Downgrading

I'm really puzzled. I have had to downgrade myself.

You know - I started that pre-bardin uniform project quite a while ago and since months, I had some unfinished units standing in my cabinet. When I recently decided to finish these units, I faced a strange fact: my painting style has changed quite a lot during the last 15 months. Having a look at the older work of mine, I had to emulate an older, less detailed way of painting.

Strange fact. But I hope the difference is not too obvious. So here they are, finished at the end:
Naples light infantry fusiliers of all four regiments.

I have also finished the drummer for the Principality of Hannover legion, the last thing missing here is the officer:

My current list of started, but unfinished units contains:
- 1st Swiss regiment
- 1st French foreign regiment
- 1st Croatian infantry regiment
- Italian light infantry carabiniers

Regarding the Italians, I guess it's better to disband the guards and velites and do them all over again - if I paint the rest of these troops and put them together on the same base, they would look far too different from each other.

This teaches me a lesson: continue the things you've started until they are finished. ;-)

Time is of the essence

Remember the good old computer game 'Dungeon Master'?
If yes, you're something between 38 and 45 years old. ;-)

On one of the dungeon walls stood the motto 'Time is of the essence'.
This is what this posting is more or less all about.

Regular visitors of my blog know that I'm having a long-time project: the ambition to paint all possible units wearing the pre-Bardin French uniform. All on basis of a certain HaT figure set.
(http://zedsnappies.blogspot.de/2011/07/project-all-varieties-of-pre-1812.html)

During the Napoleonic period, besides of many units from all over Europe, the French army fielded four foreigners' regiments. One of them was the 2nd foreigners regiment, the so-called Isemburg regiment. The regiment itself is a very popular one (I've seen it painted many times), most presumably because of its' nice sky-blue uniforms. No question - I had to have them among my troops as well.

Usually, I paint one example of every sort of subcathegory (voltigeuer, chasseur, grenadier, a drummer and an officer). This time, I failed. Why? Because of time.
I simply discovered that you can't paint some sky-blue guys, put them onto a base and that's it. This may work for many different units, but not for this one, because their uniforms changed in an unusually high frequency during the Napoleonic period. In fact, there are four different possible varieties.

Here they are, marching through the years - Isemburg grenadiers. From left to right:
1805-1806 uniform, 1807-1808 uniform, 1809-1810 uniform and the green variant that was worn from 1811-1812.

I leave it up to you to find out the subtle and not-so-subtle differences. ;-)

Oh - they've got a backside as well:

The reason why I decided to paint the Isemburgers in this way (which will in fact result in four different vignettes of that sort) is simply because it shows perfectly how the uniforms changed through time. I think the optical effect works better as if I had made four different bases, each containing a full range of figures of the same temporal period. Or am I wrong with that suggestion? Just give me your feedback, please!

Enough of the grens (at least for now)

Hey folks!

Two weeks have passed since I made my last posting. I just wonder why 'round this time of the year, the weeks pass so quickly. Christmas is coming, can you feel it?

Okay. Painting all these wooden heads was quite profitable business - my mother-in-law sold a lot of these angel puppets and... brought me the next dozend of wooden balls. *sigh*

Gee - here comes another photo of finished work. I have finished a couple of the forthcoming HaT Spanish grenadiers for the early peninsula war. It's a group of four, all painted individually in the colours of a certain regiment. I hope you enjoy them:

And - once again - the more spectacular view: the backside of these guys, showing the individual markings on the grenadier mitra lapel:

The results are really terrific - it's a very special sort of item, even among the large number of colourful uniforms during the Napoleonic period.
I suppose the next thing will be to paint the action poses, but not for private collecting. I'll sell them on Ebay for a ridiculously high price to refinance my hobby - but I'm going to make a photo of them, of course. ;-)

But this will have to wait. For this moment, I'm fed up with painting Spaniards. I have a bunch of Russian hussars on my desk, there are some fine Schilling tin figures which I have started to paint, I'm wondering about the groundwork for a single figure contest contribution for next years' FIGZ and so on and so on...

