KGL for SDS!

Recently I finished 11 x 28mm King’s German Legion infantry from the Napoleonic Wars. These are Brigade Games miniatures and will be used for skirmish games. Once again these are a commission for Cory and finishes off my efforts in 28mm Napoleonics for now. I’ve never much liked the stovepipe shako, preferring the Belgic style but these have come out well enough.

The background is the painted scene given to me by my mother-in-law as a birthday gift. Its designed specifically for use as a background when taking photos of miniatures. I’m still getting the hang of the lighting with my new setup so to my mind these are not the best pics but they’ll have to do for now at least.

Cheers,
Millsy

Spanish Napoleonic Skirmishers

I've been busy of late knocking off some commission work for a mate as part of my submissions for the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge. I've got some KGL infantry I've 99% finished to show but they will have to wait until they've appeared on Curt's blog. In the meantime here are some Spanish I finished a little while ago but forgot to post...

The first batch are some guerrilla characters on foot. These sculpts (and my painting) are based on the illustrations from Osprey’s Elite 108 - Spanish Guerrillas in the Peninsular War 1808-14.

The second batch are Don Julian Sanchez lancers 1810-12 from the same book. We had to go with whatever we could find regards the sculpts but have matched the uniform as close as possible. Lovely sculpts but some of the most fiddly mounted 28s I've ever painted. I do love their horses though. Certainly amongst the best going around IMHO.

Something interesting to note regards the photos – the mate who commissioned the work bought me a pair of rechargeable folding LED lights for my birthday, specifically so I can take photos of minis indoors regardless of time of day or weather. It’s quite late in the arvo here and pouring with rain so pretty drab and dark for daytime, yet these photos have come out jolly well for a first go. Hardly any Photoshop retouching needed at all. I think once I get the camera settings worked out they will be a great tool and I thoroughly recommend them. I imagine similar lights are available in most countries.
Cheers,
Millsy

My mother-in-law is AWESOME

Given that Sandra was 50% responsible for the creation of the wonderful creature I am privileged to call Mrs Millsy, you might imagine that would be enough to earn my mother-in-law the title of AWESOME. In the event that you presented such an argument I would in no way disagree. Quite the opposite.

Sandra is not one to rest of her laurels however. Despite a VERY recent knee replacement she happily agreed to craft the most amazing birthday gift for me. When asked what I would like I mentioned I was sick of photographing my miniatures against a bland background and what I really wished I had was a nice artist-rendered landscape. At this point I was quizzed on what it should look like, how big it needed to be, etc.

Instructions were duly delivered - a rolling country landscape devoid of man-made structures that might place it in time or location. Roughly 1/3 land and 2/3 sky. Also, it needed to be approximately two feet wide and one foot high. Even better if (in terms of style) it could look something like this...

and in terms of content look something along the lines of this...

and this...

So you can imagine my immense delight when I popped by on my way home today to be presented, completely out of the blue with the finished product - a completely bespoke landscape painting intended purely for the use in photographing my painted tin.

And here it is...

To say I can hardly wait to try this out is the understatement of a lifetime. Thanks Mum, you're AWESOME.

Cheers,
Millsy

Repainted SYW Austrian Artillery

It's not often that I repaint something from scratch. I'm not saying that I'm now (or ever will be) a painting "top gun", but I get by and most of my old stuff I can stand to look at. Except these artillery pieces.

What I was thinking I don't know but I do remember being quite pleased with them at the time (2006). Most likely it was the heady rush of having finished something the night before needed and heading off for a big bash with the lads.

Regardless, now that I've rebased all my other SYW stuff I simply had to do something with these, so I stripped the guns and retouched the artillerists, plus based them all to the current standard. I think they look a damn sight better but tell me what you think...

2006...

And 2013 (with pretty poor lighting unfortunately)...

With the exception of four lonely spare cuirassiers lurking at the back of the box I'm now down to (a LOT of) bare metal for our imagi-nations project. Tomorrow we try a small blue-on-blue game of Maurice - our very first. Can't wait...

PS. Enough distractions! Get back to the painting challenge Millsy, you lazy dog. ;-)

Cheers,
Millsy

ECW Royalist command stands

These are the last of my ECW for a while. These are Bicorne and Renegade 28mm miniatures and represent colonel’s colour parties from the regiments of Talbot, Northampton, Apsley and Rupert. Talbot’s colour is actually the first captain’s colour
(the colonel’s colour is pretty plain by comparison).

I'm currently working on some 28mm Napoleonics so stay tuned for those.

Before I forget, on behalf of all the lads here at Canister & Grape we wish you all a safe and prosperous new year and plenty of additions to your respective lead mountains!

Cheers,
Millsy