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.

Tidying Up Some Loose Ends.

Still casting about for a new project to get stuck into so filling my rare hours of leisure by painting a few odds & ends that have lain neglected in storage:

A brace of Parthian horse archers, courtesy of A&A Miniatures.

Palmyrene General, previously painted but treated to a re-base.

Still unsure as to what the next project will be. Very tempted to expand my smallish Parthian army, but equally tempted by the Steve Saleh Persians just (re) released by Foundry. Some days it would be nice to have deeper pockets & more free time.

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.