...btw.: thanks for being so kind to give me an award, Gowan. I just didn't notice it for some days and now I'm feeling very honoured about it. Guess this deserves an own posting - I first must have a look to which great artists I'll like to give away the next round of awards. ;-)

P.S.: here I add the action poses, completely painted in colours of the Guadalajara line grenadiers. Just for not opening another topic for this set.

That's it for now. Because I have so many other things to do, I sent the light infantry figures to Peter from http://peterscave.blogspot.de/ in exchange for a couple of other figures that I needed more urgently.
May Peter do with them whatever he pleases - which will usually be a well done paintjob. ;-)

So what is my opinion about this set in the end? It's simply great stuff!
HaT has come up with a nice modelled set of figures that looks simply great when painted. The set could - as most MAC sets - benefit from containing more action or resting poses to allow a greater variety for the look of larger regiments, but that's all I have to 'complain' about.

No. I'm not becoming lazy.

At least I hope so.
I'm currently pretty busy in politics, which keeps me away from other things for some time. On the other hand, I had been busy painting angel heads.

No. I'm not kidding. Comical little faces painted on small wooden balls. Look here:

If anyone thinks that I've gone insane - they are for my mother-in-law. She tinkers little angel puppets and will sell them on a local christmas market. I should have run away when she asked me about painting 'a few faces'. Actually, she brought me a bag full of these wooden marbles.

I hope that she will sell them all. Then it will at least not have been a total waste of time spending evenings to paint all these comical faces. *yawn*

Well - luckily, there was enough time left for continuing my other projects. The Russian hussars are going on well, but I still believe I won't finish a single one of them until the beginnings of next year.
But of course I don't want to just bother you with a handful of wooden marbles. I have completed the first of the new HaT grenadiers. From the front, it doesn't look much spectacular:

But the colourful decorated  cap lapels make them very special in comparizon to other grenadiers of that period - every unit had a unique pattern.

Ah - I love them. The other marching guys will be painted in the colours of other regiments and then be placed side by side on a wooden base. I presume that this will look really great.

So there's more to come. Stay tuned - even if the time between my posts is sometimes very long. ;-)

Quick and not-so-quick

*yawn* Autumn. Feels like, doesn't it?
Well. Whatever.

I had to play a bit. Back at Heiden, I got a set of Zvezda Russian hussars. Formidable figures, yes - but painting hussars is so... time consuming. Especially because unlike the Prussian ones, these have detailed saddlecloth that requires to paint very fine lines. I suppose that this specific little project will cost me several months. Maybe it's going to be a work worth entering the competition at Heiden 2013, but it will certainly take a lot of time.

Therefore, as I said, I had to play a bit. Experiment conditions: complete a mounted rider in under 3 hours.  The result is a quick-painted Naples cuirassier:

Nothing spectacular, I know. But well enough for the gaming table and a little relief to see that I have finished something. Having a handful of long-run projects on the list now, I need something like that feeling every now and then. ;-)

Btw - I have finished that Dorsenne guy from the Strelets dismounted French staff set. It's the guy with the sceptical face on the right side of the picture. That's one of the figures which went on and off my desk for months until I finally had the nerves to finish that bloody golden stuff on the backside of the uniform.

Great figures. I still have 13 of them left for painting. Well. 2015 would be a good date for completing that set, wouldn't it? ;-D

Brand new! HaT Spanish grenadiers and light infantry (Peninsula war)

Yeee-ha! I got a little item letter from the USA this morning!

Thanks for the great support, Mr.D. - the Spaniards have landed right on my desk today. What does the envelope contain? Test shots of the forthcoming Spanish grenadiers and Spanish light infantry for the early stage of the Peninsula war!

I already got some sprues of the command set and line infantry which I presented you earlier on. Now I like to share with you these great new figures while they still are unpainted on the sprue:

As you can see, poses are more or less a standard issue. Plastic is, again, of medium flexibility, which is so far okay. Personally, I especially like the reloading grenadier a lot - and I find it quite funny that the grendier on guard looks exactly the same way as the convertion that I had made. :-D
The figures are of the same sculpting quality as we have seen on other MAC sets, with only a little flash to remove, especially at the mouldline. By the first look, I'm feeling very fine about them.

