Happy Easter!

Can you believe it? It's Easter 2013 and we have snow outside!
I cannot remember there was any easter in my lifetime with snow, even if it's not very much snow.

In addition, my wife took away my camera and cannot remember where she has left it. Probably my baby son has stolen away the camera and put it into some secret place. As he has, for example, done with the bathroom keys some days ago. It took an hour to locate them and a strong magnet to get them out of their hiding place again - behind a commode with a 100litre aquarium on top of it.

Well. I have no photos for you today. ;-)

And that's quite a mess because I made some good progress with my pre-Bardin project recently. I finished the Naples guard velites I found on Histofig, finished Kingdom of Holland guard grenadier&jaeger, another 1809 Italian light infantry carabinier and a 1st provisional Croatian regiment grenadier. This sums up to a total of 95 finished figures for that project.

Okay - the bad news is that it leaves me with 190 figures still to be done.

I've just prepainted another three Croatians and five figures to be 'the real McCoy' - typical French line infantry. In fact, it looks like I'm quite 'in plan' when I look on the list of the things I defined as my 'painting goal' for 2013. This makes me feel quite good. I will probably also get done with those damn Russian hussars - with which I'm 'half way through' so to say. These chaps look really brilliant, but I must force myself to continue painting them every now and then because it's no real fun to paint hussars.

Hopefully, I'll make it to FIGZ in Arnhem this year. I've prepared a funny little vignette for the competitions and I also have something decorative for the multi-figure table (although it will certainly be no award-winner, but who cares?).

Prussia declares war on the French Empire!

On this very day, exactly 200 years ago, Prussia declared war on France. When you paint almost only figures from the Napoleonic period, you logically read books and articles about that time - therefore, dates like this are of more interest for you then they are for other people.

This year, 1813, marks the beginning of the so-called liberation war, the war which, after the whipeout of Napoleons grand army in Russia the winter before, would culminate in the battle of Leipzig and the road to Paris. This war, fought on the eastern side by the major allies Russia, Prussia, Austria and Sweden against Napoleon Bonaparte and his allies, marked the end of Napoleons reign over Europe.

Well... for me, it's going a bit so-so these days. With a little luck I was able to realise a little motive which might fit for this years' competitions at FIGZ - that means: if I find the time to go there, which would certainly be nice.

The other projects are evolving slower then intended. I still have only finished half the number of hussars that I need. Maybe it's because of these ohter figures on my desk... Kingdom of Holland guards, Naples chasseurs, Croatians... there are far too many units to be painted, aren't they?

Whatever. Today, it's figure trade show at Herne. I guess I'm going over just to have a look at what's new, look for some single figures and have a chat with some good guys. So hopefully, this is going to be a great day. Enjoy!

Another one for the statistics

And not one of the worse, I'd say!
So here's another update for my pre-Bardin-uniform-project (http://zedsnappies.blogspot.de/2011/07/project-all-varieties-of-pre-1812.html). This time I chose a German subject, voluntary hunters of the grand duchy of Wurzburg, 1814.

After googling around for quite a while, I'm a bit astonished that these chaps don't seem to be painted in 1/72 very often. Which is a shame. Not only that their dark green and black uniforms with light yellow piping looks really nice, they also have black leather straps which is not seen that often for that sort of uniform.

Well - I still must create the label. Apart from that, I'm pretty glad with the result.