A brief diversion

On my front doorstep (which we never use and hence what follows) a few weeks back was a parcel that had come to me from the UK. I opened it and it turned out to be the copy of Duncan Head's "Armies of the Macedonian and Punic Wars". I had ordered it in February and promptly forgotten about it. I am sure it arrived with all despatch and had waitied there patiently for me to notice it.

A pleasant surprise you may say, and indeed it was. Even more surprising was the fact that the snails had deigned merely to nibble lightly upon the envelope before nicking off in search of some lettuce instead.

 Well, I was flicking through it today - these books are extremely flick-friendly, you understand - and what a treat it is. Three-paragraph battle descriptions, sections on the composition and descriptions of the Armies and so on.

Then you come to Ian Heath's illustrations. There are 188 of them.

Fair use, yeah Ian?

I invite you to admire them and then ask yourself why no-one seems (that I can see) to have picked up on their "look" to do a range of 30mm miniatures. The only thing with which I can compare them is the work of the German flat engravers. Such clean lines. Such nice anatomy. Such uncluttered simplicity.

UPDATE - OK there are these from Garrison:

Rose Prestige Greek - buy them in huge quantities, they are gorgeous.

But that's about it so far as I can tell. Someone... anyone.. please!

Artillery Uniform Test Shot

Nothing much today. I'm experimenting with the artillery and painted this fellow in what is a colour test for the rest of the Gunners' uniforms.

The observant among you will note that he is in the traditional Alzheim white small clothes with the red stock whilst his turnbacks are in the armorial pale blue favoured by the Electoral family.

I am ruminating upon the colour the gun carriages ought to be. Baggage wagons, pontoon carts &c would also be this colour. Yellow is out as this is the colour of the Imperial guns. Red contrasts nicely with the pale blue that is going to be the dominant colour of the army. Pale blue would at least go with the theme. Green would clash rather, unless it's a dark green.

Hmmm.

In other news, I've put paint to plastic for IR#5 "La Rosee". These chaps look simply delicious in their pale blue coats with the fuschia-coloured turn-backs. I've only a dozen or so and that will pretty well run me out of plastic line infantry types and I'll be starting to top my units up with metal figures.

However, this does bring me to the point where I'll be starting a light infantry unit out of some Barry Minot plastic AWI American light infantry that I bought of a certain magazine editor/graphic designer chap in a pub some years ago. I've not yet decided whether to paint them on traditional Jaeger colours (Green turned up Red) or to put them into a uniform like say the FreiKorps Lacy (White turned up Yellow).

A nice dilemma.