Thursday, September 20, 2007

Seven Day Challenge

This is a bit of a follow on from a post I made a day or two ago about building on my Prussian collection.

I've since had a good scrounge through my lead pile and have come up with enough castings to build two Fusilier and one Grenadier Company. To build this force in the configuration that I am aiming at (three companies of "hatmen" and a company of grenadiers per batallion), I'm obviously a bit short but will carry on for now with what I have for now because I'm off on holiday in a week and don't have the time to wait on a new order from the lads at DPC.

Which brings me to the title of this post.

I have 41 figures and one horse to paint. To challenge myself, I aim to paint them before I go away. To make things a little more difficult for myself, I've decided to create a little vignette depicting the death of General Schwerin at Prague.

After spending the past few days with my nose stuck in an Osprey I have decided that I will be painting Fusilier Regiment Nr. 33.

The night before last I cleaned, mounted and undercoated the castings with my favoured matt black spray paint. Last night I painted all their little lead faces and hands and this morning while I got ready for work, I put the highlights on chin, cheeckbones, knuckles and nose.

As I write this I have just finished trimming the standards for IR 33 and IR 24 (the latter for the Schwerin vignette) and tonight I ought to get a couple of hours to myself and I'll get the hats and the horse done at least and start on the vignette.

As to the vignette, I'm hoping to use the mounted French officer and a rearing horse as the basis. I'll swap his hat-holding hand for a flagstaff and try to get a couple of suitably-dismayed-looking troopers from IR24 on the same base.

I shall report again tomorow.

5 comments:

WSTKS-FM Worldwide said...

Hello Greg,

This sounds really interesting! Looking forward to the outcome. Paint man, paint!

Best Regards,

Stokes

Bloggerator said...

Game on!

Bluebear Jeff said...

Don't forget to take pictures . . . we love to look at attractively dressed lead.


-- Jeff

Der Alte Fritz said...

Good luck on your "blitzpainting".

As to Schwerin, are you going to bend the torso backwards per the Menzel drawing of his demise?

Bloggerator said...

I will have to play with the miniatures a little first - I'm hoping not to have to mess the casting around too much. The rearing horse will take him a fair way back at the outset - I'm hoping a little judicious filing at the underside of the rear of his saddle-blanket will let me rock him back enough.