Finished: 15mm Ming Chinese Spear & Bow Unit #4

OK, so that's the fourth and last spear & bow unit done and dusted for my Ming Chinese army. As with the previous unit I went with a slightly brighter coat colour.

I now have 15 units for FoGR/FoGAM with a few more still to paint. and I still need to buy some artillery and arquebusier figures that I'm happy with (the Old Glory 15s are earlier handguns and not right for the army - I might need to order some of the Grumpys ones from Eureka). I should probably also think about adding some tribal warrior troops to the army, but they can wait.

Sunday Workbench 28 January

I know you were expecting a second "finished" post this past week, but I'm afraid you'll just have to wait until tomorrow for that. There is a good reason - I've had a cold all week which decided in the evenings to interfere with my ability to paint. I've made up for it this weekend and finished the second spear & bow unit as well as doing some more things.

Today I got the basing done and flag added to the spear & bow unit, then primed the figures that I had intended to do during the week:

Front left - Korean irregulars; Back left - Ming Chinese melee weapons; Right - Korean/Ming heavy bow cavalry

Once the primer had had a chance to dry, I sorted out the remaining Koreans and Ming Chinese for painting.

Korean irregulars

Korean/Ming heavy bow cavalry

Front to back: Spear & Dao unit; front rank spears for arquebusier units; heavy foot

I decided looking at what was left that I wanted to get the Korean irregulars out of the way. These will be for "mob" units and there are enough figures to do nine bases (to add to the three I've already done).

I've made a start on them:

These should be finished quite quickly, so expect a second "finished" post on Wednesday.

Finished: 15mm Ming Chinese Spear & Bow Unit #3

Contrary to my post yesterday, I actually finished the basing on these last night, but waited until today to post pics.

This is the third spear & bow unit for my Ming Chinese, which will be closely followed by the fourth.

Sunday Workbench 21 January

I've had a rather productive weekend. After finishing the heavy infantry on Friday I made a small start on the next unit (base layer of the coat colour) then carried on yesterday and managed to finish painting them (including the Klear/ink coat). As I still had a bit of painting time left, I decided to make a small start on the next unit - just the coat colour base layer again. Alongside all of that I also managed to prep a bunch of figures.

I started today by varnishing the unit I'd finished on Saturday, popping them off their painting sticks and gluing them onto bases. I also got the figures I'd prepped stuck onto paitning sticks to await priming.

This afternoon and early evening have been spent doing the basing on Saturday's finished unit and carrying on with painting the next unit (which is very nearly finished - eek!).

I'll be finishing off the basing of the first unit tomorrow and will post pics. I should manage to finish painting the second unit tomorrow but varnishing and basing will take up Tuesday and Wednesday evenings, so it will be a couple of days before you get pics of them. I'm guessing that Thursday will be spent priming the prepped figures and cleaning my airbrush and brushes, before I begin painting on the next batch of figures on Friday.

Finished: 15mm Ming Chinese Heavy Infantry Unit #1

And another unit for my Ming Chinese army rolls off the paint table! This time it is a unit of heavy infantry (or armoured medium foot for FoGR). As these will be more of a guard/elite unit, I opted to give them a somewhat more flashy colour scheme for their robes.

The next units I'll be working on are two more spear & bow units, to be followed by another heavy foot unit, before I move onto the heavy cavalry.

The various extra packs that I was waiting for arrived on Tuesday and I've been working away to get them prepped. The bases I was running short of also came in on Tuesday.

Finished: 15mm Ming Chinese Spear & Dao Unit #3

As promised in my post yesterday here are the finished spear & dao unit, the third in my army. I wanted the coats to be a slightly brighter red, but still a little muted so I used a mix of Flat Red and Red Leather. I think it's worked nicely.

I've had to start on a second box file for this army (which I'd fully expected), so have split them with the infantry in one box and the rest in another.

Sunday Workbench 14 January

OK, an admission. I didn't quite manage to keep up with my resolution this week. There were two days where no painting got done. On Thursday it was because I was out playing ADLG - a Chinese civil war, which Simon won (it was very close) making him the biggest Ming-er of all.

On Friday I was suffering from a heavy cold and the aches and lack of energy left me not fit to paint. I have more than made up for it over the weekend though, finishing the spear & dao unit I started last weekend (there'll be a "finished" post tomorrow) and making a small start on the next unit:

This bunch are armoured infantry. Just the black basecoat for metals at the moment (plus the scabbards and trousers). I suspect that these will be a fairly quick paint, which leaves me in a bit of a quandary for what to paint next as I've run out of 40x20 bases. I'll be placing an order for those this evening, but if they don't arrive in the next few days I may need to switch projects for a short while.

Sunday Workbench 07 January

Well, well, my first Sunday Workbench of the year. And not a lot to show as I've only got one project on the go. Which is quite normal for me these days.

I decided to carry on with my Ming Chinese and pulled out the first unit I came to - some more spear & dao troops.

Yesterday I only did the base coat on their jackets, I got a few more steps done today but they'll still need a couple more evening sessions this week.

After these I have another four infantry units to do as I'm still waiting for the last packet of heavy horse archers to arrive.

Finished: 15mm Ming Chinese "Blue Hat" and "Green Hat" Horse Archers

I seem to be keeping to my New Year's Resolution quite well so far - I've done something related to finishing figures every evening this week. Now to see if I can manage that for another 360 days...

This evening I've finished the basing on these horse archers, finally completing this batch which I started on in November.

Blue Hats

And with the original base:

Green Hats

Tomorrow will see me make a start on painting something else. I haven't decided what yet though - you'll just have to wait for my Sunday Workbench post to see what I've opted for.

Happy New Year

Gosh, it's 2018 already. Or at last. I'm not sure which yet. Maybe a bit of both.

Regardless, I've been rather lax with posting over the last few weeks. I do aim to be more regular with my posts this year. Hopefully my one resolution will help with that - to do some painting every day, even if it's just 10 minutes.

With that in mind, I have started the year as I mean to go on today and done some painting. I have finally finished those Ming horse archers that I started back in November and given them a Klear/ink coat. Just the varnishing and basing to do now.

I'll leave off by wishing all my readers a happy and productive 2018!