Important Arty Announcement

Those of you who have the gift of sight will have no doubt noticed the new banner link on the upper right of my blog, with a mysteriously similar name to my own.

My ever talented wife has setup an online shop for her prints and greetings cards. Currently just a very small range of cards and prints is being sold but a wider variety of items will become available in the future.

I would be very much obliged if you could click through and check out her shop, perhaps passing the details onto anyone you think might be in need of a greetings card or a print of original art work.

Equally if you click here you will find a link to my wife's website which shows a wider range of her art and design work. A link to the site is also on the right in my links list (obviously named) If you like the look of any of Natalie's art work or you have need of a freelance Designer, Illustrator and all round nice person please do feel free to drop her an email and she will be happy to answer any questions you may have.

Despite my obvious bias I should say she is a very talented illustrator and painter, and is equally skilled in creating digital designs and art work. So if you need flyers, business cards, menus, posters or anything designing keep her in mind.

Thanks for taking the time to look at this, and remember the product list will be updated in the future with a wider range of products.

Time for a tidy

 

So as the title suggested I felt it might be time to tidy up my now overrun and very messy modeling desk. I was finding the mess distracting and it was actually putting me off starting projects. Also as I work from home and this desk is right next to my actual work desk the mess was starting to spill over onto my job desk, and again was distracting me when working. 

The other catalyst was that on wandering past my wife's desk I was a tad embarrassed by how neat hers was by comparison (there's a picture below)

So as you can see the wife's desk is freakishly neat and I didn't "pose" the above picture at all. She was out at college and this is literally how she had left her desk. I guess that might be why she's the proper artist and I'm the amateur then! 

Part of the problem on my desk was that my paints were flowing across the desk like they had a bloody life of their own. A plan involving MDF was therefore hatched. I spent 20 minutes or so in the garage with a saw and the below was the result. 

Which when assembled (no glue or nails required) gave me a great little set of shelves. 

Have to say I'm quite pleased with myself as these are literally just slotted together and sitting on my desk I didn't have to glue or nail the bits together, or screw it to the wall or anything. It also means if or when the wife and I move again my shelf can be taken apart and come with me. 

As you can see the desk is now much tidier! 

In other news if anyone needs general colors to paint terrain (mud, dirt etc) then I recommend a range I found in Hobbycraft called "Basics" 118ml tube of brown paint (which can be watered down so it goes quite a long way) for £2.99. Good colour and coverage for painting terrain a dirt colour before applying flock etc. 

Sheep!

Now having just painted my unit of not the 95th Rifles for VBCW, I was going to get to suitable female figures to bring the unit up to 10 following the suggestion of my good friend Mr Barfield. These were not quite the ladies I had in mind!

The above 10 sheep are from Warlord and I bought to use in our VBCW game at Partizan in June, and as future table filler (i've always thought my table looked a bit devoid of wild life).

They were quite, simple and fun to paint. I have 9 on them split between 3 bases, and the last one on a single base. There are two reasons for this, firstly I only ordered 10 sheep as I was not sure what the casts would be like (very good as it happens) and having one base of four sheep and two of three sheep just didn't look right to me.

The second reason the 10th sheep ended up on a coin is I thought that if I ever run any Norman/Viking raiding type games I can have the bases in fields and the loose sheep as loot!

Anyway if you need some sheepy livestock for your games or something Warlord's are just the job.

95th Rifles (in a manner of speaking)

 

 For the last few days I have been painting up these rather nice figures from Mr Hicks shop MuttonChop. I have actually painted up four of these previously in a blue tone, but I didn't like it and never felt as though the paint job did the figures justice. So last week I stripped the blue paint off and repainted them as above.

These fine fellows are a small squad (under size at just 8 men) for my Very British Civil War royalist army.

They are the 95th Factory Rifles led by Mr S. Harp (cough) the factory owner.

I'm really pleased with how they turned out, and they have been squeezed into my modelling cabinet.

Below are some close up's of some of the figures. Who knows they might even make it onto the table top at our game at Partizan in June!

 Mr S.Harp himself.

 His foreman Patrick Harper

 Standard bearer, and Bugler (now there's some multi-tasking) the flag was wiped up on photoshop. I will probably change it at some point.

A couple of the riflemen, I'm really pleased with how their rifles turned out.

Hospital (with Figures) and brick Walls

At the request of a couple of people I have taken some pictures (or tried to at least) of a figure with the building so you get an idea of scale. As I mentioned yesterday my proper camera is on the blink at the moment and my back up camera is a bit crap. Hence the pictures are not of the highest quality. I also couldn't take a picture of the whole setup with figures because I just didn't have anywhere I could set it up and get enough light.

Anyway above there are a couple of shots with one of my figs by the main buildings doors and windows. The buildings are all built to the same scale so the figure will look the same with any of them. A couple of points to note the windows on this building (here and in reality) are big double size Victorian windows equally the door is the sort of external double sized porch thing you get on Victorian buildings.

Personally having looked at pictures of the actual building (Leicester General Hospital) I am satisfied that this is in scale compared to my figures. Photo's of the actual building show car's only coming half way up the windows, to give you an idea of how big they are in reality.

Another quick point to note the Figure is stood on a bit of MDF I had lying around as I will be building a grass/stone path thing which is the same thickness as the MDF the buildings, and a courtyard behind it.

The Other thing I have done today is sculpt a wall for casting by me at a later date. The wall is sculpted out of Fimo (white glittery Fimo at that) and needs cutting and sanding before I can cast it but my plan if this casts okay is to make corner units as well so I can cast my own country walls. Again sorry for the poor pictures but it was a struggle to photograph white Fimo.

Leicester Hospital Build: Finished

I've managed to finish this off over the last few days. The wife helped me to some little painting bits which covered up the white bits of foam board that had not been fully covered by texture. I'm really pleased with how the buildings have turned out. The windows and doors that the wife made really make this look great in my opinion.

I'm sorry the pictures are a bit out of focus, my main camera has run out of battery, or is broken I can't decide which, and what with the crappy light in the house today my back up camera struggled a bit.

I'm now going to make a bit of driveway or something to sit out the front of this, and a courtyard to sit behind this. Some more pictures of the buildings showing how modular they are and how they can be setup in different ways are below.