Landscaping: a good start of 2014!

Hoi,

Let's start with wishing you all the best for 2014! If 2013 has been rather slow, progress in 2014 is off with a bang. I have managed to put some muck on the diorama modules. This is a mix of wall-plaster, white wood glue and modelling grit. 

This left the plates looking pretty much like this:

Not bad at all, but they had some unnatural straight lines made by my painter's knife during the application of the muck. Which I sanded off before finishing the plates with a layer of thick gloss varnish.

When all plates were supplied with some varnish, which I applied to make sure that the plaster-mixture is less sponge-like, one of the plates had dried enough for a test-layer of spraypaint. I am using Army painter Rat Fur for this and due to lighting problems it looks a lot more reddish in the pictures then it does in real life.

The whole lot drying in their cases:

For highlighting the plates I have obtained a pot of Valejo desert colour structure paint, which I am anxious to apply and see the result of but time is the enemy here!
  
That's it again for today's update!

Cheers Sander

Cazadores

Hoi,

A while ago I've posted pictures of the 60th Rifles skirmishers that will be forming the light infantry screen in front of my Allied 3rd brigade advancing on Thomieres division. Last week I managed to paint some more figures which will represent the 12th Portuguese Cazadores to accompany the 60th Light Bobs.

The brown uniform colour turned out a bit too bright, but I reckoned that since they had been in the field in summer for quite some time, their uniforms would have faded a lot by now. Another realisation dawned: I need to paint about 3000 figures for this dio; the level of painting detail has to come down a bit to enable me to do this within my lifetime.Seeing this, these figures are not my best work ever yet not my worst by far.

So another small step towards the end goal!

Cheers Sander

83rd Regiment of Foot

Hoi,

This time I am not even going to apologise for the long absence of posts here on this blog. I knew from the start that this project was going to be one for the long run. Most of my hobby-stuff ends up on the other blog, so for regular updates you should look over here.

That said work has not altogether been reduced to nil over here. In a recent bulk shipment I acquired a lot of British Peninsular Command sets from HäT and have been able to put together the set up for one of my Salamanca regiments.

The 83rd of Foot was amongst the second line brigade advancing upon Thomieres division with Pakenham's Fighting 3rd Division, well actually it was Picton's division but he was sick at the time of the battle. In my calculations the regiment (actual strength on the day was 319) should amount to 70 odd troops so I put these together on the table to see how it looked and well it looks like this:

Now a few things are not totally historically accurate, the formation is a bit off for the regulations of the day. The officers and nco's I've put behind the line should actually be interspersed amongst the ranks in between each company. The musicians should be put behind the line but I found it visually more attractive to put them together with the pioneers behind the mounted officers. But to limit the frontage of the regiment I have chosen to put them behind. In this regiment the companies are all about 8 man strong, as figures of the regiments involved varied greatly, form the huge 2 battalion 5th Regiment of Foot, counting 1210 actives on the day, up to the 3 companies of the 60th Rifles amounting 254 troops. It would be nicest if I would be able to adhere to the figures I have counted out but I guess I will be settling for less...

Cheers Sander

200 years!

Hoi,

It's rather a special day today: exactly 200 years ago the Battle of Salamanca took place! I'm a bit sorry that the diorama is not ready to commemorate this feat but hey you can't have it all!

Cheers Sander

An update: finally!

Hoi,

As usual progress on the "Big Project" has been tiresomely slow! But I did find time to finish some of the 60th Rifles awaiting on my desk. Since my last post I have realised I do not need quite that much figures as I'd intended at first so I decided these to be the last Rifles I'd paint for the dio, excepting the officer which I still have to do. The remaining 10 or so Rifles I've prepared will be painted as Cazadores.

Here are the pictures of the lads. The other batch had grey trousers these rankers wear brown ones.

Here they're still mounted on sticks for ease of painting. I'll cut them off soon, but leave a little wire attached to the feet in order to secure them to the modules firmly.

Cheers Sander

Doing the numbers...

Hoi,

A while ago I laid out the modules in my table again, and just to try out how it looked I took some HäT Peninsular British and set them on the board where they will end up in time for real. This made me realise that I have made a startling mistake in the first place: my ground-scale and figure-ratio are not compatible! I had planned the first British brigade to have regiments of about 250 figures each, after putting figures on the board this showed that I can have regiments of about 40 figures instead!

This means I will have to do the numbers all over again. But on the bright side is the notion that I will be able to finish earlier since I have to do less figures.

Cheers Sander

2012 and all that!

Hoi,

Yes yes I know: I have been neglecting this blog immensely last year! This came to be because I hold the opinion that it is better not to overflow a blog with nonsense posts (like this one) and rather update it with real news. So 2012, the 200 year Jubilee of the Battle of Los Arapiles has come round and I should at least get something done on the diorama before the year's end. Some friends suggested I'd get the entire work done this year to celebrate but that  won't work since I'd rather have quality then a job done too fast and therefore badly. Besides there's the problem regarding the French- and Portuguese infantry miniatures or rather the lack there of as described elsewhere in this blog. At least HäT have announced they have picked up work on the British Peninsular Light- and Heavy Cavalry which is great in any case.

So we come upon my New Years Resolutions for 2012. I'd like to divide this in two types of resolutions: first the goals I really have set myself to actually fulfil for this year:
- painting the remaining skirmishers of the 60th Rifles still sitting on my workbench.
- creating the groundwork/ terrain on the modules so as to make them ready for the placement of the figures.

second up are the resolutions I would like to finish but I realise I might not actually get them done.
- paint up some of the first line British regiments
- paint up some of the French train of equipage that I want to accompany the marching columns including the artillery that supported Thomiéres Division.

Oh well we'll see how much I'll get done in real life :-)

As always I'll keep you posted and in the meantime you're invited to see what's distracting me on the other blog!

Cheers Sander