Wednesday 30 December 2020

Armourfast M4 Sherman’s 1/72 scale

A couple of M4’s for my WW2 US in Italy forces, great value for only £8.40p for two tanks. Picked up from WMMS Show a couple of years ago, also got two stugs in the stash to be brought into service over the next few months. Pleased with how these turned out, with the addition of some Early War Miniatures stowage items they really come to life.



Hope you all had a passable Christmas and here is to a much better 2021.
Stay safe, all the best Airhead


Tuesday 22 December 2020

The hunting lodge

Within my South European/Mediterranean skirmish terrain I wanted to have one building with a more aristocratic feel, without going the full stately home/palace vibe, with the resulting very large building footprint. So I thought a hunting lodge small summer house would fit the bill. I also added a small walled garden. Lots of the painting from the Franco Prussian war featured estate type walls, and as they make ideal cover for skirmish games it seemed an ideal opportunity to build something similar.





The hunting lodge was built with foam board for the walls rendered with PVA and sharp sand. Roof tiles from scrap cardboard and the paved driveway from egg carton cardboard. The low wall and gateway are made from expanded polystyrene with PVA and sand added to give it texture and make it more robust. The top of the gate posts are finished off with some beads again textured with the ubiquitous PVA and sand for texture. The gates are made from cardboard with metal mesh used to top them off. The same metal mesh is used for the windows. The hedges are made from green pan scrubber. The heraldic crest over the door was a plastic button which I cut down to a square shape to fit over the door. The only outstanding bits to finish this off are the doors, I’m looking to create something imposing for the front door.




The walled kitchen garden is designed to sit at the back of the hunting lodge or to be a stand alone item. That’s all for the moment, wishing all who pass this way a great Christmas and a much improved 2021. Stay safe TTFN Airhead.



Wednesday 9 December 2020

The village church

Every village needs a church, I based mine very loosely around the cemetery of St Privat by Alphonse Marie de Neuville as featured in his painting of the Battle of Gravelotte during the Franco Prussian war. The gate and the wall being the main features I copied from the painting. The church itself is all from my imagination. I was looking to create something with a rustic rural look, nothing to imposing.

I gave the roof of the church some battle damage and also made lots of strike marks on the walls and around the gate. Nothing that looks to much like WW2 combat damage, so no long lines of impact marks from machine gun fire. Making to terrain believable for earlier conflicts.









Below is the painting I’ve based some elements of my church and churchyard on.


That’s all for now, more village to come. Stay safe all the best Airhead


Friday 4 December 2020

Black tree designs Greek hoplite & Persian infantry

Some very old troop who have benefited from my enforced confinement over the last year. Purchased in the late 1990’s they and their Persian enemies are for using in small skirmish games. The shields are all painted free hand.


The Persians are supported by four Nubian archers, who last appeared in the blog in April 2009, in a supporting role to a post about my desert houses. So it’s only taken them 11 years to get back in. I have always loved the black and white illustration of them in my Greeks & Romans at war book which includes  Herodotus’s description of half chalk and half vermilion daubed Ethiopian archers.


Another blast from the past is my Achaemenid staging post in the background of this photo below. The staging posts were distributed along the Persian royal roads all over their empire. The look I was going for was slightly rundown in an obscure part of the empire, In the land of bones. So it can be fought over by all the passing empires over the centuries.




This last picture shows the base of the building painted with its egg box tiles in the correct colours, the two pictures above just have the building resting on the base. Still some more tweaks to do before being finished. The egg box thing is great for making large areas of paving, also used on my Middle Ages village buildings, more to come on that.


That’s all for now, stay safe, all the best Airhead.




Wednesday 11 November 2020

Damaged house 2 finished

Finished damaged house number two this week, pleased with how it turned out. The additional sabot bases with the rubble, smashed roof timbers and tiles can be used with the building or as stand alone terrain items. When creating the village I researched online for reference material. Lots of Franco Prussia war paintings were used for inspiration, a couple of images below give a flavour of the type of reference I based the village on.







More of the village to follow soon, looking forward to using the Perry’s new FPW range to fight for control of the village, stay safe, all the best Airhead, TTFN.




