WSS Danish - Regiment Livgarde til Fods

I've caught the painting bug again and managed to finish the second of my War of the Spanish Succession (WSS) Danish regiments this week.  This is the Livgarde til Fods regiment with their distinctive straw-yellow coats and carmine facings and breeches.

Figures are from Blue Moon (15mm/18mm) and my painting guide was a combination of CS Grant's books (The Armies and Uniforms of Marlborough's Wars Vols I & II) and the booklet by CA Sapherson (the Danish Army 1699-1715), both from Caliver.  I like these figures in the march attack pose, particularly as there are about three variants of each type.

My plan is to paint the six Danish infantry regiments present at Blenheim, comprising Scholten's command and I have started with Bielke's Brigade, completing the Regiment Prince George previously (which now has flags, incidentally).

For the guard regiment I tried to make the shading a bit more pronounced than my first effort with Prince George and, after undercoating in black, I used ochre as the coat shade colour and brick red for the facings and breeches.  These were then completed in yellow (Revell acrylic 15) and Carmine (Revell acrylic 36) leaving plenty of the shade layer showing through.  I think that the coats are meant to have red lace up the front but I tried that and it didn't look right so I just stuck with the simple yellow coats and red cuffs.  I'm quite pleased with the results overall.

Flags came from this site which I just printed out and glued on.  The Blue Moon standard bearers have cast flag poles and I did consider drilling them out and replacing with brass rod, but with the flags glued on they seem a bit more robust so we shall see how that goes.  Anyway, next up is Prince Carl's regiment which is back to the basic Danish light grey coat with yellow facings, which I hope to finish in the next few weeks.  We shall see...

Boxes

One of the things I like most about this hobby is making and painting things, particularly if you use scrap to do it.  To this day, when I see an empty cereal packet or some polystyrene in a skip, my first thought is always "what can I make out of that?" 

"Digestive biscuits, Sir!  Faahsands of 'em."

So this is what I created this week: boxes (plus a few rolled up carpets).  All very simple really.  The wooden crates are just balsa offcuts bound with thin card, and the ones with the tarpaulins over them are the really scraggy balsa offcuts and/or bits of polystyrene, with tissue paper glued over them.

"The party of the first part..."

The carpets started off as some pieces of T-shirt material, rolled up and tied off with thread, with some PVA glue to hold them together.  The idea was to make some more accessories for my 28mm Copplestone figures and here they are, on one of my scratch built cardboard and balsa river boats (note use of IKEA pencil for the funnel).

"Just keep schtumm Carruthers and the customs officers won't notice a thing."

I've been toying with running some skirmish games so these will come in handy for that.  We did play some Indian Mutiny skirmish games quite a long time ago and I still have some of the items that Geoff made at the time, including a welsh dresser and, my personal favourite, a war-weary billiard table.

This is what happens when you play billiards with a shotgun.

I did consider making an upright piano (or a pianolla?) this time round, but thought that might be taking it a bit far.  Maybe next week.

The Other Armourfast Su85

Having completed one of the Su85s, I went and finished off the other.  I thought I'd go further with this one though and add a bit more clutter.

Working it out with a pencil

This included a barrel made from a bit cut off a pencil, with some strips of paper glued round it, and a roll of material made from a a piece of old T-shirt rolled up and tied off with thread.  There is also a piece of spare track on the front.  It's not quite right as T34/Su85 track section but it was the best I had to hand (made from some old Airfix Tiger tracks, cut down a bit).

This Su85 has been depicted a lot more beat up and muddy than than the first one I painted.  I also left the commander's hatch open, until I can find a figure to go in it.  I had wanted to leave the driver's hatch ajar too, but that would have been a bit more fiddly.

Not sure what's up next, although I expect that it will be these KV-1 babies.  Looking forward to these as they seem a bit more detailed and for the first time ever (after being brought up on Airfix and Matchbox tanks), gravity seems to to be having an effect on the tracks in a realistic manner.

After this, it seems I've run out of Soviet tanks to make, although the Pegasus early KV-1/KV-2 combo, plus their T34/85 and even their T26, are beckoning.