Paint Table Saturday: Sikhs and Follidge!

My lack of free weekends has continued, to my frustration, as I really want to play with my hot glue gun again, having produced my one, very simple, piece of folliidge (as the annoying Terrain Tutor calls it). I have been scouring garden centres looking for aquarium plants (and a nice naked girly statue for the garden to go outside my room - I think I have found one) and have, over the last few weeks, collected a plastic crate of equally plastic plants.

These have come from a number of garden centres in the area but Chessington has much the biggest range, although their selection of girly statues is poor.  Added to the usual plethora of Buddhas (why?) is now a new fashion for dragons which I am sure is something to do with Game of Thrones.

Congo jungle

It has taken some time for me to get over worrying about what follidge would look authentic for different environments, as I study pictures of, for example, the Congo  I have been worrying about the different definitions of 'jungle' and 'rain forest' and whether or not they have palm trees in the jungle (someone said on one group that they only existed at the coast in Africa not along rivers).  Then I found pictures of them along rivers and worried that while they may have them today, perhaps they weren't growing in the nineteenth century.  I then realised that given my African project was likely to feature an Amazon tribe (not a tribe from the Amazon -that is an entirely different project) then perhaps I was over thinking it and I should just  get some scenic pieces made!

I have decided to use, initially, round bases which are large washers and CDs/DVDs, partly because they are nice and thin and avoid that 'step up' scenery issue you get with MDF.  Also, I have no tools and no ability to use them so cannot contemplate how you get nice rounded shaped bases (you use a dremmel (?) according the the Terrain Tutor but I have no idea what one is and certainly don't want to own one).  Anyway, having watched the Terrain Tutor's annoying but (I have to admit) helpful videos on making jungle bases I will be proceeding with some, over the next week or so.  

Like Surrey with elephants

I have several different projects for which I will need jungle: Congo, The Lost World,  Savage Core and (possibly) conquistadores in Brazil and Panama   My dormant Zambezi campaign will not really use jungle terrain because, having travelled to Zambia some years ago, the terrain isn't really jungly at all but looks rather like, well, Surrey, where I live.  Also I have based my figures using  a pinkiish beige colour for that part of Africa so will need different coloured scenic bases.  There is a real problem in finding model trees suitable for Africa; with tall trunks and high canopies or wide-spreading Acacia trees

Lost World Explorers

My initial plan for these new jungle bases was for Savage Core (as I really like the new rules) and I have painted my Neanderthals with the brown bases so I will do so for the other tribes.  Also, I don't have to worry about authentic plants and can use some of the red ones that I have got for this.  I can also use some of these for the Lost World and the Amazon too.   So I will carry on and make some more brown coloured base jungle pieces.

Savage Core explorer painted for The Lost World

At this point I am not going to do trees in this new jungle base style.  I actually have quite a few trees up in the loft and am not sure whether there should be any for Savage Core (how would trees grow underground, anyway).  I will do some separate tree bases later.  One thing, however, is that I find the whole land under earth so troubling, scientifically, that maybe my Savage Core world would be better in a plateau in the Amazon, in the manner of the TV series Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World, with its tribe of the week.

Another tree problem has been resolved recently, however, in that I have found, at last, some suitable leafless trees for winter from the (expensive) railway scenery firm of Hoch.  I bought four of these and they seem to vary in price quite a lot, depending on where you get them from.  This, at last, gets me over my 1864 scenery problem and, given that North Star have released some more Danes recently, it puts them, if not at the front burner, then off the back burner.

Latterly, my eyesight, which has been deteriorating for some time, has taken a turn for the worse (especially my left eye) and I really thought that my figure painting days were over.  However, this week, with some bright light outside, I had a go at doing a bit more on my Sikh artillery for the North West Frontier.  I do have to squint a lot and am worried that I may end up looking like Lieutenant Columbo but I could just manage it.  Although I now know I won't be able to paint figures again to the standard of the ones further up this page, I can still paint to acceptable wargames standard, so that will just have to do.   But as my lady friend A says: "As you look at them from three feet higher than the table what does it matter?"   Maybe if I have nice follidge, people won't notice the blurry painting!

My niece (conducting!)

My musical niece is going to be staying with us, intermittently, over the next few weeks as she has been awarded a scholarship to the Guildhall School of Music and will find it easier to commute from here than her house, so we have had to clear out Guy's old bedroom as it was full of boxes of rubbish.  As a result we had to put stuff in the loft which meant getting rid of stuff up there.  The Old Bat keeps eyeing my wargames pile up there and saying that as I haven't touched it for years maybe I don't need it.  As a sop to her, I decided to get rid of a load of old model kits and am getting rid of a lot of SF film books too.  I do need to look at this wargames pile, though, as I have no idea what is in it!

Today's music is the opera-ballet Les Indes Galantes by Rameau, which was first staged in 1735.    Partly inspired by a visit to the court of Louis XV by a group of native Americans about ten years previously, the opening has Hebe, the goddess of youth presiding over dances by her followers. The happy revels are interrupted by Bellona (how we loved their vacuum formed scenery in the seventies), goddess of war who wants to take them off to fight, much to the disgust of Cupid who decides to seek a more love-friendly environment in the Indies (basically a series of exotic lands including the Peru of the Incas, the Ottoman Empire and North America - it is a loose definition of Indies).

