Tuesday, August 14

...and he's off....

...painting that is - though the little'uns and I are counting down the days to the end of the week when we go on holiday. This year we're a couple of weeks later going than normal and it's surprising what a huge difference that makes...

...anyway - the good news is that I hit the painting table with a vengeance over the weekend, and the upshot is that the 35th Regiment of Foot - The Sussex Regiment - are about to pack their bags and embark for America as part of King George's forces in the colonies. They look OK, not one of my best paint jobs, for some reason I couldn't do justice to the figures which are very nice to look at (they're by Parkfield Miniatures), but I found difficult to paint... may just be me, but I find there are some figures that almost paint themselves, and others that don't, and these are more the latter than the former...anyway - they are painted, varnished, and only need basing to complete - if I get some time that'll be in the next few days..

..I've also been rootling around in a huge box of plastics my brother-in-law-in-law (we're married to sisters!) passed over to me ages ago - this was simply chock full of Airfix stuff in various forms - all of it unpainted.

Lots and lots of Napoleonic's (which I'll sort through eventually, bag up, and pass to eBay ), some planes (sad condition), 3 boxes of Indians and Romans still in their original boxes and not even off the sprue (already gone to eBay!), some French Foreign Legion, but best of all an almost complete Fort Sahara!

It's OO/HO scale (so 20mm give or take) but looks perfect for my 15mm Sudan excursion, so this week I put it together, scratch built a couple of roof elements that had gone missing, cut out a base board, and undercoated it ready for a full paint job.. I'm intending to use a succession of lighter and lighter browns to reflect a mud brick construction which would not look out of place in the Sudan. I have to say that even as old it is, it looks really good so far... going to need some new cans of spray paint to do it justice though so am going to wait and see what I find at the Colours show in Newbury next month.

1 comment:

  1. Might I offer a suggestion?

    Before you paint your fort, build some basic "Arab houses" ala the Major General's technique:

    http://www.zeitcom.com/majgen/39howst.html

    This is very simple and you can easily knock out several of various sizes in an evening.

    Then, as you paint the fort, paint these houses the same way . . . that way you'll have a good village to have near the fort . . . all in the same color tones so that they look "right".


    -- Jeff

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