First painted figures of the year

It's been a while coming but a recent surge in motivation aided and abetted by the new magnifying lamp has seen a few new troops ready to hit the table.

8 velites from Miniature Wars, and from the Xyston Greek pile 16 skirmishers, 12 light cavalry, 27 heavy cavalry and a general. There are also some Xyston Spartan cavalry with hamippoi in frame, but I am not counting those. They were painted last year - it's just taken me six months to flock the bases!

Next on the list is more hoplites. After that it will likely be either Persians or the remainder of my Successor pike. 

But I do have large piles of Crusaders and Saracens and Hundred Years War English and French which could make a change of direction. We shall see!

Three months with no TV

As the post title suggests, this is the end of my third month without TV, after I cancelled my Sky subscription at the end of February.  I would like to be able to nobly intone that going without TV was a lifestyle choice, but the real reason I switched off was because the rugby I'd originally signed up for so many years ago was being used to manipulate viewers.  Basically, Sky have spent the last few years forcing customers to subscribe to more sports channels to get the same content, but this Super XV season they started to cut down the number of games shown as well, so I decided I'd had enough of being held to ransom (treating your loyal customers this way seems to be especially poor strategy in the internet age, where free live streaming of sports events is just a google search away, but that's another matter...).

To cut a long story short, not watching sports TV or the movie channels at night has freed up a lot of time, and I've tended to spend that time painting.

So, how has it gone?

Well, after three months of doing a little painting every day - sometimes as little as ten minutes, sometimes as much as three hours - I have quite a few painted figs to show for it.

I'm three or four sessions away from completing another 50 cavalry, so if I cheat a little and squeeze them in, we've got an average monthly output of around 10 6mm vehicles, 86 15mm foot and 22 15mm horse.

I've already exceeded last year's painting totals in this time (barring the 6mm stuff), so I have to say that this no TV caper has worked a treat.

Also, I haven't missed the rugby as much as I thought I would...

As an added bonus, the blood pressure seems to have gone down now that I have no chance of accidentally stumbling across those 'history' channel shows featuring some wild-eyed fellow demonstrating 'conclusively' that (insert historical figure here) was in fact in communication with alien beings!!

OK, these aren't quite finished, but I'm including them in the tallies anyway...

2011 painting review

As 2012 kicks off I thought I'd look back and see how the painting output for 2011 stacked up.  There was quite a bit of progress early in the year, then a bit of a drop off as I focused on the reorganisation and touching-up of some older figures.  After a hiatus while we got used to a new addition to the household (and while my spare time was taken up with email games of 'A Victory Lost' and 'Thunder and the Crossroads'...), there was another wee surge just prior to the end of year.

Let's see how it went...

182 Roman foot and 19 cavalry
24 Greek javelinmen
8 slingers
4 boltshooters and 6 crew
56 Carthaginian foot, 13 cavalry and 1 elephant
3 Spanish foot and 4 Spanish cavalry.

The overall totals for 2011 were therefore 279 foot/crew, 36 cavalry, 4 boltshooters and 1 elephant.  That's a few more than I expected, and as there were also a couple of hundred figures that got retouched, I'm pretty happy with that!

For comparison's sake, the 2010 totals were 64 foot/crew, 95 cavalry, 8 chariots and 8 elephants.

Now of course I need to think about what's to come...

(Readers may note that I steered well clear of tallying up how much lead I may have bought this year!)

Back on the paints (and glue...)

Well, after nothing much doing on the painting front since January, I knuckled down the other night to finish off some partly-done figures, and touch up some others. 

First up, four artillery pieces and six crew, all from Essex.  I made a bit of an idiot of myself when buying the crew as I'd assumed they would come in packs of eight.  Unfortunately, they didn't; so I really need to pick up another pack some time.  For the meantime I decided to base the figures individually so that I can spread them around as needed.

Second, twenty-four Old Glory Greek javelinmen.  I painted up the first lot some time ago (these are from the old packs of 50 figures), and had kept putting off doing the second batch.  They're a bit boring to paint, but it was a good chance to experiment with a few different colour combinations for tunics, and I'm pleased to have finished them.  They still need to have their shield bosses done in chrome silver, but otherwise they are ready to go onto the table. 

