Thermopylae II. A Large Scale work in Progress.

Another departure from my usual painting output this evening, though subjectively more on track.

This is a Rosedale Figurines hoplite sculpted by Al Charles ( c. late 1970's I think) in 54mm foot to eye scale which I picked up on eBay a couple of years back for 99p. Always thought he would come in handy as a filler subject when suffering from a lack of current project to complete syndrome; it turns out that time is now.

Given the title of the figure is Thermopylae II, a lambda on the hoplon would perhaps be more appropriate; but at such large scale it seemed a shame not to pimp things a little!

Still a way to go with project, painting larger figures is a challenge I haven't tried before & there are a lot of lessons to be learned.

Female Warrior. Armour by Jean Paul Gautier.

More or less finished this last night. I humbly offer it here as the best I can achieve on a 32mm figure using 45year old eyes & hands thickened by a lifetime of manual labour:

Tried a few different back ground combinations this evening to try to make things 'pop' a little more. Certainly helps the contrast, if not the photographer.

 Come to think of it the J.P. Gautier reference in the title might not be so far of the mark. This is just the sort of European soft porn thing that he & his co presenter Antoine de Caunes would have smirked about on the late, lamented "EuroTrash".

More Random Miniature Painting. Partially Nude Female Warrior WIP.

Another random entry with no possible practical wargaming use. This time an Enigma Miniatures fantasy female in the ubiquitous useless armour:

I don't as a rule go in for this type of thing but I do occasionally stray onto the Coolminiornot site to view some of the painting on display there ( frankly some of it is astounding) & decided to try & push my brush work out of my usual comfort zone of using simple shading & citadel washes. So far this represents about 10 hours painting time, most of which was spent trying to get the skin tones right by building up very light layers of paint. This leads me to three revelations:

1. Painting realistic skin tones is very, very difficult. And time consuming.

2. Photographing miniatures with very delicate shading without washing out the colour is even more difficult.

3. I need to find another wargaming project to work on before both my sanity & eyesight fail. Bit devoid of inspiration at the moment though.

Random Viking.

Received this miniature as a freebie in my last order from Wargames Foundry, a bizarre choice given that the order was for Seven Years War Freikorps.

He was fun to paint but not sure what to do with him as I have no intention of ever starting dark ages gaming.

Somewhat Predictably- More Successor Command.

Another twelve hour day today, but hoorah taking the sabbath this week. To celebrate this momentous event here are some more Hellenistic commanders finished under the influence last night.

Foundry Macedonian General, nice figure, unconvincing sword skills.

The man himself, or more likely one of the Diadochi masquerading as him.

Foundry phalangite characters haranguing a Polemarch officer

Having fun doing these, just a couple more to do & then its back to finishing up the Crusader Thracians. After that the world is again my oyster, watch this space.

Successor Command on Shanks's Pony.

Continuing with the theme of basing some proper command stands for the Hellenistic era, I give you the following:

Back to photographing under artificial light this evening as I got in rather late from work. Both of these miniatures are from Gripping Beasts Polemarch Successor range, the one eyed ancient on the left being a mail order freebie they offered early in the release schedule.
Sculptor is again Steve Saleh. Nice figures overall but sometimes lacking the sharp detail of the earlier Foundry 'World of the Greeks' ranges. This may be down to wear & tear of the moulds rather than any culpability on the part of said sculptor as the eBay purchase that the one eyed freebie came in were of high quality whereas some of my later direct purchases weren't quite so good.

Successor General.

Started to update the command bases for my Hellenistic collection last weekend, the first subject being this mounted geezer from Foundry's 'World of the Greeks range':

The 'allegorical' raven is a resin item from Tabletop World, which was part of a graveyard set bought from them & the pillar is turned out of balsa foam.
It was Foundry's Alexandrian Macedonians that got me started in 28mm Ancients & they still remain one of my favourite ranges for this era of warfare. Shame they didn't follow up on the projected range of Successor stuff that was advertised in their release schedules of the time, probably fell out with one their sculptors:)