Tuesday, August 2, 2011

And now for something completely different....

After painting so many Napoleonics, needed a little break in variety. Found a website with pictures of some really nice 28mm Thirty Years War. And thought "I have to paint that....just smaller". This was a fun distraction and enjoyable to paint.




Sunday, July 31, 2011

Slow start picks up pace...

....so after doing some painting in April...May and June were ....completely unproductive painting wise. Though I did get a good start with my exercise routine and my work on converting an old 2nd Edition D&D campaign to the new 4th edition rules is coming along nicely (over 110 pages of material typed out).

July though was a vast improvement of getting some work done. I managed to paint 75 stands for Age of Eagles this past month, though short of the goal of 100 I set, but I feel confident that I'll hit that goal in August. Renewed interested in wargaming, and the fact that July was so F@*&ing hot here in Chicago, that even with central air I didn't want to leave my basement this past month.  (Plus giving up World of Warcraft didn't hurt either, its crack....stay away from MMOs.....at least until Star Wars comes out) So here we go.....

Sadly I didn't inherit my father's skill at photography,. because these photos really don't do the figures justice in my opinion.

Three Brigades of French Dragoons


The 9th, 8th, and 28th Dragoons


The 20th, 4th and 26th Dragoons


The "Pink Brigade", 14th, 16th, and 17th Dragoons


3rd Hussars


1st Cuirassier


The 13th, 14, and 28th Chasseurs a' Cheval


The 16th  and 22nd Chasseurs a' Cheval


The 3rd Young Guard Voltigeurs, in late war uniforms.


ABOVE: The Young Guard Flanquer-Chasseurs, with a unit of the Old Guard Marines attached

Close up of the Marines 


The Russian Elizabetgrad Hussars


NEXT TWO PHOTOS: The Russian Karkov and Tchernigov Dragoons (I forget which is which). I went with early war uniform for the Russian cavalry to give them more color with the horse furniture than the post 1807 ones.



The Russian Empress Cuirassier


Russian Cossacks. I went with more variety in color of their coats then simply dark blue, which I think gives the unit little more personality. 


Russian Division Commander


 ABOVE: Austrian Kaiser Cuirassier Regiment

Austrian Leichtenstein Hussars  Regiment


 An Austrian Grenadier Brigade. I don't know if the Grenadier Officers wore the "Black" coats of the Austrian Line infantry regiments, but I decided to go that route. But if I'm wrong please, someone let me know.


 Austrian Grenadiers from behind, showing off the back of the bearskin helmets


 Austrian Grenzer Brigade


 Close up of the Grenzer Leibstandarte. Another reason I prefer Heroics and Ros over Baccus miniatures and their huge photocopy paper flags. If you can't paint Madonna holding child on a 2mm flag, get out of painting 1/300 figures. (Yeah I'm a little snobbish when it comes to my H&Rs)


 Russian Pavlov Grenadiers, with 1797 pattern flag. (Looking at the picture I reallized I didn't finish painting the tips of the flags.....oops...)


 Two Prussian Westphalian Landwehr Brigades each with attached Schutzen battalion.


.....whew!.....well....not bad for one month. Still have about another...350 or so stands worth of Napoleonics to paint. Some of them have been sitting in bags since...ooohh......1989.....thats righ '89!!....(never really had a need to paint the Swedes, but...paint them I shall before buying any new figures).

.....although....those English Civil War figures have been tempting me........

Promise to update better.....really....

Shameless plug

Okay before I get to updating my painting progress. I promised to mention my Dad's photography website (well designed by my cousin Nicholas Dolinar). My father's black and white photos, featuring unique visions of shapes, textures and landscapes have been displayed in several galleries in Arizona and Georgia, and is participating in a photography contest in October (I promise to give more details, when I remember to ask for them).

http://mfhphoto.com/

<Hugs to my Dad>
Steve

Monday, April 4, 2011

1st Post

So I'm getting back into painting my 6mm once again.

For those who don't know (which I'm sure is 99.99% of you) I'm the "Kronos" member of the AoE yahoo group who designed the Spanish Ulcer scenarios in the files section. And while I had a lot of fun designing the scenarios I have in fact never played them. I had sold off my Napoleonic collection before hand after falling out of wargaming for awhile. After mulling it over, I'm trying to be more disciplined about my free time schedule and get back into painting once again.

As the main page says I don't have a major long term plan with painting my Napoleonic 6s, and what remains in my collection is a mess. So I just intend to paint little here little there and see what we come up with. Regardless of its disorganization I just want to paint these new Napoleonics as the best I've ever done. And I've come to discover I far more like using a black primer than the white I choose for most of painting career (sigh....another addition to regrets list). So here we go.


I haven't worked on a Blog for some time, so hopefully these pictures come through ok.

These three brigades are all thats left of French Ligne/Legere infantry. So that's number #1 on the shopping list for any future purchases after I finish painting the remaining figures. As with my Age of Honor Blog (which needs to updated badly ...another addition to the "to do list") I've gone with my home style of bases for mounting instead of the official one listed in the rules. I just find that the official ones don't work well with Heroic and Ros figures. You can remount figures to make it work to be sure, but I think it doesn't present as nice a visual as using the strips as they are. The Legere brigade was the 1st one painted and mounted and the two Ligne quickly followed. After comparing the Legere brigade to my Seven Years War infantry I realized the French H&R infantry arent as 'robust' as the 7YW ones, and gave a slight gap between the figures from stand to stand. To improve the look I decided to add one figure to each rank from now on. And as you can see the 12 figure per stand Ligne brigades compared to the 10 stand Legere does seem a little more impressive.


Close up of one the Ligne Brigades



All the British Cavalry I had left. Wish I had a steadier hand for this shot, but luckily the close ups came out a little better.


The Household Cavalry, I think some of my finest work. The 1st Regiment in the front rank and the Royal Regiment (Blues) in the second rank.


Heavy Cavalry Brigade, going from left to right, consisting of the 4th Dragoons, 5th Dragoon Guards and 3rd Dragoons.



Smaller Heavy Cavalry Brigade with the 3rd Dragoon Guards in the front and 1st Dragoons behind.


Light Cavalry made up of the 14th and 8th Light Dragoon regiments.


And some Portuguese Light Cavalry....sadly a little fuzzy....cause even with a less decorative uniform than their English allies a good paint job.

So that's it for right now.....Some Young guard cavalry, Guard artillery and French Dragoons await to be painted....hope to have them up here soon.

Steve