Finally, the touch ups: some Old Glory Apulian javelinmen which were hurriedly painted some years back.  They were pretty roughly done as I was in a hurry (not to mention being a pretty limited painter!), but this was compounded by my putting them in an old biscuit box that had a very flimsy bottom.  After they'd fallen out twice I put them in a better box, and only pulled them when I was desperate for troops...

Anyway, a couple of years later,  here they are after a touch up.  They are still not very nice to look at, but by brightening up the headbands, the tunics and the flesh they look a lot better than they did.  Shields are still crummy, but I didn't feel much desire to redo those right at this moment!

So, the painting tally for this year now stands at 118 Romans, 8 Balearic slingers, 24 Greek javelinmen, 4 artillery pieces and 6 crew, with another 48 Apulians touched up.  Hopefully this will be a good warm up for the next bout of painting...

Painting tallies updated

Well, it has been a successful six week's worth of painting by my standards. Since late September the output has been 16 eastern horse archers, 4 scythed chariots, 2 mounted generals and 36 Successor heavy cavalry. I also did a fair bit of touch up work on 18 Poeni and 21 Roman cavalry.
It's pleasing that the tiresome work I did earlier in the year prepping batches of horses has paid off, allowing me to churn out cavalry regularly and in pretty decent sized lots of late. The Successor cavalry was expecially speedy, needing only a week.

So here is the full list for 2010 so far:

12 Celtiberian scutarii (OG).
4 Carthaginian four-horse chariots, 12 crew (Chariot).
8 Successor elephants, 24 crew, (Chariot) 6 supporting skirmishers (OG).
1 mounted Successor general (OG).

18 Thracian medium cavalry (OG).
18 Illyrian light horse (OG).
12 Tarentine cavalry (Chariot).

4 Seleucid scythed chariots (Chariot).
16 eastern horse archers (OG).
36 Successor heavy cavalry (OG, with a few Essex and Xyston figures thrown in).
2 mounted Successor generals (Xyston).

Older figures made presentable:

18 Carthaginian Poeni cavalry (Chariot).
21 Republican Roman cavalry (manufacturer unknown).

One could just about say that 2010 has been the year of the horse!

It's almost priming season...

The weather here is starting to turn from stinking hot and humid to pleasantly variable, which means that it's time to get the cans of spray primer out.  My first priority is to fill out my Successor armies and to get some of my recently purchased DBA armies primed and ready to go.  Of the DBA armies, Normans and Saxons will be first up, but I have to get my hands on some painting guides or books so that I don't make a complete mess of things...

Anyway, now's a good time to take stock of where I'm at.  This is the painting tally for this year so far:

12 Celtiberian scutarii (OG).
4 Carthaginian four-horse chariots, 12 crew (Chariot).
8 Successor elephants, 24 crew, (Chariot) 6 supporting skirmishers (OG).
1 mounted general (OG).
18 Thracian medium cavalry (OG).
18 Illyrian light horse (OG).
12 Tarentine cavalry (Chariot).
 
This is what's partly finished or on the table:
 
24 Celtiberians with spear (OG).
18 generic horse archers (OG).
120+ Confederate infantry (Italeri, Esci, Revell, RSM).
 
There is also a lot of stuff sitting already primed in boxes that I hope to get round to some time, but Lord knows when that will happen...

Painting tally, May

To motivate myself to paint more, I'm going to start posting painting tallies.

To date this year:

12 Celtiberian scutarii (OG).
4 Carthaginian four-horse chariots, 12 crew (Chariot).
8 Successor elephants, 24 crew, (Chariot) 6 supporting skirmishers (OG).
1 mounted general (OG).

Hmm, looking pretty poor, but I have done some prep work which will hopefully help things progress a bit faster later in the year!

Next on the table:
18 Thracian medium cavalry (OG).
18 Illyrian light horse (OG).