The freshly glossed standard bearers and standards that I have been nattering on about for months. They'll join their waiting regiments tomorrow evening, and then dragoons, dragoons, dragoons!
Well, that's the second mini-project for the summer completed! At long last, the infantry standards and ensigns are finished save for three small touch-ups, which I could probably ignore, and no one would know the difference. But, you know how that goes.
Most of us want our figures to be "just so" by the time we finish them at the painting desk. Whether that comes from perfectionist tendencies, obsessive-compulsive disorder, or simply a desire to produce the best brushwork we can given available time and ability, most figure painters and gamers, I think, fall into this camp. Otherwise, we'd play classic Avalon Hill board games with small card counters, right? Waterloo anyone?
Smart-assed kidding aside, I seem to remember reading something by Terry Wise, Stuart Asquith, or one of the other Old Guard of the hobby, long ago in Military Modelling, that you should try to paint your figures as well as you can, developing and improving your brush skills and methods over time. Like so much else I read as a callow youth in the early 1980s about preparing tabletop armies, that piece of wisdom has stayed with me.
In any case, these various flags are not quite as masterfully executed as recent examples by Der Alte Fritz, but he has perfected the method since I began these last winter, and I'd like to think my next batch of flags will look even better. These will do nicely at arm's length however.
Remaining on the list of my hobby painting and modelling challenges to myself this summer are:
1) Finish 30 RSM95 horse grendiers in bearskin bonnets (not dragoons it turns out).
I'm trying something new in the painting here to see if I can't speed things along a little bit in the two months left before school and real life begin to interfere yet again with more pressing matters like hobby related activities. In any case, the plan is for red-coated, Wurttemberg cavalry with black facings and turnbacks like those below:
2) Construct a red brick North German church.
Based on an extant structure on Boizenburg, Germany, not too far from Luebeck, but on the former eastern side on the one-time internal boundary between West and East.
3) Construct a model of an existing half-timber warehouse.
A lovely old structure in Klaipeda, Lithuania (ex-Memel).
So, still much to do in the time remaining, so I won't make any overly confident predictions yet. But I feel like I've managed to make a good start these last few weeks. The old college try and all of that kind of stuff.
Ok, time to hit the sack. It has been a long day. A good day, but a long one. The Young Master began his summer vacation last Wednesday, and keeping an active eight-year-old occupied and out of trouble takes it out of us guys on the wrong side of 50. Whew!
-- Stokes
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