About Me

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London, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
A mythical beast - a female wargamer! I got back into wargaming in the summer of 2011 after a very, very long break and haven't looked back since. I must admit that I seem to be more of a painter/collector than a gamer, but do hope to correct that at some point in the near future. My gaming interests span the ages, from the "Biblical" era all the way through to the far future. I enjoy games of all sizes, from a handful of figures up to major battles (see my megalomaniacally sized Choson Korean and Russian Seven Years War armies).

Sunday 29 May 2016

A Somewhat Productive Week

Despite being somewhat tired every evening this week and spending much of yesterday trying to catch up a bit on sleep, I've actually been reasonably productive. During the week I was painting up some artillery for my SYW Russians. I'd pretty much finished them on Thursday night so I did the final details on Friday evening and varnished them. A bit later on I stuck them in a container with water in it to help loosen the PVA glue holding them onto the painting sticks. A couple of hours later I took them out and as I was plucking the figures off I noticed something frightful - everything seemed to have white splotches in random places. I then realised what it must have been - the varnish wasn't fully dry and the water must have been warm, causing the varnish to go cloudy. I decided to try something a little drastic, but it seemed to do the trick - a  mix of satin and matt varnishes with some of my ink washes.

Yesterday I got the figures stuck onto their bases and added basing gunk. This morning I added flock and glued the limbers into place behind the horses.

And without further ado, here are the pics:



4 pounder, 2 x 8 pounder, howitzer


As before, the guns are loose so that I can choose what gun to use depending on my army list and also to turn them round to show limbered/unlimbered.


This afternoon I've been having some fun with the airbrush. You may recall that toward the end of the Challenge I assembled a bunch of extra vehicles (mostly hover tanks) for my 15mm NSL force. Well, as they'd been sitting in the drawer ever since and I didn't have anything else primed and ready to go (OK, nothing else that I wanted to paint today) I set up the spray booth, sorted out the paints I'd need, found my little scraps of mesh for the camo patterns and got myself ready to go. And then I spotted that I hadn't added radio antennae to the vehicles. A couple of minutes with a cheap plastic brush, a hobby knife and some superglue and the antennae were in place.

I did my best to replicate the paint scheme of the original vehicles. The colours were easy as I'd made a note of them in a blog post at the time. It was more the technical side - I'd forgotten how much of a pig it was using the meshes for the camo.

Anyway, some pics of the various stages of WIP:

Dunkelgelb primer

Hull Red stripes

Dark Blue Grey diamond pattern

Diamond pattern close up

Camo Light Green dot pattern

Dot pattern close up


A few weeks ago, I was contacted by a small miniatures company in France, asking me if I'd be willing to review some of their figures. I had seen some of their figures during the Challenge and really liked the look of them, so I agreed. They then asked if there were any in particular that I would like to review. The list was very long, even after I knocked it back to a few examples of the singles and groups, so I just said "surprise me".

Anyhoos, earlier this week the package arrived:


On opening the package I was surprised - the figure they'd sent wasn't one of the ones which had made it to my pared down list, but was a very suitable one for me:


"Tania the Tanker" from Raging Heroes, whose pose and look is clearly inspired by "Rosie the Riveter" from the WW2 posters. The pic shows everything (except the delivery slip) that came in the package. I have opened the blister pack to take a look at the figure, but no pics for now - I'll be saving those for the review post. Let's just say it looks great and I look forward to painting her.



18 comments:

  1. A damn productive week Tamsin, love the sci-fi!

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  2. Don't you just hate the varnishing - there's always the chance of it going tits up all that time spent. The Russians have turned out great.
    As for the hover tanks love the paint job.

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  3. Never have enough guns for the russians. Excellent work.

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  4. Varnishing - a simple job that can go desperately wrong without warning. Good save though. I've got some Darkest Africa figures that went awry about ten years ago still awaiting salvation. Paintbrush for them, I think. Good spray work. What kind of gun do you use?

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  5. Productive week indeed and great save with the varnish. Loving the look of your parcel contents too, very interesting.

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  6. Very productive week Tamsin! Looking forward to seeing the finished Tania figure.
    Cheers, PD

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  7. Well recovered! My heart sinks when I notice figures have dried shiny/blotched etc.

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  8. Love the GZG sci fi stuff. very swift progress and all looks very good indeed.

    Previous comment deleted due to wrong position and NOT wanting to try an "Hi-Jack" another's comment.

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  9. Very nice artillery - the WIP looks very interesting and promising! :D Cheers!

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  10. Love the way the airbrush came out. Sorry you are feeling tired but cool beans on having a good production.

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  11. Spiffy work on them all, Tamsin! Great recovery on the ruskies, but I really like the tanks. You make it look too easy whereas I'd need a few days and swearing profusely to get that result!
    Kudos on the review work too, I'll be looking forward to that writeup! ;)

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  12. @ Martin C - cheers! :)

    @ Francis - thought you'd like them :)

    @ Dannoc - it's never happened to me with acrylic brush-on varnish before, so I'm glad it was recoverable :)

    @ Paul - indeed you can't; the more guns the better :)

    @ Gary - cheers! It could have been a lot worse - at least it was recoverable :)
    I use an Iwata Revolution (0.5mm needle) for priming and larger areas; an Iwata Neo (0.35mm needle) for finer work.

    @ Michael A - thanks! Kyle (Mr Lee) painted up a bunch of Raging Heroes figures during the Challenge so, having seen them, I know I'll enjoy painting this one up :)

    @ Peter D - and so it was. Tania will be along in a week or two I expect :)

    @ Herkybird - my heart definitely sank. I'd have been well annoyed if my recovery effort didn't work :o

    @ Clint - cheers! Just the detailing and basing to do now :)

    @ RMacedo - thanks! :)

    @ Whisk - turns out that the tiredness was down to the start of a cold which has just blown up on me overnight :(

    @ Neil - thanks! :)

    @ David B - cheers! You just need an airbrush and some practice! :)

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    1. Thanks for that. Mentioned it to Chris in a casual sort of way, but her expression made it clear she was only interested in painted walls and ceilings. 😒

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  13. Very productive indeed Tamsin great work!

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  14. Excellent work on that artillery! I'm pleased to hear that you could fix them! Nothing worser as to start painting all over again!
    Like the cammo on the hover tanks to! And finally I'm looking forward to that figure of France!

    Greetings
    Peter

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