More publicity about the diorama courtesy of the Kapiti team

Not content with national television and front page coverage, the Kapiti Wargames Club strikes yet again with another newspaper article, this time in the Kapiti News.

Click on the above picture to read the article.

Tauranga locals help paint model soldiers for diorama

Here's another newspaper article about our project.  This time it is the Bay of Plenty Times with a story about our Tauranga crew. The journalist interviewed Bruce Balfour over the phone. The article included the above picture of Greg, who runs the local store and was the distribution centre for the models in Tauranga. 

The last few figures stagger in ...

Campbell from Wellington has submitted this photo of his 62nd/63rd (and hopefully last) miniatures.

"It was a bit of a rush to paint this and another 13 Turkish casualties in the last four days," he says, "But just in time for Saturday."

A fantastic job, especially portraying the forlorn look of the wounded man. 

Our southern-most painter?

"I still think I'm the southern most painter," says Steven Hill from Balclutha. He's painted 20 Turks and 20 New Zealanders.

"I really enjoyed contributing even in a small way, and thanks a lot for the opportunity."

A question of size

Look carefully at these two pics. They're photos that Paul R has posted over on the Pendraken Forum, showing some 10mm figures he's been working on, posed in front of some of the 54mm Turks he has painted.  As he says, they compare well!

   

News from the Wairarapa

The Masterton Marauders blog reports on a show-and-tell held at the club meeting last Sunday, which included some of the work members have been doing on our project.

Rex finishing off the last of his 54mm Turks for the diorama.

David, Ceilidh and Rex with some of the 80 54mm diorama figures painted in the Wairarapa.

Waikato packs up

Monday was the deadline for the Waikato painters. As coordinator for the region, Darcy Perry reports on his Hits To Kill blog that he was particularly happy to receive all the miniatures back on time.

"However, one volunteer returned his miniatures unpainted," added Darcy. "Fortunately I had purchased three cans of Dark Earth and Dark Yellow, so it was back to cleaning, assembling, spraying and painting."

Above:  But wait - there's more ...

Above: The last few completed. 

"Spending an afternoon at the table with Bobby last week had certainly honed my army painting skills. The best advice he gave me was whatever you do on one, you do on all of them. So choose your level of detail wisely! After a late night and early morning with the brush, the last box of Turks went south today."

Now Darcy says he can finally relax and countdown the days until the opening of The Great War Exhibition.

"It has been an honour to be part of this project and the WW100 programme," he says. "My thanks go out to the other volunteers around the country that have inspired me with their painting and stories."

Darcy is still tuning in to this blog as the diorama project continues. His friend Rob in Wellington will be helping with terrain during the installation.

"Thank you once again to the Waikato regiment of painters." says Darcy. "Over 300 troops and that makes up 8% of the total of 4000 miniatures. A commendable effort."

Here is Waikato's honour roll:

TAMAHERE OFFICERS CLUB 

• Darcy Perry 
• Lewis Morgan 
• Dave Hunter 

HAMILTON IMMORTALS 

• Philip Porter 
• Daniel Conlon 
• Nick Jebson
• Julia Jeanplong 
• Geoff Holt 

TRONHAMMER

• Timothy Lind

CAMBRIDGE WARGAMING CLUB 

• Bobby Grindrod

...and Darcy's daughters, Jade, Ella and Rylee who all put paint to brush to help Dad meet the deadline.

A quick repair job

A few days ago, Mark posted a picture of some "New Zealand" casualties he had just finished - or so he thought.  Alan Perry (one of our UK sculpting duo) spotted that these were in fact British casualties that had been mis-labelled.  The British were supposed to be in tunics, not shirt-sleeve order - but this wasn't obvious just by looking at the bare metal models.  So as if he hadn't done enough, Mark has now repainted the shirts as khaki tunics, as seen above. Well done, that man!

Mark has also been busy with other figures, including these three Turkish officers, as well as a what appears to be Turkish infantryman running away without his weapon.

