Paint with Paul

I had started to fill this entry in last night, which takes time as it always does, when the pc mysteriously shut down and restarted itself, losing everything I had already typed in. Will run my antivirus later.

Went to the club last night where Paul was continuing painting his cuirassiers (left). There he gave me help and hints for painting. I had brought all my reivers and horses and all my paint to the club. Paul also showed me how to paint my horses by actually painting them himself, sorry, demonstrating. He has a very good established technique and can paint quicker than I can down a pint. Paul painted my horses in this way:

My red horse (to be brown) was washed in Burnt Umber. It may need another coat (see left). Though it will be a mix of GW Snakebite leather and black.
Both my white horses were washed in GW Codex grey. Paul said that one of them may need to be drybrushed white.
One of my black horses was lightly drybrushed in Blue. GW Midnight Blue specifically. Looked nice.
Washing was done by drenching the brush in water before dipping it in paint and lathering it over the figure where it would seep into all the crevices.
Paul did say however that I had undercoated too thickly and had not removed the "flash" off the figures. Whoops. I shall remove the flash off my reivers figures before lightly retouching any bare bits with GW Chaos black before continuing my painting. He said that he paints his figures how they dress etc with hands and face first. Paul also suggested I give the horses a white blaze and do the socks on the feet.
Many thanks to Paul for all his help and advice on painting.

There were 2 games on last night: 15mm Napoleonic between Andy Sharpe and Mark Alcock; 20mm Greeks v Greeks between Andy Hamilton and Dave Hewins using Dave's figures. I took photos as usual though this time I used my new toy: a mini-tripod which I bought very cheaply off ebay last week. I had hoped it would reduce camera shake from myself and judging by the results, the tripod worked. Out of the 66 photos I took last night, only about half a dozen were unusable. Thats 10% of the shots. Everything else came out perfectly as I had wanted. As usual, I will preview some of the photos.

Photo of Dave Hewins Greeks (left) taken from the other side of the table with the tripod and cropped to center in on the action. All these figures are owned and painted by Dave Hewins and some had recently been re-speared.

Wurtembergers and Austrians engaging in battle at the base of a hill (left). The Austrians are by Andy Sharpe while the Wurtembergers are by Mark Alcock.

Mark also gave me the Red Badge of courage book back which I had asked him to look after. Paul and I discussed John Preece who left a complimentary comment on my blog on sunday. It is the same John Preece who has contributed to Recce in the Battlegames Magazine and who will be at Partizan at the end of the month. Looking forward to it even more.

Before I sign off, those cuirassiers Paul was painting will look like the ones in this photo (left) when completed. This photo was also taken at the club last night.

As always, all photos will be added to their own galleries later. More often than not I let those galleries double as game reports as the action can be followed by viewing the photos. Along with any photos from next week, they will probably all be uploaded just before Partizan.