New hobbyspace opened!

Hey-ho. Finally, the biggest part of renovation is done. Our kitchen is 90% completed, so is the living room. I have now a completely new hobbyspace, much more storage space, a bright painting area besides the window plus a glass showcase so that my figures have no longer to hide inside a closed cabinet.

You cannot imagine how happy I am with that. I'm no longer depending on plastic boxes.

I'm still a little bit low on time - not much time for painting. I have currently the French hussars and some grenadier conversions (Kingdom of Holland) on my desk, hoping to get them finished within the next one or two weeks.

By the way, I finished the Tirailleurs du Po for my pre-Bardin uniform project:

Unfortunately, I couldn't find a picture of an officer for that unit, therefore it's only a group of three.

Oh - and, as promised, I'd like to present you some pictures of the 33rd French regiment in white uniforms. The grenadier is still missing, I know. I'm still not sure if I paint a bearskin or a shako version - I have pictures of both and I'm yet not sure which one I'd like to take.

 Oh my. These colours! X-D
Well - painting the kingdom of Holland infantry, I'm now facing pink and light purple, which also looks a little bit odd when combined with white. I hope to get these grenadiers ready soon - it will be another great display.

Tree awesomeness

In the beginning, I didn't even care about base making. Then I started to make bases in order to make my project units transportable and more presentable. Then I got into that competition thing, saw all those nice little dioramas and found it interesting to create such little vignettes as well.

One of the things that are vital for larger vignettes are trees and bushes. Two years ago, I watched a workshop on how to build trees on basis of a wire framework, held by Das_Dirk (http://dirchs-modellbauwelt.jimdo.com/) who is also a member of Bennos' forum. These trees looked great, but when I tried to make one, I ended up with... well... wire scrap. So I threw it all apart and concentrated on other things. At FIGZ 2012, I bought a single figure and spontaneously had a scenery in mind – unfortunately, this scenery would require a tree of some size. I looked around, but all ready-made trees available on the market looked either odd or where ridiculously expensive. With a little luck I managed to get an individual one – made by another great modeller whos' work can be seen on http://bookman-miniaturen.blogspot.de/2012/09/baume.html

Thanks to you, Bookman, I was able to build the scenery I had in mind, you'll see it at ISSC in Heiden (http://smallscaleconvention.jimdo.com/about-issc-and-where-to-be-found/) this September!

Well. So far, so good. As I told you, I bought some nice hussar miniatures at FIGZ in Arnhem recently. Again, I had a special scenery in my mind, which would require some smaller trees and bushes for the hussar scouts to hide between. Mmph. Tree building problem again.

Nothing against the arts of Bookman – but I found it way too expensive to have all the required plants to be made. I saw the cool trees that Ralf presented at FIGZ and suggested these to be a real solution. I tried to bribe the guys (Ralf and Dirk) to make some trees for me, but they refused. I suspect that they wanted me to do it all on my own. So that's where I started.

Following the advice of Ralf, I bought myself some things:

• NOCH 23100 Nature trees
• a small can of UHU sprayable glue
• a bag of sawdust, which I got for free at the local tool market

Price: around 20 Euro. Which doesn't seem bad for approximately 30 trees/bushes.

Look at the amount of basic material in the box:

So how does it work? Very fast and simple.

At first, I prepared two smaller nature tree parts, cut off lower branches, etc. Smaller trees usually don't have an expanded rootage and as the trees will be simply sticked into the basing material, it was not needed to create a rootage base at all.

First step: I brushed the trunks with wood glue and then dispersed sawdust upon them. Laying on my desk, they had time to dry out overnight. 

Next day, I carefully took them up with a plier and sprayed the glue upon the branches. The UHU spray glue works out fine – nearly pinpoint accuracy. I just dispersed some artificial foliage material onto the branches, blowed away the loose parts and – here you are, two small trees!

Well – I have to clean away the green parts that by mistake attached to the trunk and then drybrush the whole thing. Next time, I'm going to paint the trunks and branches before applying the foliage. That will certainly look much better, but for the start, I'm pretty happy with the results. Thanks for the inspiration, Ralf!