Monday 2 November 2020

South European Village - Damaged house part 2

Below are a selection of pictures showing the construction of damaged house two. I base all my 28mm scale buildings on 2mm thick plywood. As used by dolls house builders, works much better than art board with no danger of warping when glued or painted.

Around the main house base can be seen two of the sabot bases with sand and small gravel added, the gravel is from a cactus buying phase the daughter went through many moons ago, I got a lifetime supply out of that phase. Also added are some granite chipping’s from the pavement out side our estate. A pile of foam bricks cut up from the removed poly board can be seen in the second photo.



The cross hatching in white on the top picture showed where I was going to cutout the walls and the smaller cross hatching show’s where I will strip of the card covering from the poly board to expose the foam layer. The next picture above shows the foam scored to represent the exposed bricks where the render covering has fallen away.


The picture above shows the remains of the second floor made from lollipop sticks cut horizontally, which is removable, also on the cutting mat is half of the roof made from the ubiquitous coffee stirrers. Till next time stay safe, TTFN, Airhead.



Thursday 29 October 2020

South European village - Damaged house 1

Damaged house 1 from my 28mm scale generic south European village. I wanted to have at least a couple of damaged if not totally flattened houses amongst the half dozen houses making up the village. One thing I like to see in other people’s terrain is building which when modelled in a damaged state don’t look as though some one has been round and swept most of the rubble, smashed beams and roof tiles away! 

To try and represent a realistically damaged house the first thing I do is build the whole house without any damage. Making it easy to get the right amount of rubble to go with the house. With damaged houses I always paint the insides to represent wallpaper on the walls, I keep it simple and use marker pens to add simple stripes or designs.



Next time I’ll post some more WIP pictures showing my process of disassembling the house and adding texture and rubble. Stay safe Airhead




Saturday 24 October 2020

Irregular miniatures & H&R ancient India 1/300 scale army

Initial opposition for my Macedonian army, only nine elements of the required twelve finished yet, the cavalry are all H&R figures, the three archer units are Irregular figures as are the chariots. The elephant units are a combination of the two manufacturers, three elephants per stand, Irregular in the centre flanked by slightly smaller H&R elephants on both sides.




More stands to come, H&R chariots next up, they will be an interesting contrast to the Irregular ones already completed. 

TTFN stay safe
Airhead





Sunday 11 October 2020

H&R 1/300 DBA Macedonian army

I’ve only had these figures for this last 20 years, finally painted over the last few months. Pleased with how they have turned out so far, still more to finish, only 11 of the 12 units finished for the basic DBA army. I’m going for 24 unit army’s for BBDBA of Macedonian, Persian, Indian and Scythian.

All the Macedonian figures are from Heroic & Ross, some of the other army’s include Irregular figures which although very different in style to the H&army figures, but paint up really well, more of these to follow in the next few posts.





More to follow in this scale and smaller!! Funny how fashions/gaming scales change over time. Following in Mark Backhouses and the inimitable Sidney Roundwoods footsteps into the world of the very small and the even smaller.
TTFN stay safe
Airhead 


Wednesday 30 September 2020

Generic south European village

Just a quick post of a test picture of my generic south European village, which at a stretch could cover southern France, Italy, Spain


All the buildings pushed together on my cutting matt, for storage, no real art director of the picture. All 28mm made from foam core board and scraps and the ubiquitous coffee stirrers. Painted with my usual combination of Wilco’s match pots.


Monday 28 September 2020

Going forward - terrain - and other stuff

Well it’s been a while! And how the world has moved on. But let’s not talk about that bit. 

Today is my first day as a none member of the working population since the mid 1980’s due to the combination of redundancy/retirement. So what to do?

This place is distinctly dusty and unloved at the moment, so as I’ve rashly promised in the past, time for some updates, this is just a test to check out the new interface, and using an iPad. So fingers crossed as to how this will look.

Over the WFH & lockdown I have managed to be quite productive for me:

FPW Prussian jägers 28mm x16

1/300 H&R Macedonian v Indians (only had the figures since the 1980’s) 

28mm South European generic village, still a WIP

Some 54mm WSS figures

So over the next few weeks I’m aiming to update around the topics above, fingers crossed this works.

TTFN Airhead - Stay safe.