Casualty basing

Three stages in basing the casualty figures.

I’ve not posted much from my own workbench lately so here’s a snapshot of the work in progress on basing the three Westphalian Landwehr casualties. I’m in the home straight but it still seems to be taking longer that I expected to get over the finishing line.

My customer supplied three 3mm thick circular plywood bases for these figures and you can see those in the picture above. I gloss and matt varnished the figures prior to gluing them to the bases and that’s the stage you can see in the leftmost figure. The next stage is to build up the basework to the level of the figures’ metal bases using putty. For this I use a mixture of green stuff and Sylmasta A+B putty. I find this mixture much easier to manipulate than pure green stuff. The middle figure has reached this stage.

After the putty has set, I apply a thin layer of slightly watered down PVA glue to the base and dip it into my tub of basing material. The core component on my basing material is N-gauge railway modelling ballast. This is a bit coarser than the sand that may wargamers use for basing and I prefer this texture. Along with that I dot around some bits and pieces of different sizes for variety. These are mostly other sizes of stone, the occasional piece of cat litter and sometimes a a small cork pellet. You can see this stage in the rightmost figure. Sometimes I need to a second selective coat of glue and ballast to fill in gaps. It’s important the let the first coat dry out thoroughly beforehand otherwise things can very very messy very quickly!

The fourth stage is paintwork. I’ll apply some darker earth tones across the base and paint the larger base elements (like the cat litter) before finishing off with some drybrushed coats of pale sandy colours. After that, I just need to glue the caps and muskets in place. Final pictures will follow once all three figures are complete.

Perry Prussian teaser

Greens of the "loading" set of Perry Prussian artillery with a British 6-pdr.

Alan Perry has posted a little more info about the forthcoming Perry Miniatures Prussian range on TMP. What do we learn from this? Well, the main highlight is that the first box of plastics will be available at Salute on 16^th April 2011 so if you see a small group of men huddling in a corner poring over some sprues, it’ll be a safe bet that it’s me, Peter F, and the other Calpe Miniatures regulars closely examining the quality of the competition.

Alan has also revealed that there’s a small chance that some of the metal packs might be released ahead of the plastics. These packs will include foot artillery and, intruigingly, commanders. Whether this means command figure packs to go with the plastic infantry or personality figure generals remains a mystery. On the foot artillery front, it’s good to note that the 1815 bias of the Perry range will be supported by making the Prussians available with Prussian, British (loaned) or French (captured) ordnance. There’s also a new picture of the greens for the set of figures loading a gun which I’ve included here for your viewing pleasure.

Casualties commission #2

Work in progress on the third figure of the casualty commission.

With the short Winter days, my figure photography opportunities are severely limited. So I’ve taken a quick chance to snap the work in progress on the third figure of the small Prussian casualties commission I’m working on. It’s not the best shot because of the time constraints but also because the camera’s battery was running out of juice.

He’s mostly done with only hands, hair and the cord of his water bottle to go. I’m dithering about what colour to paint the cord. I suppose I ought to do it green to fit with the Westphalian theme but I’m strangely tempted by red. Oh, yes, and there’s some more mud to add to the lower edge of his litewka.

Casualties commission #1

Commission work on Westphalian Landwehr casualties.

Sorry for the dead air but work has kept me on my toes for several weeks recently. I may have mentioned previously that I’ve taken on a couple of small commissions and I’ve been feeling guilty about not being able to make much headway on them (even though both my clients are kind enough to fully understand that slow delivery is part of the “deal” with me). So, to assuage that feeling, I’ve knuckled down and got well and truly stuck into both pieces of work. The first one is for three Calpe Miniatures Westphalian Landwehr infantry casualties (one for each battalion, so different coloured shoulder straps on each figure). I’ve completed the basic paint job on the first two and e-mailed a photograph to my client (see the picture above). These ones are ready for varnishing but before I do that, they both come with seperate caps and muskets that require painting and the third figure is still on the painting desk. Nevertheless, I’m pleased with the progress.

For those of you interested in historical uniform details, the distinctive colour for the Westphalian region was green which I’ve painted here using a basecoat of Vallejo Black Green (980), a first highlight of Vallejo Flat Green (968) and second highlight of Vallejo SS Cam. Bright Green (833). I didn’t want a green that was too garish yet I wanted one that was still bright enough to stand out a little – I think it’s turned out well and I want to credit Toby Thornton for this particular recipe. Landwehr infantry regiments usually used different coloured shoulder straps to identify each battalion. So, for these figures, red represents the second battalion and yellow represents the third battalion. I’ve got to paint the other figure with white shoulder straps to represent the first battalion. Some landwehr infantry had fourth battalions that would normally have sported light blue shoulder straps, which I think would have been a rather fetching combination with a green collar.

The other commission I’ve got in progress is for a set of Calpe Miniatures Pommeranian line infantry command figures – so plenty of Prussian blue, grey and white there. I’ll add some photos of those as they progress too.