April update - Austrian Cannon

April was another very lacklustre month. I managed to pull my thumb out and finish banging out some cannon at the end of the month.

These are from frontrank and there is a heap of crew to paint up as well (primed only). 4 foot cannon, and 2 horse (with the funny benches).

I possibly ended up using an overly dark ochre colour, but I'm sure campaigning is a grubby business.















I also got around to cutting up a bunch of dowel as measuring sticks for General du Corp. The long sticks are for artillery (how fitting), medium command, small movement. I ended up with a single stick from Doug which is astonishingly smooth compared to my own. I do wonder if thats the wonders of people using/holding/fiddling with them till they smooth, or if I just ended up with crappy wood and paint.


 The last addition to the painted pile is some old GW oil drums. I *didn't* actually paint these myself. I someone managed to convince my buddy Garret to do so. I suppose that's ALMOST like painting it myself (he said lying to himself). Garret did a great job weathering these and used some colours I wouldn't have selected myself. I quite like that aspect and can appreciate why some hobbyists swap painting squads with their buddies.

March update - random 'progress'

March has been a bit of a bust. The COVID disaster has complicated our lives but both my wife and I work at the hospital so aren't working any less. My mother in law is now living with us as we expected our childcare situation to complicate if not disappear (though not, thankfully, yet). Mentally I'm a bit zapped so have found it pretty hard to pull myself away from easily accessible entertainment on the computer to actually start painting. Boo.

Let's look at what has been done. The Austrian infantry made some progress with all the black work finally done. Although, what's that in the bottom right? It's some standard  bearers that just arrived with the artillery.....







We have a critical shortage of guns for our game. I ordered a lot from frontrank when funds freed up to match the infantry I'd slowly stockpiled.

I'm a bit (or more than a bit) dubious the convention will go ahead. I need to plan to not screwing up the crew though, so I'm going to still try and get the painting done. Worst case is I do the minimal cannons and a few infantry. I can even imagine a situation where I don't go and hand off the figs to our mastermind (Doug) to haul down there.

The guns are inked on the left but not on the right. I tried using 'payne's grey' ink which was a bit dark, and some of Les' magic ink 'SOFT' that I made up from a recipe on dakka dakka...looks better. 

Feb update - Batch painting blues

I've hit the phase of painting where not much seems to happen for a long period of time/effort. Suddenly they will be done....one day.

I managed to get the grey primer I was waiting for, sprayed my figs during a break in the weather and felt like my hand was going to get frostbite. I've gotten blue pants, hair, and skin done. Today I banged out the first colour on the horses for the officers within units.


 BEHOLD! It appears like I've done almost nothing!

I decided to break up the monotony a bit by jumping in on "Fembruary Challenge" by leadballoony. The idea is to paint up a/some female models with a look towards how they are represented in the hobby. I shall post in the future, but *spoiler alert* it's pretty pneumatic/trashy/non physiological. You can see (barely) a preview in the lower right corner.

28mm Austrians March - Depot Battallion

January would seem to be the month for raising your units, load the magazines, and make grandiose plans for the coming campaigns.

I have, so far, managed to assembly my entire collection of Austrian plastic that had been stockpiled. The lions share of these are victrix models which have different poses (and 2 arms!) so are much more time consuming to assemble than the marching Perry's.

In rough numbers I have a bit over 150 Austrians. Some miscellaneous stuff was also assembled to try and clean the computer desk up a bit. I intended to prime them up for the 'look I've done work!' shot, but the local game store is out of stock of the 'wraithbone' coloured priming I'm hoping to use. The plan, roughly, will be:  to prime off white, basecoat some flesh and other colours that benefit from a wash, ink it, and highlight everything necessary.

I converted some metal colonel figs with helmets to bicornes to make some higher level (field) officers. I think the heads might be sitting a bit proud on the cut neck, but I don't relish drilling out the neck so I'll live with it.