Dragoon Painting About to Begin

Things have been quiet here at Stollen Central for the last week or so sonce our return from nordic skiing. But I have finally glued the 30 Revell 1/72 Austrian dragoons to their steeds and glued all the horses to temporary card bases, so I won’t mess up any painting during the next few weeks. If all goes well this evening, I’ll start base coating the whole lot with a new type of undercoat – Liquitex artists’ acrylic gesso.

Normally, gesso is used by artists to treat “raw” canvas prior to painting it. However, I read somewhere online that some plastic soldier enthusiasts use it to prime their figures. As it says on the bottle, gesso provides superior “tooth”, so that paint sticks to it really well. Once dry, it remains flexible, which should prevent any paint from flaking off swords, scabbards, flagpoles, and the like. I’ll let you know how it goes.

On another note, I’ve had such wonderful feedback from many of you recently that I thought I’d (re)share some of your remarks left here plus a few from The Miniatures Page,the CAMRA, SOSAC, and Olmec Derision Society, and the OSW discussion boards. Enjoy!

"Your blog looks great. I will check back to it often." Norris (Dwarfman)

“Nice little site…and I love Stollen…the food that is… Great little site!” -- Murphy

“I love the concept and . . . I am seriously thinking of following suit and starting my own fictional state and army, probably using Marlburian figures instead of SYW though. Quite inspirational, thanks for sharing.” – Mongrel 1

“Really charming; I particularly like the way the buildings lift off and you have ruins there. Very clever.” – Neotacha

“Much inspired by the construction. Good stuff.” – John B

“Very nicely done.” – Snickering Corpses

“I'm getting very impressed by your efforts. . . by all means, keep going with it . . . and I certainly would like to read an article about how you built all of these buildings.” – Bluebear Jeff

“Your written exploits have begun to start some similar urges of my own!” -- Murdock

“Great work by the way! I wish I was half as productive.” -- Moif

“Great job on keeping the blog updated. The buildings are excellent also.” -- Poruchik

“Those buildings will look pretty cool. Do you have templates for them that you can post?” -- Miniwargamer

“Stokes - what a fine paint job. The whole army looks very cleanly done indeed. Marvellous!” -- Bloggerator

“Excellent work. Give the architect a payrise.” -- Grimsby Mariner

“It's fun seeing how inspired other people are with their Old School projects. I can tell that you are having a lot of fun with the Grand Duchy of Stollen.” -- Altefritz1740

“Very lovely indeed, Stokes -- the epitome of Old School!” -- Henry

It’s funny, but a little encouragement from like-minded individuals really makes it easy to keep moving forward with a fairly lengthy project -- like this one. Thanks men, and keep coming back. It’s getting better all the time -- with apoligies to one Mr. McCartney. ;-)