Napvember Post 4 - Slow and Steady

Not as quick as I was in the second week, but I've still got some painting done!

Volley fire is more effective if they all aim the same way, though

Here we go, another 3 infantrymen. I actually painted these last week, but again real life has been getting in the way of the blogging. As you can tell, the basing on these needs to be finished off, but that should be fairly straightforward!

As it's now the 1st of December, I suppose Napvember is now complete. I've got 12 models finished altogether, which is better than the 5 I was aiming for, but is still a long way from a complete army. I think I'll aim to get the line infantry regiment up to 24 men as soon as I can, but of course the butterfly effect is starting for me now, so there's a danger I'll wander off and start something else before I get that far...

Napvember Post 3 - Back on Track!

After the trials and tribulations I posted about a few days ago, I've managed a bit of a turnaround! 

I now have a unit of painted riflemen...

Alright, it will count as a "tiny" unit for Black Powder, but it is a unit, and it's my first ever for the napoleonic era. Since painting at least one napoleonic unit was one of my New Year's resolutions I'm happy with that!

The real meat of my British army is obviously going to be the line infantry, so I've moved onto that with a test model.

The idea here was to find a way to paint these quickly, and I'm happy with the result - this was about 2 hours work in total and now I know what I'm doing I think I can speed that up with a little production line. I think I'll aim to get a few more done for next week. 

Napvember Post 2 - Best Laid Plans

Argh.

As dedicated followers of this blog (I'm sure you're wearing your Paintbrush and Superglue t-shirt even as you read this), you'll know that I was meant to post my second Napoleonic model at the weekend, but have failed to do so.

The following is a spirited attempt to explain that this is not my fault.

Things were going reasonably well up until the weekend. I'd decided to carry on with my rifles and get those all done as it would give me a unit and might even allow for some sort of skirmish gaming.

Then, my one year old daughter got ill. Not hugely ill, but enough that she wasn't sleeping very well and I didn't get time in the evenings for an hour's painting as I had been doing.

Not to fret, I thought. I'll catch up on Monday night, and I can at least post "in progress" pictures if nothing else.

Unfortunately, a minicab driver had other ideas, and decided to drive into the back of my car as I was on my way home on Monday. He then tried to convince me that letting him "deal with it" would be a better option than claiming against his insurance, and it took me ten minutes at the side of the road to get his details (I think the fact that I was ostentatiously writing down all the taxi numbers on his car might have swayed him a bit). That's not relevant, but it wound me up so I've been ranting it at anyone who stands still long enough. The bodywork got pushed onto the wheel so I had to pry it back to be able to drive home, and the exhaust started rattling, which was nice.

Doesn't look like much, but has turned out to be a right pain

That dealt with my painting time for the next couple of nights, as I spent it on the phone to insurers, garages, car hire people, etc. I do at least have a very nice Peugeot as a courtesy car until mine gets fixed. I don't want mine back now.

Then, daughter got more ill, and barely slept at all for a night. She's now been prescribed antibiotics and is looking a lot happier, but it was last night before I got back to the brushes.

So here we are then - nearly Saturday again, and I don't yet have more finished models to show. I'm on the way though, so I'm promising riflemen for this weekend, and I'm going to try to get another model as well so I'm back on track...

At least I can show a WIP picture and prove that I got somewhere with the rifles!

They have actually moved on a bit since this picture. I'll finish 'em!

Napvember Post One - Rifleman

If anyone is keeping track, they may well have noticed that I promised a painted model for Saturday, and then haven't posted until Monday.

Real life got in the way I'm afraid! I spent most of Saturday on a succession of DIY jobs, so my painting had to take a back seat. Anyway, enough excuses, here is the first painted model!

One model painted! We're off!

As you know doubt guessed it would be from the title of this post, the model is a rifleman, specifically one of the Perry plastics.

Start telling me the buttons are the wrong colour now!

I've decided not to try to match any particular division with my collection at this stage. I did toy with the idea, but quickly realised that worrying about this stuff too much was going to cause even more paralysis in my painting than I had already, so changed my mind and will now go for whatever units I most like the look of until I have something approximating an army. If anyone points out that the resulting force doesn't match anything that actually fought, I'll deal with that by running away and hiding somewhere.

This slightly different angle is extremely worthwhile.

So, with that in mind, I chose to paint my rifles as the 95th, probably the most famous British napoleonic unit, with a fighting strength of something like twelve million men if you go by the number that wargamers have painted.

I even painted the back!

So what's next? Well, this was kind of a test model, so I'm hoping I can get the rest of my rifles painted quite quickly and then move onto something else. I only have eight in total at the moment, so it's a bit less impressive that you might think, but better than nothing. Watch this space, with bated breath, to find out whether I manage it!