I first saw this opera on Blu-ray at my friend A's house a couple of months ago, in a modern dress version produced in Bordeaux.  Well, I say modern dress but for most of the thirty minute prologue no one is dressed at all, apart from the splendid, part Berber, French-Algerian soprano Amel Brahim-Djelloulas as Hebe, who is wearing the most diaphanous of shifts.  Something of the flavour of this entertaining, if not entirely successful, production can be seen in this prologue here, complete with Mlle. Brahim-Delloulas in her shift and some rather sweet but silly naked dancing.  The Chrsitie conducted CD is musically superior, however.

Harem nude (c. 1910)

More orientalist inspiration in today's wallpaper of a harem nude by Georges Antoine Rochegrosse  (1859-1938), one of a number of harem style nudes he produced.  There is an Algerian link to Rochegrosse, as well, as he spent his winters there and utilised  source material from there for many of his paintings.

Rochegrosse also produced this wonderfully spirited painting called The Heroes of Marathon, which certainly makes up in energy what it lacks in accurate phalanx depiction.

Off to Colours today with Eric the Shed!  Haven't been there since 2013 and when I wrote up my report on the blog, then, I was contacted for the first time by...Eric the Shed!

Post Salute Depression...

Well not really, but the rushing around on the day (after a very busy week at work) has made me rather tired and my legs still ache.  The only thing to do was go and meet my friend in Sainsbury's and end parenthesise Salute 24 hours with another cooked breakfast.  I nearly bought Rogue One in Sainsburys as they have it for £10 but don't know if I want to watch it again.  It would be interesting to see what the video sales are of this,  Charlotte says she wants to see it again but she is a Star Wars superfan.

I am grateful for the kind comments on my Salute post yesterday but feel rather guilty as it was, really, not a Salute post at all and was sorely lacking in pictures and other Salute content.  It has been nice to catch up on other people's much better blog posts and look at their fantastic pictures.   As ever, Wargames News and Terrain have done a fantastic job collecting posts, news and pictures into one place.  Hopefully, there will be more blog posts in the next few days. I can't believe how many things I missed and was particularly annoyed to miss Dalauppror's lovely looking (and prize winning) Fort Mosquito game.  I missed his last Salute game too even more annoyingly.

I also started to remember all the things I meant to go back and buy but forgot to; principally the Perry Afghans with mountain gun, which I could have used with my Sikhs until my North Star one turns up (if ever).  I also think I should have gone back and got some Victrix Macedonian pikemen but as Big Red Bat said to me today "I'm surprised you've not got a stash of metal ones in your Lead Mountain" and, of course, he was right.  I found these Foundry figures straight away and suspect I may have more somewhere.  I really need to sort out the pile!  I wish I'd bought a couple more TableScape mud brick houses too.

Usually, I return from Salute with a great desire to get painting but I didn't feel like it today, although I did undercoat the last company of my first Confederate infantry unit.  I also filed and based the Perry metal Confederates in frock coats, who are destined to form my Texan regiment. These are lovely and I am looking forward to starting them. I need three more packs, though.  I also got my newest North West Frontier figures based too so the day wasn't a total write off.

I'm not sure how my work week is going to pan out; it could mean a frantic two days on Monday and Tuesday or I could have more time to get on with a couple of longer term projects I need to finish which I have had to drop in the last month due to other demands.  I can't make Shed Wars tomorrow, as I have a conference call in the evening, which is particularly annoying as it is an ACW game. and I haven't actually played an ACW game since my Airfix days in the seventies.  Overall, though, despite my post Salute ennui I am looking forward to getting some more painting done in the next seven days.

Back painting once more...

More Mexicans!

Things have been tremendously busy in the life of the Legatus and have not been helped by several IT issues meaning that I haven't had any spare time and if I have I haven't had access to a computer for long periods of time.  All is now sorted and so I hope to catch up on various urgent tasks, not least of which is sending out my prize draw winners figures, as it is now a month since the draw.  Apologies to the winners but getting to the post office has been impossible.  Anyway, this weekend I managed an hour or so on my next unit of Mexicans and finished the nine other figures I have been working on, in a somewhat desultory manner, for the last few weeks.

I finished 17 figures in May which was my best month of the year.  The longer evenings are certainly helping on the painting front.  I don't know if more than 17 will be possible in June but maybe a dozen is more realistic.  I didn't mange any in June last year but this June I have already managed five so far.  These pirates have been sitting on the paint table for far too long but now they are done.  I'll probably dig out a few more to keep building on them ready for the new Osprey On the Seven Seas Rules which come out in August.

I haven't done anything for IHMN for a bit but here are two new figures.  Firstly we have the North Star Moriarty (who will actually be Alberich von Tarnhelm in my companies).  More on him in my earlier post here.  I don't know where the monster figure came from, maybe he is a Foundry figure, but given the excellent news of the new IHMN Gothic supplement (online only at present) I knew I needed to get him painted.  

