A Brief Interlude - Spain: Barcelona, Sitges, Cadaques

Miniatures painting took a back seat for a while as we got ready to head to Spain for a family vacation.  My daughter Carolyn got a travel grant to go, so we packed up the whole family and headed out with her.  It's been twenty years since I was outside of the USA, but I figured we better get out before "the Donald" built a wall of isolationism around the whole country.

Gaudi's Magnum Opus - the Segrada Familia.

The inside of the basilica was amazing.  Filled with light due to the soaring support arches modeled after trees.  It literally moved me to tears.

Looking up.  It is extraordinarily difficult to capture this in a way that shows the sheer scale of these arches!

Roman Amphitheater at Tarragona, south of Barcelona.

The Cable car to Mount Serrat.

The view from our room in Cadaques.  We stayed in an 800 year old home, literally a fifty yard walk down the cobble stoned street to the Mediterranean.  We had the top two floors and the owner had her painting studio on the first floor.  We could not have asked for a finer hostess or place to stay.

Carolyn outside the B&B with one of the many street cats.  The artist Dali lived just outside Cadaques and started a hotel for cats, that was just up the street from us.

A view of Cadaques from the light house

A happy family!

Thanks to Carolyn for providing the inspiration for the trip!

Snorkelling and Scuba (for Connor) from our base in Cadaques.  We came up from our dives into a hailstorm, but our guides kept us safe and got us back home in one piece.

Good think we had on the wet suits - those hail stones packed a wallop!

The final stages of our journey.  On the way back to Barcellona we stopped in Allela and had a tour of a fourteenth century winery.  Got to sip wine under the shade of a mulberry treee with a view of the farmhouse and the Mediterranean - simply amazing!

Just a neat house in Alella

Carolyn was able to stick with her vegan ways, even in pork loving Spain.

One of our best - and cheapest meals - was in Alella.  A fresh tomato salad and locally caught Mackerel for me.

DBA Marian Romans and Spanish Auxillaries

The new army lists in DBA give the Marian Romans a little extra variety, so I decided to add some of the Spanish, and Numidian allies.  I assume the elephant was probably supposed to be from Numidia, but I have chosen a hang over from the Carthaginians, and in any event thought it would look best as an element in Scipio's army.

VVV decals were used to decorate the beast.  One of Scipio's Iberian allies guards the elephant on foot.

On the other side of the elephant, a warrior in captured Roman armor guards the elephant from the attack of lightly armed psiloi.

Iberian heavy cavalry - ineffective but pretty.

Here's what started this whole project.  I found some Roman Bolt Throwers in my collection of unpainted lead from Testudo miniatures, and couldn't resist getting them into action.  In their first outing versus an Indian army, they proved devastating to the enemies elephants.

Numidian allied light horse - the most feared horsemen on the battlefield.

Spanish light infantry auxiliaries.

And the heavies - really had fun with the shields!

The largish Xyston figures mix quite nicely with the Testudo Romans - next up, the Gallic mercenaries of Caesar.

Der Kriegspielers Russian Jagers and Artillery

Let's just say that as a former professional photographer, I still haven't learned how to take decent pictures of these glossy little fellas!  I'll keep working on it, but for now just know they are a lot better looking on the tabletop.  Here we have the 3rd Russian Jagers.  I have decided to model the 3rd Corp of the Russian first army, primarily due to the presence of the Pavlov Grenadiers.  Not to mention that eventually I'll get to paint the guard cossacks...

The infamous Russian artillery.  The Unicorn is actually plastic, but I have some stand ins from Newline Designs on the way.

The soldier with the barrel swab thought he was being rude, so turned around to not have his backside facing the camera.

Progress on the Russian army thus far.  I have three other infantry battalions mounted that will require minimal brush work to make serviceable, though I will need to replace the flags.

The view from the ground....

and from the observation balloon.

Old School Napoleonics - Der Kriegspielers and Hinton Hunt

At the Siege of Augusta convention I was fortunate enough to find a large lot of Der Kriegspielers miniatures for sale at a bargain price.  They were adequately painted so I am endeavoring to touch them up as best I can without doing a complete repaint, to get them ready for the table top.

