My Kingdom for some Light

Before I start to drone on about my figures I must apologies for quality of the pictures. My daylight lamp stopped working (the bulb) and I have not been able to find a replacement so the pictures were taken using actual daylight only and are frankly terrible. 

The lack of lamp has also been why I have not posted much this month, without the lamp i'm restricted to painting when there is good local light (which has not been often). 

Miniatures wise I've just finished a range of 6mm stuff for my 51st Highland Division project. First up 6 Battalion command stands. I realised recently that whilst I had a Headquarters Company each Battalion had a further command section above this at the Battalion level. So the following 6 stands represent the actual Battalion commanders on the table top. Gaming wise these are probably not really necessary but what the hell it was a good reason for some small diorama stuff. 

I also painted 3 trucks which I was short of in one Battalion and 4 bren carriers which again I was short of in one Battalion. These are below.

Lastly I painted up the majority of the 17th Field Regiment Royal Artillery. The had, so far as I can see, been issued the new 25pdr guns by 1940 and with little information as to what specific regiments had towing wise I just went with the classic 25pdr towing vehicle which was also coming into service in 1940.

 The regiment comprised of two Batteries further divided down in to 3 troops each. Each troop had between 3 and 4 guns depending on issue. As with the scale elsewhere in my force I am representing 3 guns with 1 model so 1 gun is a troop and 3 is a battery. I decided to base the arty on separate bases to their towing equipment as bases big enough for both just looked too big. 

The individual vehicle and figure on the small stand in front of each troop is the troop commander who acted as the forward observer/spotter for the troop his XO commanding the guns themselves.

I need to do two battery command stands and a further Regiment command stand but the bulk of this is done. I'm not sure how much painting i'll get done in the next few weeks as work is packing me off to Birmingham. 

A little foliage

I'm sort of between 6mm projects at the moment as I wait for my latest Heroic and Ros order to put in an appearance. I did however have a lot of scatter material so thought I would have a crack at making some 6mm terrain, namely trees.

I made these using just scatter material and cocktail sticks cut down a bit. Honestly I'm rather pleased with the result, this was the first time doing this so I just based them on a big round base I had lying around. In future I'll cut some 3mm mdf or similar into a nice random shape and make some bigger groups of trees.

Above is my first attempt next to the finished article. I initially made the trees way way to small and based them on a 2p piece. It was immediately obvious that the trees were barely bigger than the figures so I restarted and the right hand base is the finished article.

Some shots below of the trees with my 6mm Bacus Naps, strictly speaking the trees are still a bit under size to be truly in scale. But to my eye they look right, and that's good enough for me!

Last Z standing

Just finished the last four of my Studio Miniatures metal zombies. Lovely sculpts which were a joy to paint. I particularly like the sculpting on the zombie scratching its head. The face is really nicely done.

 Went with a sort of 60's inspired purple dress for the zombie chick

 Typical IT/Engineer zombie with some top pocket pen action

 Another office like zombie

Surfer dude, love this sculpt

Waiting on my order from Heroic and Ro's at the moment which will allow me to start making my Infantry Battalion command stands and the first of the Divisions arty support. Once that's done (as a break from just infantry) I'm going to crack on and complete the last 3 infantry Battalions in one go just to get them done so I can then concentrate on all the fun Divisional support stuff! 

In non modelling related news my wife is now officially a Childrens Book illustrator represented by the Bright Group. She's in the process of illustrating her first bits of proper work. Two educational books for the american school system, which is sort of exciting to think that thousands of american kids will see her art. And some other commercial items for clients with Christmas in mind. 

Twice the fun

 Not a very exciting post today, I've spent the last week working on another two infantry Battalions for the 51st Highland Division. I've completed them as per the previous 4 Battalions that I've done and I'm pleased with the results. At this point I have 6 infantry Battalions completed which means I have two of the Divisions 3 Infantry Brigades finished.

I had intended to crack straight on having finished these and complete the last 3 infantry Battalions but I'm getting a bit bored as I've painted the same units countless times now. So instead I'll be working on the Battalions HQ stands and a couple of the Divisions support Battalions/Brigades, so more interesting things like arty etc.

Some more pics below of the two newly finished Battalions (1st Bn Gordon Highlanders and 5th Bn The Gordon Highlanders respectively)

Just a hint of Death

Finished another four of my Studio Miniatures zombies.I particularly enjoyed painting these four though I'm not all that happy with how the "biker" turned out. I wish I had been more adventurous with his bandanna, but my free hand skills are weak.

Highland Warriors

 Been a bit busy over the last few days, but had time to paint up my first stand of Napoleonic Warriors. I'm pretty pleased with the results myself, got another 3 to do and i've also just finished 4 more zombies which I'll blog about later or tomorrow.

Naked Death

 Another four zombies to add to my shuffling horde, again these are from Studio Miniatures metal range. A joy to paint, although with hindsight their skin looks a bit "fresh" as I didn't give them enough green/rotten skin highlights.

 I painted this guy with pink bunny slippers, because you know what middle aged man doesn't have a pair of pink bunny slippers. Sadly they came out red looking in the pictures.

 I'm really pleased with how the white/grey hair came out though.

Since doing mr "should really be dead" I've added a load of blood to his base so there's a trail from where he's been dragging himself along.

I did a quick count today and it turns out I have a veritable horde of 24 zombies painted, with another 8 on the painting table! I'm pretty surprised to be honest as it didn't feel like I had painted that many. I'm going to get more plastic and metal zombies from Studio Miniatures as they all look good together. I've also just finished basing 2 more Infantry Battalions for my 6mm project so I expect to slog through them soon!

I've been considering trying to create a 6mm zombie project as I could build a proper town and stuff in 6mm, but I suspect that zombies is a "period" to far for 6mm.

Tiny Hip

Those of you that follow my meandering blog may recall this post Hipster where I discussed the below picture and how I had an urge to create a diorama of it. Well the Hip in 28mm was going to be massively expensive so I decided to do it in 6mm.

Original Picture

My Diorama

Its not perfect, I don't like the helicopters blades at all and the chopper I've used is not an exact match (the picture is a more modern variant I believe) but I'm fairly happy with the results. The whole thing is a tad pointless as I don't game any modern africa in 6mm. I guess if I ever do this could be some sort of objective marker or something. 

I've got more Zombies on the paint desk at the moment as well as some more 6mm naps. 

Stumbling Dead

Spent the last couple of days painting the first of my metal Studio Miniatures Zombies. I've painted plenty of their plastic ones but never bought any of the metal ones before. I'm very impressed the sculpting and casting is extremely good and the figures are very detailed (disgustingly so in some cases).

I've really enjoyed painting these, got the other four from the set on the paint table at the moment, along with a couple of 6mm projects which I also hope to have finished today or tomorrow.

I've also realised I seem to be painting a very "white" collection of zombies. It just never occurs to me to paint anything other than Caucasian skin which is a bit odd. I don't really know how to paint darker skin tones so I'm going to scour the net for some tutorials and endeavor to diversify my zombie apocalypse!