Next up were another three Afghan tribesmen from Artizan Designs.  Although irregular figures always take longer to paint, I am keeping a batch of these on the go and just painting the odd colour when I have time.  I have another six under way at present.  Very easy figures to paint.  

Finally, I did a test figure for the Orinoco Miniatures Latin American Wars of Independence British Legion.  This was also a nice easy subject so I will work on a few more.

£500 to move this two miles?

Lots of expenses this month what with the dreaded extension and things such as moving Charlotte from her halls of residence of the first year into her flat for the second year of university.  To move two suitcases and seven cardboard boxes of stuff Pickfords wanted £420 with VAT on top.  What a joke!  Fortunately we found a local firm that charged the comparatively bargain price of £192.  10 boxes of Perry plastics saved!

The work on the extension is driving me mad, not least because the Old Bat keeps wanting my opinion on carpets, bathroom tiles, lights, curtains and all sorts of other nonsense. I also thought that after pneumatic drilling the garage floor away it would quieten down; but not so far.  It's very hard to research the economic impact of direct flights to Bogota with a constant grating, high pitched whining in the background.  But enough of the Old Bat, the brick sawing is nearly as bad.  Also the builders have added significantly to our weekly shop by consuming huge boxes of tea bags (I always wondered who bought those 240 bag boxes), cans of Coke and biscuits.  I can't say that I have seen Wagon Wheels since the seventies but the builders love them.  And Club biscuits and Jaffa Cakes and Penguins and Hob Nobs and Kit Kats and chocolate caramel digestives.  It all got really out of hand when the Old Bat bought them Bahlsen Choco Leibniz biscuits at £1.80 for nine.  Can't they eat custard creams and bourbons like everyone else?  I'm going to do the next biscuit shop!  Maybe I'll get them fig rolls, that will teach them!

The scariest children's TV show ever made

My mother used to get my sister and I these "figgy biscuits" when we were little, largely, I suspect, on the basis that we hated them so much that we couldn't bear to eat more than one at a time.  I particularly remember being given them as a "treat" while watching Tales from Europe on television after school.  This was a collection of children's TV series from Europe (obviously) which were either dubbed or just had English narration over the top.  I particularly remember one featuring some boys and a motorbike filmed in Istanbul I think.  Every time I go to Istanbul, now, I think of fig rolls.

The really memorable Tales from Europe series, of course, was the utterly terrifying The Singing Ringing Tree.  Forget Dr Who, I never hid behind the sofa for that, but The Singing Ringing Tree gave me nightmares for decades.  Originally an East German film made in 1957, you can buy it on DVD, if you really want to scare your children to death, although the DVD is in its originally filmed colour, which is somehow less scary than the expressionist black and white version the BBC showed in the sixties.  Everyone is used to seeing people of "reduced stature" these days thanks to science fiction films and, indeed, the Paralympics, but in 1964 the scampering dwarf from Das singende, klingende Bäumchen  (it sounds even scarier in German) frightened the life out of me.

Girders!  We'll need biscuits after shifting these!

Anyway, stuff keeps arriving on large lorries at 6.00am in the morning, much to the neighbours' delight.  Do I really want to spend £4,500 on steel girders?  I do not but because of the sort of soil we have here we have had to have a complicated foundation put together with a sort of cage of girders underpinning tons of concrete.  You could build a rocket launching pad on the foundations!

I do have a floor, somewhere

My room is total chaos at present and is not helped by the fact that I have bought a couple of those CD album cases to hold my DVD collection.  I had filled all my shelves and had built up an overflow of three piles of DVD's which were over a three feet high and kept falling over.  So all the boxes are going to the dump and I will put them in the sleeves.  Except I don't have time to get on with it.  I haven't even unwrapped the second case.  I did start on my unwatched TV series and have already filled one 500 disc capacity case and have only reached the letter L.  I've still got the rest of my unwatched TV series, unwatched films, watched films and watched TV series to go.  In the meantime I can't find anything!

I don't need any more figures, of course, but was in Orc's Nest this week and saw the new Victrix Greek Unarmoured Hoplites and Archers so picked them up for no real reason whatsoever.  I constructed a few and had forgotten quite how long these multi-part plastics take to assemble.  I'm thinking about Greeks again because of the recent release by Foundry of the Steve Saleh sculpted Persians which have, after many years, seen the light of day for the first time.  These would be perfect to pitch against Macedonians.  Although I don't have any phalangites painted I do have 66 Greek skirmishers and 24 cavalry painted for the Cynoscephalae force I did for a Society of Ancients game in 2007.

My Foundry Greek heavy cavalry from 2007

I think Persians of this period are among the very worst wargames armies to paint.  The troops usually rate low points in most rules so you need lots of them and they have extremely complex patterned uniforms.  They are like Celts!  Or samurai! Anyway, I found a couple of Spartan officers I had started some time ago, so hopefully they will give me the opportunity to do a post on my Spartan blog this month. 

Now it's time to pay the builders their weekly money again!