Salamanca Day 2015

Hoi,

While I would love to show some progress on the project itself today in honour of the Anniversary of the Battle of Salamanca I will show you something else. Today's update brings you some painted HäT test-shots of the British Light Dragoons from the Peninsular War era. These are very nice figures with two of them having pegs instead of right arms which you can choose yourself from several available ones brandishing a variety of utensils like pistols swords and a bugle.

For these I chose the uniform of the 14th LD's with slightly orange-ish facings. Why this regiment? Well I couldn't decide what regiment to paint and than Fate kicked in because while reading Wellington's Military despatches I stumbled along the Duke mentioning a skirmish between the 14th and Massena's advance guard in 1810 somewhere along the Lines of Torres Vedras. So it was decided that I should depict the 14th and here they are.

Enjoy!

9 months have gone and passed...

Hoi,

As is the destiny of this blog it has taken me about 9 months before I have been able to get the project to the next level. The last two weeks I have  been off from work and thus I took out the diorama and gave the plates their final layers of paint. The paint used are two colours of Valejo textured paint. I started out with Brown Earth and dry-brushed it with Desert Sand.
Now I just have a few spots to touch up and than I will have to decide whether I want to put on a layer of gloss varnish to help protect the surface.

 Well without further ado, here are the pictures.

An overview of the entire table:

A look from the Allied left flank upon the French position:

A look from the French position (upon the hill) down to the Allied position:

The upper half of this picture shows the position of the British Artillery, upon the heights and in the lower left corner there will be a clash of French and Portuguese cavalry.

Cheers Sander 

Hoi,

Well July 22nd is the day that the Battle of Salamanca was fought in the year 1812. Followers of this blog concerning my "Big Project", the first phase of the battle is what I am trying to depict on a 1,50m x 1,50m diorama, will not be surprised by this commemorative post.

While progress is still very slow, I have decided to try and finish painting the groundwork plates this Summer. Anyway, I couldn't let slip this day without thinking about the day the battle itself was fought on. The other blog is far more active due to the fact I use it to showcase all my other hobby projects, yet Salamanca is never far from my mind....

Next phase: Priming!

The project is entering the next phase in it's development: priming of the plates! Some days ago the weather was finally good and dry enough for me to basecoat all the dio plates with Rat Fur primer from Armypainter. Sadly I had used up all my primer (3 spraycans!) with 1,5 plates still to go...
Oh well, I guess I need to go to the shop for a new one then ;-)

I took a lot of pictures but most are overexposed, so I only have 2 more or less decent ones to show you guys:

Cheers Sander

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