Sunday 6 July 2014

Painting Drought.

I've had a very slow June in the painting department due to a number of factors, but mostly due to being exceptionally busy doing other things. Firstly work has been very hectic which has impinged significantly on my leisure time, which is restricted at best & what little remained has been taken up carrying out some much needed repairs at HGA Towers.
Its very pleasant living in an Edwardian house with good natural light & high ceilings but the downside is the constant need for small maintenance work, two years ago it was re-pointing one gable end; this year its replacing & repairing the original window sills. I could have employed a carpenter to do this for me but I wanted them done in good, durable timber & most of the chippies I come across only want to work with white wood which wouldn't last 5 minutes in our wet micro climate. To be honest its been a real arse of a job, particularly cutting out the old sills but they should see out the rest of my tenure on earth.
Other than the above which is reason enough I've experienced what can only be described as a 'painting funk' in that I've been unable to find anything to even remotely interest me in this department. My output is slow at the best of times even when enthused by some project or other but I just plod on & get there sooner or later. Faced with having nothing to engage my interest I just stopped painting. This has happened once or twice before & then something comes along that gets the creative juices flowing again, this time its the soon to be released Republican Roman plastics from Victrix. So in order to get my eye in again I've made a start on a few Renegade Miniatures velites that have been hanging around since my last attempt at a Roman Army:



Don't know how well these will scale to the Victrix figures as Renegades Romans were notoriously huge, but it shouldn't matter in limited numbers.
In addition to these I finally made some progress on these Thracian cavalry that were abandoned 18 months ago:



Not 100% happy with the colour scheme on the shields, but they do stand out.

4 comments:

  1. Nice looking Romans and Thracians. I like the shield patterns on the Thracian, as is. That said, maybe adding another color to it may please you. Possibly a red stripe along the diagonal? I'm interested to see your 1:1 carpentry too. Best, Dean

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    1. Thanks Dean, a stripe might not be a bad idea but I'm also considering a palmate frond! May have to start a separate blog to illustrate my various carpentry disasters.
      Regards HGA.

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  2. I like the Renegade velites, I have a unit of those myself. I wouldn't imagine that they will "go" with Victrix, as big and chunky... They work well with Aventines, though. Maybe a very light ink wash over the cavalry shields? Best, Simon

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    1. Thought long & hard about using Aventine for this & other projects, indeed I have several of their excellent elephants, but their figures are a little too large to fit with the Foundry, Crusader & Polemarch that constitute the vast majority of my ancients collection. Agreed, blue on shields is a little 'neon' some weathering wouldn't go amiss.
      Regards HGA.

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