Tuesday 31 May 2011

Painting Tips


There are lots of how to paint your figures on the internet and on blogs like mine. So this is how I paint my armies without getting paint all over my fingers.

For infantry and horses, I use plastic milk bottle tops. These you can find in your home right now and even family and friends might help you to collect these.
Now these come in all colours these days green, red, blue and now orange. Before using the tops give them a quick wash.
I use just three of the colours blue, green and red. Blue for musicians and their horses, flag bearers. Green ones I use for private’s and trooper’s horses, the red ones for officers/NCOs, This is so that I can easily see who I am painting.

To make your figures stay on top so they do not move around, I use a little bit of blue-tack (Pea size). You don’t need much to make them stay on the milk top and they are then easily removed with a simple twist while you hold the figures stand, once finished.

Clothes pegs are another great item I use, that you will also have in your house hold. These again are made in plastic or wood and they are really cheep to buy these days. My pegs are wooden and I use these to hold cavalry troopers, artillery cannons, limbers and wagons.

Tuesday 24 May 2011

Bargain!


For quite a while now, I have been going into Charity shops now and then just to see if there are any bags or boxes of old figures that I could use to fill up ranks or make new ones, but that has never happened to me as of yet. But at the weekend I went into one of the bigger Charity shops and to my surprise I found a classic paperback book by Philip J Haythornwaite “The Napoleonic Source Book” for a bargain price of just £3.
I know that a lot of wargamer’s use this as a kind of bible to the find out about a unit’s uniform colours involved in the Napoleonic Wars. As I was well happy to find this book and it was in great condition.
 I know that Haythornwaite has written over 40 books, most of them on Napoleonic Wars and most of them for Osprey paperbacks. 
To buy this book it will cost you £19.99 new if you are lucky to fine one or on Amazon for £5.80.
The Book contains over 400 pages which include Campaigns, weaponry, warring nations, commanders plus over 200 illustrations, quick references, facts and figures and much more.
I shall now try to find time to sit down and read this book and give you and review of this book as soon as I can.
So do pop into your local charity shop, you’ll never know what you might find!

Tuesday 10 May 2011

The Prussians are coming!



I thought that I would give you another update to what I have been doing. Well I have just come back from a week’s holiday which was fantastic with lovely sunny weather all week.
I took a trip to my favourite toy shop in Norwich, Norfolk UK and looking at all the boxes of soldiers, I was tempted to buy a couple of boxes.
They are HAT’S French Line Hose artillery 8039 and another box of their French Limbers 8205. Also while I was away, I picked up another two tins of paint and a bottle of PVA glue. So it turned out to be a very expensive week.

The Humbrol paints are now £1.60 pence each but I can pick them up for £1.35 pence each. Not much of a saving as this time last year they were £1.25 pence each.

As you can see that I have started to paint up the Prussian Foot Artillery from Hat. These are not bad figures although they have left off their coat-tails detail on their jackets. I have painted up all the four guns with this set and have started on some of the gun crew. As with the first batch of 12 Prussian Landwehr figures that I started this year, well I have not touched them now for a month, but hoping to restart soon.
Again this month I hope to put another general on the Marshal and General page which seems to be getting a lot of attention.