Pre-holiday wrap-up

As of tomorrow night, I’m off on my holidays for two weeks so don’t expect much action here. By way of compensation, I thought I’d give you a few things to chew over in my absence.

Firstly, I’ve picked up on some stuff going on over at TAG. They’ve already started on a Richard Ansell scuplted range of Napoleonic Austrians which look nice from the pictures I’ve seen (pity they weren’t at Salute in the Spring for me to see these figures in the flesh). Now it sounds as though work has begun on some 1809 Saxons to complement the Austrians. In digging around to find out more I discovered the TAG Forum (another fine example of me being unable to see what’s right under my nose). If you register for this and go into the Napoleonic forum there’s quite a few treats in store including several work-in-progress shots on the sculpting for both the Austrian and Saxon ranges.

Meanwhile, a muckle big beastie is stirring north of the border (see, being married to a Scot means I know how to speak the lingo). Messrs. Imrie and Hilton have teamed up again and they’re in the throes of a new Napoleonic project that promises to be of epic proportions. Some early painting photos have appeared on Steve Dean’s forums but David and Barry have set up a sort of blog to document their progress in the League of Augburg site. At a 1:5 figure ratio, the size of some of the units will drain the blood from your faces - David is in the middle of painting one French battalion of over a hundred figures. Needless to say, I’ll be following this closely. To think I’m having trouble finishing a 30-odd figure unit!

Lastly, I just wanted to pick up on a couple of comments/requests:

@Phil (and others): it’s Summer hols for Calpe too. When we’re all back to normal in September I’ll bring you an update about the infamous vulcanizer problems and the 1813 Saxons. If things work out, I might even have a special photo-story posting to share.

@Simon: I haven’t forgotten your request about jaeger pictures. It’s just that life’s been hectic in the run-up to the holiday. What I hope to do is take some new pictures with the new camera using the lamp shade light box idea I mentioned recently.

If you’re in bonnie Scotland over the next two weeks, look and for me and say hello. Also, I’ll be at Colours 2008 next month but probably on the Saturday rather than the Sunday this year due to a social engagement diary clash.

UPDATE (8 Aug 2008): I knew there was something else I meant to mention. The latest Foundry e-mail newsletter has announced that they’ll be having an open day in the Autumn. No actual date has been sent yet but they are look for volunteers to bring along their own armies of Foundry models and put on games upin Nottingham, especially if you have forces for Foundry’s 1644 English Civil War rules or Medieval Warfare rules. Not Napoleonic, I know, but it might make a fun outing.

A better way to photograph minis?

I know, I know - been a bit quiet recently. Loads on at work and trying to clear the decks for the upcoming family Summer holiday.

That probably explains my slightly less than sane dalliance with a Web site called Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories. This site is a mine of crazy ideas and projects almost perfectly designed to appeal to the child inside every forty-something male. I urge you to take a tour round the site and enjoy some of the stuff they get up too like dalek robots made from pumpkins, weird lego models and a Star Wars Death Star made from a melon…

Bringing things back on topic, though, the reason for mentioning this site here is that there’s a neat article about making a light tent for photography from an Ikea lampshade. It looks like an ideal (not to mention cheap) set-up for getting the lighting right for taking pictures of miniatures. I think this is something I’ll try out at some point in the coming weeks - especially now that we’ve acquired a new (to us) digital SLR camera.

Black or white?

Another small update on progress. I’ve been following a thread on TMP about Prussian landwehr uniforms with some amusement. As usual, there seem to be several TMPers who are content to make categorical statements about things with little or no historical evidence to support their assertions. In this instance, there were some people prepared to state definitively that the straps for things like cartridge cases were white for the landwehr. Well, sorry, no…

We’re talking about poorly equipped militia units from a nation with sorry finances in a continent almost totally exhausted of all resources after 20-odd years of constant warfare. There’s no way that a regulation insisting on white staps could have been honoured. Equipment was begged, borrowed or stolen from where ever it could be found. And that meant straps were a mixture of colours. Yes sometimes white but far more often black. I’ve previously posted Knotel plates of Prussian landwehr here and the mixture of strapping colours can clearly be seen in them.

What’s this got to do with the current painting progress? Well, I was working on the figure shown here while this TMP thread was happening and, as you know, I’m striving for a campaign look with my Kurmark landwehr. I do actually want a mix of black and white straps so this chap has just happened to get white ones to offset the black the others painted so far have received. Other bits of progress on this figure include canvas coloured straps for his bags, completion of the footwear, trousers and litewka along with the now traditional muddying up of things. I think he’s coming along rather nicely.

Tell Osprey what you want

It’s always good to see a business be responsive to its customers wishes so I was pleased when I read on the Osprey Publishing blog that they can do short print runs of old out-of-print books. Better still, they want our opinions about which topics to go back and re-do, so don’t waste the opportunity to get your bids in.