Wednesday, November 28, 2007

The British Are Coming


Eureka Arquebusiers de Grassin (left) and Suren Black Watch Highlanders (right) fight for possession of the pumpkin-scarecrow somewhere in Flanders. Buildings by Herb Gundt.

Someone asked if anyone was painting British forces. Well, as long as you are asking, I thought that I might as well post the one picture that I had of my British forces. I took the picture last week, the friday after Thanksgiving. Bob Pavlik came over to Schloss Seewald to shoot some pictures of my SYW collection for inclusion in the Historicon 2008 booklet that lists all of the games. Bob set up this little vignette and provided the lighting. For some reason, it didn't occur to me to take advantage of Bob's portable lights and shoot some of my own pictures, piggy-backing off of his hard work. So here it is.

I only have a brigade of British so far, consisting of the 11th Foot (Sowle's Regt. - Staddens), the 8th (Onslow's - Staddens), the 3rd Foot (The Buffs - Front Rank) and the 42nd Highlanders (Surens). My intention is to paint and flag the units for the War of the Austrian Succession, circa the Battle of Fontenoy in 1745. My meager cavalry force consists of 30 horsemen divided among the 8th Horse (Ligonier's - 18 figures- Surens) and the Horse Grenadiers of the Household Cavalry (12 figures - Staddens). I have no artillery at this time, save for a lot of unpainted Elite Miniatures guns and crewmen. Lord John Ligonier will be my army commander, but the brigade structure is yet to be determined until I get more figures painted. There will probably be at least one Guard battalion using the Suren figures and the rest will be the Staddens in the march attack pose.

12 comments:

  1. More beautiful minis! Love the buildings and terrain, too, with the scarecrow and all!

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  2. Der Alte,

    Thanks for troubling to put up a pic of the redcoats! Everywhere I look I see Prussians, Prussians, Prussians and just wanted His Britannic Majesty's Army to get into the fray!

    Your site is very inspirational!

    Theo
    Belfast

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  3. Hurrah! The Scots are on the move. Okay, they're the 42nd, which is just another kind of Campbell, but even so, lovely to see them in action. The arquebusiers look good too. Excellent pics, thanks for sharing them.

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  4. Hi there Jim,

    Hey, those Eureka Arquebusiers look lovely! A nice change from all of tricornered hats, mitres, and Austrian bearskin grenadier caps. Your scots are pretty cool too. How did you develop your rapid painting process? I'm always on the lookout for ways to speed up my own way of doing things.

    Best Regards,

    Stokes

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  5. super figs - also I am interested in the buildings - where did you get them from?

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  6. Buildings: these are all made by Herb Gundt of H.G. Walls in South Bend and are custom made to my specifications. Whenever I see a picture of an interesting building for the 18th Century, I cut it out or take a picture and turn it over to Herb and he constructs a miniature copy. The chicken coop structure with the latice work comes from a model done of the town of Rossbach. The pumpkin scarecrow was an idea that I copied from another web site. Then I thought that it would be neat to have some laundry hanging on a clothsline. The 2 story building is the Gasthaus Alter Fritz in Hochirk, Germany,

    Around this time last year, I started painting British SYW figures and from November to January, I had painted 4 battalions and 30 cavalry figures. Then the Prussian mania took over and I found myself painting tons of guys in blue coats instead. It is still my intention to add to the British in 2008. Between what I, Bill and Randy have, we have a dozen plus battalions, enough for a good sized battle, but we are short on cavalry.

    Painting Speed: the best thing is to commit to painting at least one hour a day. If you do that, you will have a battalion in no time. I like to break things up into smaller groups of 15 to 20 or 30 figures and paint them to completion (or 10-12 cavalry figures). Smaller batches don't seem as daunting a prospect to paint as a 60 figure battalion.

    I use the assembly line method and paint all of one item on each of the figures in the batch. this goes faster than painting 4 to 6 figures from start to finish. Often, I will paint the first figure to completion to get a feel for how to paint the figure, this helps me spot tricky bits to paint or find shortcuts that speed things up.

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  7. Note the stork nest atop the chimney on one of the buildings. This is a typical sight when one is visiting Frederician battlefield sites in Silesia. There are stork nests everywhere.

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  8. Lots of lovely eye-candy; looking forward to more pictures of your troops

    -- Allan

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  9. John,

    As usual, your figures are magnificent. And I tahnk you for show casing the Black Watch - "The Campbells are coming! Hurrah! Hurrah!" with bagpipes aplaying.

    Jim (AKA Col Campbell)

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  10. I think when I was on tour in Poland I saw more than one Storks' nest on top of chimneys just like in your model building.

    Greg

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  11. Jim, your blog is a real joy to visit to just soak up the eye candy.
    I'm lovin' everything you do and your tabnle always looks superb. You are a very lucky man :-)

    Frank

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  12. Oops! What's a tabnle??? :-))))

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