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!

Introducing Napvember!

In my latest Zomtober posts, I mentioned that I'm intending to get started on Napvember. It seems only reasonable to explain what on Earth I'm blithering on about.

This looks a lot better than anything I'm likely to paint.

Like any self-respecting historical wargamer, I have a reasonable collection of Napoleonic models (28mm British, in my case). Unfortunately, and also like any self-respecting historical wargamer, I'm easily distracted. Normally this occurs just after buying a load of models and just before actually painting them, so I have a British Napoleonic army that is unpainted except for a single piper that I did for a painting competition a few years back.

This has always niggled at me, but the sheer number of models and a worry that painting Napoleonics is going to be fiddly has always stopped me from cracking on with them. However, with the advent of Zomtober, I've decided that the key is nice simple goals, so I can at least make some progress without worrying about painting the whole force.

So, with that in mind, my plan is very simple! There are 5 Saturdays in November this year. For each of them, I intend to paint a single Napoleonic figure from my collection. I'm not planning to produce spectacular paint jobs, but just getting moving with this project will be nice, and hopefully will spur me on to paint more than the planned 5 figures.

Of course, I'll be posting the results here as I paint them, so you can all keep me honest. If anyone wants to join in and paint their own Napoleonic figures, that can only be a good thing!

Zomtober! Post Four - The Big Finish

For the final week of Zomtober, I decided to round things off with something a little different - a giant mutated zombie in the style of the "tanks" from Left 4 Dead, amongst others.

I can remember buying this model from Triples, but I can't remember which year, or who the manufacturer was! I do remember that he's intended to me Mr Hyde from a VSF range of some sort.

Good job he bought those extra large trousers before he got bitten

I decided that I didn't want this model to look like another zombie only bigger, so I gave him a more normal skin tone (it is a little lighter than normal but without the green or brown tinge I've given the others) and red eyes with yellow pupils - you might just be able to make that out in the picture.

I also finally managed to settle on a basing system, so all the zombies I've painted so far are now based!

Bleurgh.

As I said last time, I've got a lot out of this project, it's been set at just the right level to keep me motivated and I've been able to exceed the goals even with limited painting time. I'd like to thank Pulp Citizen, Brummie Thug and Rob of Four Colour Super Minis for instigating Zomtober, Kieron for drawing my attention to it, and all the other Zomtoberists for posting their models and keeping me interested. 

Since this has worked out well for me I'm going to move on to Napvember next, so watch this space for details of that!

Zomtober! Post Three - To Infect and Sever

It's that time again, so here are the results of my painting efforts in week 3 of Zomtober...

First up, a zombified police officer:

Missing part of one sleeve as it's been torn off, definitely not because it's hard to get matching sleeves from the WF zombie sprues.

Notice he's still got his gun, so might attract some attention from zombie hunters keen to build up their arsenals! 

Then another sports fan to go with last week's Lakers supporter:

Don't know what team that's actually supposed to be though.

A couple of unfortunate office workers:

Where are they all finding these feet?

More casual dress code in this guy's office - no tie!

A very casually dressed zombie:

Nasty tear in that vest there.

And finally, someone who really didn't choose the right place to go on holiday.

I actually own a shirt not too dissimilar to this.

And here's a group shot of the horde so far:

Everybody say "brains"!

As you can see, I've finally started to base these models properly - the big bevelled bases don't work with the crowded urban boards I want to use these on, so they're going to go on much smaller bases now which I will be trying to get finished for the end of Zomtober.

I have to say that Zomtober is really working out for me - having some deadlines and specific models to post about has spurred me along in my painting quite nicely, and each time I post I've had more models to talk about. I'm already pondering what to do in November! Not only that, I've also started following some new blogs that I wasn't aware of until the month started, so that's a bonus, and I've introduced Kieron to We're Alive. It's all good!