State of the Painting Desk

Lancashire Games' 15mm French

Having returned this week from a two week holiday in Italy, I sat down at the painting desk midweek.  With paint to the face and greatcoat applied to the French line shown above before I departed, I picked up where I left off.  At the first painting session, I discovered my eyes must be reconditioned to see the detail on the little buggers clearly.  Painting almost daily must exercise my eyes for this close work and condition them for the task at hand.  With more than two weeks between painting sessions, my eyes required a bit of retraining.  Oh, the hazards of aging.

With a coating of Minwax stain, the 15mm French line infantry for the 1859 project are in the final stages of completion.  The high gloss of the Minwax makes it difficult to distinguish detail in the photo.  That will be resolved once they get a spray of Dullcote.  Needing only sufficient curing time for the stain, these 36 figures will soon receive an application of Dullcote and then move on to basing.

Next up are a dozen Old Glory French hussars for the 1859 project shown in the foreground and three figures from Casting Room Miniatures for a Great Italian Wars' command stand in the back. As seen from the photo above, only the horse base coat has been deposited.

Figures are lining up in the painting queue as I prepare for the fourth quarter painting push to field sufficient figures before the year-end painting tally.  With a 2016 personal painting goal of 900 figures, I should make that objective handily.

Of course, a battery of travelogue photos from the latest Italian trip will be forthcoming as I work my way through the hundreds of photos.  Venice from the 2009 trip gets a revisit as does Rome from my 2014 trip.  Included in the 2016 review will be visits to the fortress cities of Verona, Peschiera del Garda, and Mantova.  With three of the four fortresses in the Italian Quadrilateral covered in this trip only Legnano remains to visit to complete the foursome.

Finally, a BatRep describing the night assault by Trimble and Lawton to finish off the Action at Brawner's Farm is in progress.