is an excellent bloke to do business with, prompt, responsive and extremely helpful).

The figures themselves are more like18mm than 15mm - so quite large, and most require assembly, not just spears and shields but also whole weapons arms and some figures such as archers are split at the waist. They have loads of character, and paint up well though.

On getting them home (again; some years ago), I assembled them, based and undercoated in black. Since then, they have just been sitting around, getting in the way. David Lawrence runs DBA competitions locally, and one of these, 'Landwaster' is coming up very soon. I wanted to bring a new army, as committing to bringing something new is a very good way to get myself motivated to paint something. The Ottomans fitted the bill. So here's the work in progress.

Four cavalry, four light horse, one artillery, two 'Psiloi' (light infantry) and one Janissary bow.

Progress is patchy - because I keep seeing other bits I should do, but it's steady. These guys should be ready by 17 November, and the big test at the Austrian Club.

Later I hope to expand them to a full size Ottoman army for DBMM. Vexillia no longer carries them, instead, Sergeant Major Miniatures in the US are now the only supplier I know of. I am looking at what I might need to add to the mix.

NWE British - now with added Decals..

An evening spent peering over teeny weeny tanks later... 

Essential equipment..   sharp scissors, very sharp knife, brush and tweezers.

So I grabbed my humbrol varnish and varnished the relevant bits on the model - scared myself with how shiney they were. Then used scissors to chop the GHQ sheet into the relevant bits, scored the parts between the decals (because they are printed on a single film) grabbed them with the tweezers, immersed in warmish water for maybe 10 seconds.

Then used a soft brush to pick them up and apply them, blunt tweezers to move them about. Applied Tamiya decal set, and when dry this morning, sprayed with an artists matt varnish.

Here's the results.

Command, Recce, 6lb AT, Mortars, FAO, and Cromwells,

SPG & Shermans

Front on.

I am pretty happy. I also took a graphite pencil and really marked up the paintwork, tracks and wear points on turrets and hatches. I am now considering whether to paint or use the GHQ decals for British armour.

Lead Audit - 9 months in

So a little banter between myself and Thomo the Lost via email, and the subject came up about how much stuff I had painted/ordered, especially with Brigade Models sale now on. expected any time now for Christmas

9 months in, and looking back through my orders for the year..  I wasn't as good as I thought. The tally was as follows:

Rules & Other stuff

Maurice + Cards

Airbrush & Compressor

1/48 scale F111 kit (does this even count?)

Shipwreck rules

Litko Markers

1/300 decals (British & German tanks)

Miniatures

Medieval German army (eBay) –  but at least it was all painted, so didn’t add to the lead pile

Lancashire Games Goths for DBMM (sale price ;-)

Navwar - 3 Fleets for Shipwreck (and gave one away)

TSS & Magister Militum - planes & helicopters for Shipwreck

5 packs of GHQ (but 4 of those were on special) - 24 AFV

13 packs of Essex Chinese (so my Sui can do duty as Early Tang)

Ok, so my 'no new lead' pledge has kind of faltered, but I really do think I am going pretty well.  

I have painted up 44 x 1/3000 scale naval vessels, plus aircraft, in 6mm, GHQ, 62 x Late War German vehicles, 47 x Late War British vehicles, accompanying infantry for both, a DBA Rajput army, finished up the DBMM Sui in January, (did some more in June).

The plan is to do a DBA Ottoman Turkish army using the Venexia figures I have lurking around undercoated for Landwaster in November, and try to get started on the Goths. Interspersed with this, I will also try to paint up a 1940 French battlegroup for BKCII.

Overall, nine months in, not as disciplined as I wanted, but not too bad, by my standards.

Panzer Grenadiers Part 2

I had posts noting that the camouflage was invisible in the previous pictures.. hopefully these are clearer.

Panzer Grenadiers - 6mm BKCII

In my last post, I started the process of painting some Panzer Grenadiers, and wanted to give the impression of an oak-leaf camouflage. In this scale, it's not easy, especially as I didn't want to spend an hour per figure. I thought I could get an impression by simply dabbing using an old stiff paintbrush. You can judge for yourself how successful it was. Personally, I think the brown I used was too dark for this scale, and looks almost black.

Comments, suggestions and criticisms welcomed... as always

BKCII Big Cats and a Cunning Plan

Well, some time ago, I posted a pic of some test paints I did of Late War German 6mm models for BKCII.

As part of my current clean up of stray lead, I managed to just about complete a BKCII battlegroup of British for North West Europe in less than a week. (I am just waiting for some decals to arrive).

In the spirit of a 'Battlegroup in a Week' challenge, (Yes, I know there is no actual challenge, but I challenged myself). I decided to go back to the Germans. Finished the basic paints, a wash, and basing of all the vehicles other than some Panzer Grenadier Sdkfz 251, so here they are:

The whole of the Battlegroup armour.

Big Cats on the prowl

More Big Cats

Panzer III

Hetzers and PzJg IV

And finally, made a start on some infantry. Now I thought that it wouldn't look right to have Late War German Heer in grey, so I have decided to attempt an oakleaf smock pattern. "In 6mm!" I hear you say - "utter madness!"

But in the immortal words of Baldrick, I have a cunning plan..  it involves, a very light base colour, virulent green dabbing with a very old, stiff and splayed brush, then a Devlan Mud wash..

Of course..  the smart move would have been to actually test this on an old figure, but no, that would be too sensible, so 9 platoons (bases) have received their undercoat and very light smock base coat.