The people that saw me painting at the ISSC in Heiden may have noted that I had the light infantry command figures on my desk. I decided to paint them in the colours of the Barbastro light infantry regiment.

A more quick-painting oriented approach, I know. As the setup of light infantry figures shows a quite dynamic team of soldiers (except from the marching guy perhaps), I have decided to paint the soldiers in the colours of the same regiment and then arrange them in an action-oriented vignette. We will see.
For the grenadiers, I still don't know - I have a couple of nice pictures for different regiments, so I guess I'll paint them up in different dresses.

Which brings up the old dilemma again - now I have two diorama ideas, a single figure vignette in ground work stage, two single figure vignette concepts, a couple of great Schilling tin miniatures and a long-run project that suffers badly due to the fact that god ignores my request for prolonging the standard daytime to 48 hours. M-)

...did I mention that there's a complete Prussian foot army in my cabinet, waiting to be painted?

Franznap - mystery unveiled!

Hey folks!

I'm back from the small scale convention in Heiden (http://smallscaleconvention.jimdo.com/) - what a great day it was! You can see a lot of pictures of that show on http://www.bennosfiguresforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=12472, including a short report from me. Have a look at it - those pictures are worth a look.

Not only that I found enough time for painting and chatting with great miniature artists, I was also able to buy the figures for my next big painting projects - thanks to Thomas, who found the required hussars for me and to Mr.Schilling who now produces the French army on retreat from Moscow (see them on http://www.zinnfiguren-schilling.de/).

The SSC at Heiden is an event that hopefully will take place every year from now on - a well-balanced mixture of sellers and miniature artists where you can see much inspiring modelling and painting work in small scales. Really worth a visit. On the other hand, this means that the contributions for the painting&modelling contest were mostly masterclass. Well - it was impressive to see such great work and then notice my own humble paintworks standing among them. And this is the point where I have to give you some explanations and start doing some promotion.

Back at FIGZ in Arnheim, the magnificient sculpting artist Francesco Messori gave away some test sprues of his work to members of Bennos' figure forum - including me. By luck, I received a sprue of Naples staff officers and two sprues of French line lancers. In fact, Francesco has created some great figures (see more of his arts on www.franznap.com), but that special cast went wrong somehow - the temperature, the pressure... whatever the reason, the result was really not the best - the sprue, made out of a sort of resin, that became really brittly during the process, was a complete web of plastic. So freeing the figures required a sharp surgical scalpel, the loss of some blood and lots of patience.
Whatever. I did all the best that I could in order to set these beautifully sculpted figures free and then give them a good paintjob. Because of the lack of free time, it took me several weeks.

In addition, I could not post any photos of this work - because I wanted to put them into the competition in Heiden as I promised it to Francesco. But now the time has come. Ladies and gentlemen - I hereby present the incredibly beautiful figures of Franznap!

These are French line lancers. Many figures are casted with separate arms, which gives you the possibility to create a great variety of poses. I swapped one troopers' head with the bicorne-wearing version and positioned the soldier in front as if he is holding the lance for the sergeant who is currently mounting up the horse.

The complete set contains a lot more figures, all in different poses. So just take these pictures as an example how a diorama with the complete range of figures could look like.
Well - I did the best I could. For what was a 'terrible test shot' the result is very pleasing (although the competitors in this cathegory were much too strong for me. ;-) ).

The other set of which I received some figures, were the Naples staff officers. I would have loved to have more of them, you can bet. After a similar amount of carving, I decided to paint up a group of three and make a small vignette. Here's the result:

Among all military of the Napoleonic age, the uniforms of the Kingdom of Naples belonged to the most colourful and flamboyant ones. These figures are extraordinarily well sculpted - note the different body sizes. Most times, all figures within a set have all the same size, isn't it?
The complete set contains - as far as I know - ten different figures. You can see them on www.franznap.com in the section 'sculp&cast' under the subcathegory 'Neapolitan General staff'.
I can only say that research for correct uniforms and painting these figures was pure fun. And guess what?

I was lucky. Bronze medal in the cathegory historical single figure/vignette standard.
Francesco - consider your figures being award-winners.