Thanks for a great FIGZ day!

This has been a really great day. Unfortunately, this years' FIGZ is now over, but it was - again - a pleasure to be there and meet so many nice hobbyists. My special dedication goes out to Remco and Benno from http://www.bennosfiguresforum.com/ who - again - hosted a really good miniature event.

I put a lot of photos into the aftershow-threat at Bennos' forum: http://www.bennosfiguresforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=14096 where you can see pictures of other visitors as well (hopefully all people will have put their pictures into that section soon).
I've also posted there the pictures of all competition entries. Bad for me, the jury liked dwarfes and elves more then goats. MEH!

Well - no matter what, I said I'd paint a goat and I kept my word doing so. X-D
The figure is one that was left from the test sprues that Francesco (http://franznap.com/) gave me back at FIGZ 2012, a French lancer of the line. The goat is from the Pegasus farm set.

Thanks to Ralf, Dirk and Conny I learned some new things and will shortly start my very own tree-building experiments - the raw-materials are already ordered. I need to build a handful of trees in order to place my new figures between them:

French elite company hussars from ART miniatures. Finally, light infantry that deserves the name - being on scouting duty and not wavering sabres in that stupid full-charge-whatsoever-action. :-D
I have something really nice in mind, hopefully my limited diorama building abilities will do fine.

In some, I spend around 50 bucks on brushes, figures and coffee. Now ISSC Heiden will be my next event of this year. And I very luckily look forward towards FIGZ2014.
Time enough to prepare new beautiful things to exhibit. Which means: it's back to the brushes.

Oh - and don't forget stop eating hamburgers:

Ready for FIGZ

Okay, friends, followers, random visitors - it's about time.
Whoever is interested in small plastic guys and vehicles should come and visit FIGZ in Arnhem, the Netherlands, on Sunday the 2nd of June. Yes. That means NEXT SUNDAY!

Yay, I'm really anticipating for this event since days. It'll be great to meet all these great hobbyists I know from Bennos' figure forum. Great guys, great day - a whole day out with the boys, enjoying the marvellous works of other painters. I suspect that there will be lots of nice new painting work and a lot of real eyecandy to be seen.

Btw - I managed at least to bring some of the white/purple Frenchies onto a base, but it's not completely finished yet. Therefore, there's no picture before FIGZ and the people visiting the show will be the first to see those strange uniformed guys.
In the meantime, I have started to paint the tirailleurs du Po. Nice blue and white colours.

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to find out a belonging officers' uniform for them. Maybe some of my followers may help me?

Well - the box is filled with figures. I have my competition entry ready. I have some spare money for buying new equipment, perhaps a new figure or two and - of course - the limited special FIGZ figure 2013, created by the formidable Alex: http://www.bennosfiguresforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=13687

CU all at FIGZ!

(P.S.: and afterwards, I promise to post lots of photos and a post-FIGZ report for those who can't visit the event.  ;-))

FIGZ is getting closer!

Only a few days left until FIGZ 2013!

Just a reminder: FIGZ will take place in Arnhem, the Netherlands, on the 2nd of June.
Anyone who is interested in 1/72 figures, small miniature painting and modelling should consider to visit this nice little eent - it's worth the journey.

I'm quite happy that I have managed to finish another legacy - the 1st rgt. etranger (Tour d'Auvergne), which was one of the first things I started for my pre-Bardin uniform project. It started with two painted figures and stood in my cabinet for far too long.

Shortly before the FIGZ is going to start, I'm happy with having finished almost all of my units, except from the Baden guard grenadiers. The Italian guards&velites will be abandoned - I don't feel comfortable with the old results, I think that I can do better with that subject.
And for the 33rd - still under construction. ;-)

Next thing will be the Tirailleurs du Pô - because my wife said so. Must be the nice blue uniforms. ;-)

Back on plastic!

Yee-haaa! I found it! Finally! My camera is back!
Hurray, I'm back into picture business again. Well - the light was not the best today, but after weeks and weeks I was just too eager to bring the pictures of the recent painting work online.

