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| The first 2/3 of the fictitious second battalion of the Anhalt-Zerbst regiment all glossed and waiting on their final third (with flags) to turn up. |
Well, glossing has gone a bit slower than expected during the last 10 days or so. The Grand Duchess has been away on a work trip (Indonesia and Singapore), so it has been the Young Master and yours truly holding down the fort here at home with the cats. Fairly calm and quiet all things considered. Even the evening driving lessons around the quieter streets of our neighborhood.
Besides the usual outdoor things at this time of year, I've been scrambling to get a project finished out ahead of June 1st, so free time in the evenings has been scarce since classes finished at the end of April and grades were due on May 5th. But, here is where we are at the moment with the Anhalt-Zerbst Regiment.
Only two tiny errors noted that are so egregious I've got to correct it with a small dab of flesh tone on a chin and another of dark red on the rear of a cuff. The latter fellow in the left file, front rank all the way at right. That is, the three figures marching backwards to their own beat (story of my life). Otherwise, any painting glitches are so tiny that only I will ever notice them, and we'll leave it at that. As my advisor advised many years ago, there are two kinds of theses. Those that are perfect, and those that are finished.
That observation remains sound advice, and the same goes for units of model soldiers. At some point, we've got to call 'em done and move on to the next project.
But otherwise, things have gone reasonably well with the application of approximately 2.5 coats of the Liquitex acrylic high gloss varnish. It is runny straight out of the bottle, however, and I find that the stuff goes on best after about 10 minutes once some of the moisture in it has evaporated from the small puddle on my palette paper, and it becomes a bit more viscous.
That last half-coat (the .5) goes on those raised areas likely to get a bit more handling and in need of a little added protection. Which is to say hats, outer arms, left legs/toes, skirts of waistcoats, and on the back their shouldered packs/haversacks. More involved for cavalry of course, but there we are.
And speaking of cavalry, that rather heavy box of Minden Austrian hussars and mounts has been whispering its siren song to me from the closet here in Zum Stollenkeller the last few weeks. Gotta hurry up, get these finished, and based so I can get started with the first squadron. No rest for the wicked in my ongoing quest to slowly paint down the lead mountain of Minden and RSM95 figures!
Hence the self-imposed moratorium on figure purchases.
A related task for the summer is to take a look at everything and develop a concrete plan for painting the rest of it during the next several years before the ol' eyes make the activity difficult. It dawned on me recently that somewhere in the last dozen years or so I stopped working from a list of units to complete, and paiting output slowed down appreciably.
Not that I was ever able to crank 'em out the way some hobbyists manage you understand.
In any case, high time to get back on track beyond the more vague aspiration of fielding two armies too large to deploy everything on the table at one time. You know, that particular wargamer's affliction.
But that's a topic for another time.
-- Stokes
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