Whitey!

Finished off the test figure for the second maniple of Italian Allies yesterday evening. Decided to go for a lighter palette this time round:

Lots of Vallejo Panzer Colour being used on these figures. The base for the tunic & shield are Canvas, with white added for the highlights; the red feathers are a base coat of Tail light with Carmine Red highlights.
Its early days, but I think I may have finally conquered my ( irrational) dislike of Republican Romans with these figures!

Reports of My Demise Have Been Greatly Exaggerated.

Hi all, its been a while. The reasons for my lack of posting since September have been variously & in no particular order, work, work, more work, surfing holiday in Portugal, more work, lung infection & doing paddle duties for a mate who was up shit creek; think that about covers it.
Therefore progress on the Italian Allies has been patchy to say the least, but here are things as they stand:

Three views of the first maniple of hastati/ princeps.

 Very pleased with them so far, only slight reservation is the slightly " Osprey" stance of the Signifer.

and A couple of work in progress shots of cornificer & velite.

Hoping to get a bit more done over the weekend but I fear paddling duties & painting the bathroom at HGA Towers may take precedence.

More Italian Allies.

Plodding quietly through these chaps; four down, 56 to go.

Need to come up with some suitable designs for the shields, plain red is a bit flat.

First Ever Eye'talian.

It's happened again I'm afraid. I've been distracted from finishing a current, well relatively speaking project by something new & shiny. Though in mitigation I have finished a small Theban command vignette:

On reflection it looks more like idle chit-chat than command, but that's what happens when blokes congregate. At least it does with my 'blokes' & I suspect human nature hasn't changed greatly over the millennia.
The current new & shiny is this, courtesy of Victrix Miniatures:

Of course I could have bought either of the two Roman sets also released,  but true to form the most obscure boxed set of the three was my purchase of choice. Below is the first ever Ancient Italian miniature I have ever painted:

Have to say, seriously impressed with the quality of this set. Slightly smaller ( about 2mm to eyeline) than the hoplite figures but the facial features and general anatomy are much more refined. Fit of parts very good & mould lines acceptable; but will need a very fresh scalpel blade to remove satisfactorily, otherwise plastic seems to pick up under the edge - though a dab of liquid poly' will cure this.
Take into account as well that for £ 30 you get 60 figures.
Only minor criticisms: feathers on helmets quite fragile, though this could equally apply to white metal figures & removing hilt from scabbarded gladius takes a fine touch so as not to destroy armour detail ( see above miniature).
Overall impression 9 out of 10.

Back to the paint bench & a short discourse on archery.

After a fairly lengthy lay-off from doing anything related to miniature gaming the shortening days have forced me indoors of an evening & back to the painting desk. Firstly managed to complete the desert dwelling featured last time:

Thanks to Dean M for suggesting a white dry brush, really helped what was previously a very uniform finish.
Currently on the painting desk are the remaining Victrix hoplites from the box of Thebans, well actually hoplites with boetian helmets:

Not actually seen any evidence that hoplites even wore boetian helmets, but I'm sure someone could point out a source for me. Personally I would think this particular style of helmet to be fairly comfortable & practical, certainly less restrictive than the corinthian & chalcidian styles more commonly seen. Once these guys are done it will be onto Victrix Romans & Italian allies.

On a slightly different subject I finally got round to test firing my home made bow this week.

Home made bow on home made tiller.

I made this a couple of years back from a piece of unusually knot free yew that I found in the middle of a very over grown hedge. I think the conditions restricted the amount of side growth that makes the timber very knotty & hard to work with, so this seemed too good an opportunity to miss. The bow is a shade under 6ft long with a draw weight of approximately 45lbs and will throw a heavy bodkin point around 125 yards.
Its been a interesting project & it was good to actually test the bow out in the field, but compared to firing my laminated Scythian bow a somewhat disappointing experience, the same arrow fired from this bow with a very similar draw weight travels a good 40 yds further. This is likely a testimony to my poor bow making skills, but it did make me wonder if yew as a bow making material is inherently inefficient, is this why the classic medieval longbows required the massive ( 100lb plus) draw weights to achieve their purported killing power. Time to do some research before lunch I think.

Renedra Desert Building.

Picked this up a couple of weeks ago from my local games retailer, Questing Knight Games in Wellington. Local is very much a relative term here as from doorstep to doorstep its a good 20 miles, but as I was working just round the corner it seemed rude not to pop in & have a browse.

The injection moulded parts came on three sprues & went together fairly easily with liquid poly' adhesive, the fit of the parts wasn't great but 5 minutes work with some car body filler soon sorted that out followed by a quick rub down with some emery paper to finish.

The basic finish has been achieved using this:

found whilst wandering round our local DIY store in search of more prosaic items. I have no idea why it is desert "bisque" it bears no resemblance in either taste or smell to delicious soup made from sea food!
It does however produce a rather good facsimile of rough plaster render ideal for the subject matter.

Painting Drought.

I've had a very slow June in the painting department due to a number of factors, but mostly due to being exceptionally busy doing other things. Firstly work has been very hectic which has impinged significantly on my leisure time, which is restricted at best & what little remained has been taken up carrying out some much needed repairs at HGA Towers.
Its very pleasant living in an Edwardian house with good natural light & high ceilings but the downside is the constant need for small maintenance work, two years ago it was re-pointing one gable end; this year its replacing & repairing the original window sills. I could have employed a carpenter to do this for me but I wanted them done in good, durable timber & most of the chippies I come across only want to work with white wood which wouldn't last 5 minutes in our wet micro climate. To be honest its been a real arse of a job, particularly cutting out the old sills but they should see out the rest of my tenure on earth.
Other than the above which is reason enough I've experienced what can only be described as a 'painting funk' in that I've been unable to find anything to even remotely interest me in this department. My output is slow at the best of times even when enthused by some project or other but I just plod on & get there sooner or later. Faced with having nothing to engage my interest I just stopped painting. This has happened once or twice before & then something comes along that gets the creative juices flowing again, this time its the soon to be released Republican Roman plastics from Victrix. So in order to get my eye in again I've made a start on a few Renegade Miniatures velites that have been hanging around since my last attempt at a Roman Army:

Don't know how well these will scale to the Victrix figures as Renegades Romans were notoriously huge, but it shouldn't matter in limited numbers.
In addition to these I finally made some progress on these Thracian cavalry that were abandoned 18 months ago:

Not 100% happy with the colour scheme on the shields, but they do stand out.