Since the beginning of this year, I had been working on contributions for the forthcoming competitions at FIGZ and Heiden. Unfortunately, at the moment I only think that I will manage to bring up single figures for both events. Well. Nevertheless, I can't show them here at the moment.

I could possibly have finished the group build projects also, but I was far too much fascinated by the new research results for my pre-Bardin uniform project (http://zedsnappies.blogspot.de/2011/07/project-all-varieties-of-pre-1812.html).

For that reason, it was necessary to finish as many of the old stuff as possible in order to be able to start with the new things. Again, I had to see that figures painted more then one and a half year ago, look a wee bit strange in comparizon with the newer ones...

The first are early Carabiniers of the three light infantry regiments, Kingdom of Italy in 1809:

I especially like coloured vests of these guys. Plus the green uniforms - green is in my opinion the quickest-to-paint uniform colour of this period.

Additionally, I finished my setup of soldiers for the Hanoverian French legion:

The last missing figure was the officer. I experimented a little bit with static grass again - this time, the result looks quite nice, although I have not used that silly rattle-box or other devices for creating the static electricity effect - I just grinded the grass between my fingers onto the base, then put it upside down and knocked a bit onto the backside. Done.

Back to green. The next one is the completion of something quite old. A longer time ago, I painted a fusilier for the first (provisional) Croatian regiment.

In combination with yellow, the green looks even nicer, doesn't it? These guys required a lot of carving work on the shakos because in almost all cases, I had to carve off all shako insignia.

In regard to modifications, these folks were much easier to create, because they are basically standard voltigeur figures, representing early members of the 1st and 2nd regiment of foot velites of the Kingdom of Naples:

This is an 1808 outfit - a lot less splendid and spectacular then the later guard velites uniforms with bearskin caps and loads of golden laces. Nevertheless - a pre-Bardin uniform.

But who are these chaps? Any suggestion?

Hehe. What do you think from where these folks came?

The time is around 1809 - and they're Dutch!
A grenadier and a chasseur of the lifeguard grenadier regiment. I found them when I wondered why there was no "No.1" line infantry regiment in the army of the Kingdom of Holland. The reason is simple: regiment number one were the guards.

For a long time in this project, I kept my eyes on Frances' allies, it's special troops and foreign regiments. I never took much notice on the French army itself. I just thought that at the time I'm finished with the whole project, I'll paint a single bunch of French line infantrymen and that's it. But I was wrong.
In the meantime, I have not only discovered a wide range of different uniforms within the French core army itself (especially when it's about drummers' dresses, plume and epaulette colours, etc.) - I have also discovered that with a few modifications, this set works well for light infantry as well.

This one represents the 63rd line infantry regiment. More of them are about to follow, taken into account that creating French core infantry requires the smallest amount of modifications.

We will see if I'm about to finish the 33rd in their ridiculous white and purple uniforms until FIGZ. I have finished my setup of the 1st foreign regiment (tour d'Auvergne) yesterday, but the basing still has to be done, so I have not posted them here yet. As there are around two weeks left for basing work, I'm going to bring around 30 units to the bring-and-show at FIGZ for this project only.

FIGZ is near!

Hurry up, folks! It's only a few weeks left until FIGZ 2013. On June 2nd, wargamers and miniature painters can be stared at in Arnhem. And yeah, I'm really looking forward to it.

I still have some labels left to be printed. Unfortunately, the printer doesn't work as expected. Looks as if technology is not my friend these days. Guess what I still haven't found? Right. The **** camera.
Whatever. I'm prepared. Hehe.

Almost three weeks without a single brushstrike - my hobbyplace is a building lot right now because my wife thought it's about time to renovate our complete home. Well, it's itching in my fingers to finish the 33rd French regiment, but I suspect that I will not have it ready for FIGZ - perhaps until the ISSC in Heiden. We will see.

Fact is: I have something ready for the competitions at Arnhem and *giggle* Peter - without saying too much, it will have to do with goats. ;-)