All thawed out

At last, all the snow that’s hit Wiltshire over the last week or two has melted away at the study here at BfK HQ is warm enough to work in again. And that means it’s been time to start my assault on some of Peter F’s finest figures with the putty and sculpting tools. So far I’ve picked out some figures that look well-suited to modifications and made a list of the painful indignities I’m going to inflict on them. Better still, a couple have already been on the operating table. Once I’ve got a critical mass of work completed, I’ll take some snaps and share more details with you.

While I’ve been shivering lately, I’ve also hoovered up links to a few more interesting and useful sites.

The first of these is Clarence Harrison’s new blog where he plans to recount the tale of building his collection of figures for playing the Republic to Empire ruleset. Clarence did the artwork and design layout for the rulebook so if anybody’s collection is worth watching grow, it’ll be his.

Next up is another painting blog, this time that belonging to Toby Thornton who paints for Artmaster Studio. Now that’s a commercial painting service so I have to quickly clarify that this isn’t a product endorsement slot. Rather, I like the cut of Toby’s painting jib and if you scroll down a few postings you’ll find some Foundry French artillery figures that he’s done very nicely. The only thing I’ve found a bit odd is his choice of the Foundry figures. If he can do such a good job, I wonder why he didn’t opt for more modern sculpts from the Perrys. Still, there’s a little nostalgia there for me because some of those French artillery crew figures were among the first I purchased when I returned to the hobby about ten years ago.

Lastly, we travel to Spain for another commercial painter with a wide range of tastes in different periods and scales. “Archiduque” Rafa is another painter who works commercially and looking at his work I can see a definite Spanish school emerging with notable stylistic similarities to my online friend Javi Gomez.

All three sites are well worth a browse for eye-candy and painting inspiriation and I’ll add them to the links in the right hand column when I get a spare moment or three. And talking of having time to post more – I’ve just acquired a copy of a secondhand book I’ve been hunting down for ages. It’s the Arms and Armour Press version of the Blandford title Uniforms of the Retreat from Moscow. Over the weekend I’ll aim to say more about this acquisition and, in particular, why I prize this paperback edition more highly than the original Blandford hardback.

And I’ll leave you tonight with a stop press announcement from Alan Perry, in case you haven’t seen it yet.

Home from Colours 2009

Uniforms of Waterloo (Blandford Press, London, 1974)

As I suspected, despite the title above, I was too tired to complete this post on Sunday evening. My feet are still aching from going up and down all the stairs in the venue! Something that isn’t aided by the fact that we did a four-hour family dog walk and blackberry picking outing on Saturday.

My overall impression of Colours this year is that attendance was slightly down but that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing – either for visitors or traders. The games and trade stands were easier to get at and more comfortable to stay at making for a more pleasant experience and, according to some traders I spoke to, encouraging more actual purchasing.

As usual, my companion around the show was Peter F. and the latest news from Calpe Towers is that the first moulds for Saxon artillery pieces have been made and I’ve now got a couple of these highly distinctive items in my possession. I’m too stretched to photograph them for you now but that delight will follow in due course. Peter’s also working on the Saxon grenadiers to complement the already released musketeers and then artillery crew will follow. The other photo-worthy item is Peter’s entry in the painting competition that came a creditable second in its class – I’ll have a nice picture of that for you soon too.

The demo games were of variable standard and there wasn’t much new or exciting to report from the trade stands yet, despite this lack of excitement, I still really enjoyed the day and picked up a couple of bits and pieces that I’d been after for a while or that had been recommended. I got some 100mm wire pikes for cutting down as landwehr cavalry lances; on Peter Royle’s recommendation via Peter F., I got yet another type of white paint to try (more of that on another occasion); and I acquired some very neat castings of wooden barrels and buckets from Antenociti’s Workshop – these are destined to grace some artillery and command bases.

I also learnt a lesson about striking while the iron is hot (or rather, failing to do so). I saw a second-hand copy of the Blandford Press book Uniforms of the Retreat from Moscow on one of the booksellers’ stands but rather than snaffle it there and then I opted to see what else I might find elsewhere and return later. Of course, the inevitable happened and another eagle-eyed shopper had purchased the book by the time I returned. Never mind, I was forced to console myself with a copy of Uniforms of Waterloo from the same publisher instead. While it’s true that these old Blandfords contain quite a few errors and modern research has superdeded them they are still useful and many of the colour plates are lovely little works of art.

So that brings to a close this year’s visits to wargaming shows for me and, as Autumn begins, I can turn attention to painting again on the cooler evenings. Plus I’ve got a weekend of sculpting and mould making lessons to look forward to at Calpe Towers in a few weeks time.