31 January 2009

Smile - you're on camera!

Here are the two photos I failed to upload the other day. Unbloodied and unbowed, I struggled with HTML for the first time until I understood what was going wrong.

So, from the back and front, ladies and gentlemen I give you some English nobles. Dressed to kill and ready to fight for God, England..... and if a ransom or two should come their way then, well, it would be rude not to :)



I have done a bit of tidying up (particularly on the cadence mark on knight second from left) since taking these shots; that electronic eye is pretty unforgiving of a slipped brushstroke, eh?

26 January 2009

More painting, but no more pictures

I got a solid hour of painting in on Sunday afternoon. It went pretty well and I got a few more of those foot knights finished, as well as a bit more progress on my Nurgle team's beastmen for BloodBowl.

Like many other gamers/geeks out there (I think), I rather enjoy the planning and cataloguing of whatever project I'm undertaking or planning. This meant that I had a very pleasant time sketching out the coats of arms I've already painted and planning some extra ones for knights that are as yet bare metal while entertaining the son and heir by making silly faces and playing catch with him at the same time. Multi-tasking? Ha! It's easy ;)

22 January 2009

Second time lucky?

I tried to put this picture in my previous post, but no joy; maybe I was doing something wrong? Anyway, I've got a couple of those knights already painted (gold star for me!):



Edit: okay, I've got the picture uploaded but it only accepts the uncropped picture.

The painting is under way

Not being a great photographer, the pictures I'm going to post mightn't be the best (any tips that don't involve buying fancy kit would be gratefully received).  I did promise to share, though, so here goes:

A mixture of undercoated Corvus Belli foot knights, along with a monk and trumpeter from the command packs. I've used GW's 'Chaos Black' spray undercoat, more from habit than anything else.

I love the detail on these figures and, at about 34p/fig, perfectly reasonable to my mind.

Swelling the ranks

Although I mainly play fantasy games (Bloodbowl, Elfball and occasionally Aeronautica Imperialis) because that's what the locals play, I'm a historical gamer at heart. I just love the medieval period in particular - all that chivalry, heraldry, castles, courtly love, peasants being kept in their place... And of course, lots of Frenchy-bashing ;)

The rules that I've settled upon are called Impetus, by Dadi and Piombo. They're for large-element based miniatures, so each unit can be a mini diorama. I've never quite got the hang of more than simple basing, but I'm hoping to work on that as I get stuck in to {drum roll} my major project for 2009!

This will be to paint, base (and get to play with, dammit) two 300pt armies (one English, one French) for the Hundred Years War. I figure if I do both sides then my gaming buddies have no excuse not to give some proper historical gaming a go. I'm going to use Corvus Belli miniatures throughout, except for one base of welsh spearmen from Feudal Castings (an idea I nicked from Jet's top-notch 'Geektactica' blog) and the final figures arrived last night, which was a real geeky pick-me-up after an incredibly long day teaching followed by parents' evening.

Now all that remains is to paint all couple of hundred figures! Oh, and to make my task 'easier', I've never painted anything smaller than 28mm figs before; the gallery I plan to put on here may end as more of a reassurance than inspiration ("At least my painting looks better than this guy's - what is he painting with, a toothbrush?").

21 January 2009

Begin

I've found that the blogs of other gamers can be a source of great inspiration - painting, new games, reviews, modelling techniques. Really useful and interesting stuff.

I'll be posting the progress of various painting and gaming projects here to keep me on track, act as a personal record I can look back on and, hopefully, someone else will find it useful, too.