Feeling bookish?

Sneak peek at the cover of Javi Gomez’s forthcoming painting book.

I’d like to draw to your attention to a forthcoming volume from Pen and Sword Books. Javi Gomez, occasionally of this parish, has written a wargames figure painting book which is due for publication (as far as I can tell) in the third quarter of this year. The imaginatively titled Painting Wargaming Figures doesn’t yet show in the publisher’s Coming Soon page but other sources already have cover images and some blurb…

“Javier Gomez, a highly talented figure painter of long experience and excellent reputation, shares the secrets of his success in this accessible ‘how-to’ guide to painting miniatures. He takes the reader step-by-step through the whole process, from choice of materials (unlike other available guides it is not linked to any specific figure manufacturer) and preparation of the miniatures to basing and even advice on photographing the finished item. Techniques such as dry-brushing, ink-washing, shading and highlighting are all explained clearly with the help of step-by-step photographs and colour charts. Specific case studies tackle a variety of useful subjects across all periods, such as mixing realistic flesh tones for different races; painting horses; guns and limbers; Medieval heraldry; Napoleonic uniforms; WW2 and modern camouflage patterns. Javier also clearly explains how these techniques and processes can be applied to all the major wargaming scales, from 40mm down to 6mm. Whatever historical period (or Sci-fi/Fantasy) and whatever scale the reader is interested in, this book is an invaluable source of practical advice and inspiration.”

I’m a big fan of Javi’s painting style and I’m almost certain that this is £16.99 that I’ll be investing wisely. So, Javi, if you happen to read this, can you give us any inside information about the book?

Meanwhile, over at the Osprey Publishing blog, there’s an interesting piece entitled “What subjects should we revisit? We want to hear what you think!” Well, I could hardly resist an invitation like that, could I? It would almost be rude not to add my comments to the 20+ already there. Before you go there or read on here, take a moment to make your guesses about what suggestions I made.

Done? OK…

Award yourself zero points, if you guessed that I made Napoleonic suggestions – come on, even my wife and daughters would have got that much right 🙂 Ditto if you went for Prussians – I happen to think the Ospreys in this area don’t need much updating.

Award yourself one point if you guessed that I went for some Confederation of the Rhine stuff and give yourself a bonus of two more points if you correctly thought of Saxony.

Finally, for the big five point bonus, you will need to have come up with the slightly left-field answer of Italy. I’ve got an old second hand copy of the MAA on Napoleon’s Italian troops first published in the 1970s. While it’s been reprinted in a new livery since then, it’s fundamentally the same book inside the covers as that first edition.

How did you do? What suggestions would you make?

One good turn deserves another

Peter, Markus and Markus' new Bavarian book.

With all this disharmony over the Eurozone, I’m delighted to report that there’s at least one area in which Anglo-German relations remain on friendly terms: uniformology.

Over the last few months, I’ve been helping Peter Bunde with the English translations for his Brigade Uniform Plates. To be honest, Peter’s English is already very good indeed (far better than my German) but I think he finds it helpful to have a native English-speaker check things over to make the phrasing natural and use the correct English uniform terms. My recent credits include Plate 253: Westphalian Landwehr Cavalry and Plate 255: Elbe Landwehr Cavalry (among others) though all the credit really belongs to Peter for his extensive research.

In return for helping out, Peter has sent me a few plates as gifts but I was unprepared for the generous gift that arrived last week: a signed copy of Peter’s new book which he has co-written with Markus Gartner and Markus Stein. Die Bayerische Armee 1806-1813 is a follow-up to their earlier book about the Saxon Army that I wrote about back in 2010. This new volume is part of the same series and follows a very similar format. It’s packed with highly detailed and thoroughly researched information. Even if you can’t read the German text, there’s plenty to enjoy in the selection of illustrations. The vast majority are in full colour and include ones from noted historical uniformology sources, Peter’s own Brigade Uniform Plates and a couple of illustrations commissioned from Patrice Courcelle, including the front cover of the book itself.

This is probably the most useful 80 pages about the Napoleonic Bavarian army that you could ever hope to find and it compares very favourably against the similarly sized Osprey volume.

Osprey book vote

Over at Osprey Publishing, there’s one of their periodic book votes where people are invited to express their preference for which book they’d like to see published. One of the current candidates is a new Men-at-Arms book entitled “The Army of the Kingdom of Saxony 1810–13”. Let’s just say that it would make me and some friends of mine very happy if this particular suggestion were to get your support. Especially since it’s lagging behind in fourth place at the time of writing 😦

Sprechen Sie Deutsch?

Do you speak German? Or Russian? I’ve got material about the Saxon army in each of these languages that I’d like to get translated into English.

The German material is a couple of chapters of Hottenroth’s 1910 book Geschichte der sächsischen Fahnen und Standarten that regular BfK correspondent Andrew Brentall sent to me a while ago but I simply haven’t had time to work through it all myself. The Russian material is a few A4 pages from a magazine.

Now, I could, just about, manage the German myself but it would take a lot of effort and be a deep test of my memory of the language skills I learnt at school a very long time ago. And as for the Russian – well, I’ve no chance with that!

So if anybody is interested in the Saxon army and fancies a challenge, let me know. It’s not a huge amount of material and I’d be extremely grateful.