First up is the 1st squadron of the 2nd regiment of French Cuirassiers.  Thanks to Matt in New Zealand for the additional cavalry to complete the regiment.

http://thehintonspieler.blogspot.com

The standard bearer in the middle is a converted officer but I am unsure of the make.  He is similar in style and size to the Der Kriegspiers / Hinton Hunt figures, but the base is enormous, being almost a full 1/8th of an inch think.  Anyone know what manufacturer he might be from?

Here we have a foot artillery battery, with what appears to be a Russian gunner wearing a French shako.  The gun itself is plastic, so I have added a few details to the stand to try and distract from the simplicity of the gun carriage.

The crate is a 20mm scenic detail from the WWII FAA line, but looked universal enough to fit in.

The water bucket is a filed down 28mm French Shako and the sponge is an old lance with the sponge sculpted from epoxy putty, as well as a couple of epoxy putty round shot.

No Russian army would be complete without the Pavlov Grenadiers.  This is the first battalion and I will model the third battalion down the road, but it may require a complete repaint so is likely to be some time before joining the fray.

Have to love the red mitre bags!

The Standard bearer is a converted Musketeer which has been decapitated and then had a grenadier head added.  The cast on flags are so large and heavy for the Russians, that I decided it would be best to replace the staff with a wire spear and make a paper flag.  Thanks to the folks at Warflag for making the downloadable flags!  I just print them in black and white and paint over them.  Makes a really nice template for painting the flags.

 http://www.warflag.com/napflags/flaghtml/russindx.htm

WWII 105mm German howitzer emplacement - Bolt Action

This is the German 105mm Howitzer set with a few additional pieces for the sandbag bunker and storage by Baueda.

I entered this set in the painting contest for the historical category at the Siege of August this past January.  I was sure that if I won anything it would be with the limber in my previous post, but surprisingly, this set won a first place prize and the siege bucks given as a prize were quickly spent on some Testudo 28mm knights for a battle of Tannenberg (Grunwald) project. Had a great time at Siege by the way so come visit Augusta Georgia if you can next January!

Lots of nice accessories are included in the Bolt Action set - everything but instructions.  I searched their site high and low but there were no instructions to be found for this piece, though I found instructions for about everything else they make.  Hopefully I got it put together correctly!

Feuer!

New small diorama elements for DBN in 28mm and 15mm camp with limbered horse gun

I actually created this piece to serve as a camp element for the Napoleonic variant based on DBA (De Bellis Antiquitatis), called DBN.  If memory serves it is modeled on an elite horse artillery limber, very similar to the Old Guard, but without the white pompoms.  There was some disagreement in my sources as to what the uniforms looked like, so I tried to make my best guess.  I hope you purists out there will be forgiving of my interpretation.

For the small diorama bases I use a Litko 3mm base and add a piece of insulation foam that I then carve to shape hills, roads, gulleys etc.

There are so many good scenic products out there these days.  I believe the tufts of grass and flowers were supplied by Leadbear's Tufts out of Australia (https://www.facebook.com/leadbearstufts/)

Here we have a series of 28mm Cavalry for my slowly growing 28mm armies for DBN.  First I have the renowned British 15th Hussars.  I had a ton of conflicting sources as to the design of the saddle cloth.  Eventually I went with Haythornthwaite's uniforms of the Peninsular war.

You really have to wonder how they kept those tall busbys from falling off at a full gallop!

These are some old school Garrison figures that I picked up as part of a larger 20mm Der Kriegspeler's find.  I figured I might as well spruce them up and use them, so cut off the cast lances, cleaned up the paint and added some highlighting.

I really like the little gulley in the center of this small diorama base.

When seen from behind this base really comes alive as the rider on the right looks like he is leaning in to catch up with his fellow lancers.

Lastly I have three regiments of French dragoons in post 1812 uniforms

These are foundry figures, I believe sculpted by the Perry brothers, but they are considerably smaller than the current Perry plastics.

You have to love that some designer somewhere said - "Hey, you know what will really make our dragoons look fierce - yellow and pink facings!  Yep, that will definitely strike fear into the hearts of our enemies."

Love the horse on the right side with both back feet off the ground.  Don't know if horses actually do that, but it looks cool.

I don't often model guidon bearers for my cavalry elements, but this one just looked too cool!

1812 uniform with a pre-1812 flag - I imagine it was possible for a while, at least I hope so.

Vive le Empereur they shout as they prepare to ride down Richard Sharpe and his tiny band of green coated ruffians...