Lockdown Labours

"Oh yes," I thought, "spending all my free time indoors I'll get plenty of painting and blogging done!" Har har har. Not only have I been dabbling in the videoed-games, the family clear-out of the lego (it's not like there's much else to do round here...) has occupied rather a lot of "model time". 

About half the lego in our mysterious boxes is now clogging up the dining room table. We didn't originally own the pirate ship, it came in bits in a box of lego some acquaintances were giving away.

Achtung Bagpiper!

20 mm Bagpiper (Britannia miniatures, sadly lacking kilt) with some fine brushwork on the tartan.

I wanted to get a figure, rather than a counter, to indicate force morale on the Chain-of-Command tracker (The Afrika Korps already have some surrendering chaps for this purpose) so I have a bagpiper. It only really works for Scottish units, but as the 51st Highland were at El-Alamein and the 15th Scots were in Normandy, that's the two theatres I have campaign packs for covered.

Some of these aren't technically tanks

Universal carriers: Spot the difference.

Note: universal carriers, not having a turret, are not tanks and therefore part of a balanced model painting diet. Which means the tanks and armoured cars to follow are entirely justified.

Tank Politics

Local miniature painter saves £££ time with this one simple trick! Don't bother painting camouflage on tanks, just do one colour. In all seriousness though, the Caunter Stuart has been in the "to do" draw for months and I've only just finished it, but the Valentines I bought last month have had the final layer of varnish on within weeks.

Non-binary pride Stuart (left, Plastic Soldier Company) and asexual pride Valentine (Right, Armourfast).

Unusually Timely Update

Some of you on social media will already have seen the new tank, unless I've been buried in the algorithms.

Another example of my unusual vehicle marking conventions: British white-red-white vertical stripes square converted into trans pride flag.

StuG Life

Markings are entirely fictitious to remind people that wargaming isn't real.

I didn't chose the StuG life etc. etc.

What I haven't been painting this year

I've been lured by the cold war for a while, largely drawn by the draw of CoD-style ultra-macho modern warfare stuff, except against an enemy who could well have clobbered the west in a straight up fight.

S & S models are generally good, but the tracks were a pain to fit. That's the downside of resin I suppose.

Brown brown everywhere ner any a drop to drink.

Apologies for the lack of posts, silly things like 'work' and 'socialising' are getting in the way of important things like Shed Time. Nonetheless, I sneaked a few hours the weekend before last, and painted some things brown.

First on the agenda were the bowmen, who now sport basecoats of skin and leather (scorched brown, a colour which goes under most things it seems...) All of them are going to be white, but I might try to get variations of skin tone, and not use the same browns on all of them.

Still not sure about the trousers. They don't really have any raised bits for highlights.