He has also painted these Turkish casualties.  In fact, this blofg is starting to look quite gruesome with all the casualty pics we are posting.  I suspect, with possibly 1000s of casualties, the finished diorama is really going to be an eye-opener on the wastage of war.

More info on Mark's Chasseur blog.

Three Fernleafs face the charging Turks

Looking slightly outnumbered, Timothy Lind's three lonely Fernleafs await the charging masses of Turks.  

These pictures are from Timothy's Tronhammer blog (from you know where, by the blog name!) in which he explains his thoughts on being part of this project. 

Timothy plans to head down to Wellington to see The Great War Exhibition when it opens, and help celebrate and remember this important moment in New Zealand's history.

'Nelson Mail' article on our project

About a week ago, the Nelson Mail ran this article on Warwick Young, one of our South island painters.

Painting every intricate detail on a 54mm tall figurine is no simple task, but Nelson man Warwick Young makes it look easy.

He is painting 40 pewter models accurately depicting Turkish troops, right down to the bristled moustache.

He is one of around 100 artists across New Zealand who together will contribute 4000 tiny pewter models representing New Zealand and Turkish troops who fought in World War I. They will be displayed as a diorama for the coming Great War Exhibition in Wellington.  read more ...

Let me know if your local paper does an article on this project, so we can re-post it here on the blog.  

Mass painting weekend in Kapiti

The Kapiti crew are continuing work on their Anzacs and Turks this weekend, It looks like a full weekend painting amongst three or four of them. They're into the home stretch, and will post up more pics as they go this weekend.

Last Turks from Bowman Towers

"Painting continues apace Bowman Towers," says Scott Bowman from Paraparaumu. "My last batch of Turks finished tonight... I got these done in just under a week... that's pretty damned quick for me, but I don't feel my butt has left the painting table... other than to sleep, and go to work!"

Scott has again gone with that 'on-campaign' mix of shades and tones.

That's 40 figures he has managed to get done so far now.  He now just needs to finish the ten New Zealand casualties he has left to do, and hopes to finish those over the weekend.

Scott is now taking a break for rest of tonight.  He has hired The Hobbit - Battle of Five Armies on DVD for an evening's family viewing and a return trip to his beloved Middle-Earth:)

Leith's final batch

Leith from Hawkes Bay sent us this picture of  his 27 Turks, all ready to go. For this atmospheric picture, he's arranged the figures on what appears to be his back-lawn!

This is his last batch of figures, totalling 54.   A sterling effort.

Leith finished with this comment: "Thanks for the opportunity to be involved in something so epic!"

Herman's Turks go over the top and the ANZACs arrive

On his Wargames Obsession blog, Herman van Kradenburg (Paraparaumu) has posted a humourous look at his recent painting work

But be prepared - at the end of his article, the humour turns to pathos.

Jonathan's well-travelled figures

Here are some photos Jonathan Forsey (Canterbury) sent us of his latest batch of Turks and Anzacs, including casualty figures.

He painted these whilst on holiday at Lake Heron station up in the mountains near the head-waters of the Rakaia river.  These boys have travelled!

Jonathan has painted 45 figures so far, some already returned, and this lot due to go back to Tim at Comics Compulsion today.

Nine-page thread at Pendraken Miniatures Forum

There's a (currently) nine-page thread on the Pendraken Miniatures Forum at the moment, in which Paul Reynolds gives us a session-by-session break down of his painting progress.

It's really interesting reading the other forum members' thoughts and comments about the project.

Plus you get to see some shots of Paul's terrific work.

Turks en masse

Jon's recently completed Turks look fantastic - and especially en masse like that.  But bear in mind this is only about 0.5% of the total figures that'll be in the diorama!

A rainy day's work

 

'Pelarel' from Wellington sent the above picture of batches 3 and 4 finished. He was happy for a rainy Sunday to get these done.

The picture below also shows batch 5 waiting for its washes.

Charge of the Turks

Rodger (Christchurch) has posted a picture of some of the Turks he has just finished painting.  Just for these photographs, he inserted the figures into some temporary terrain.  Simple, yet very effective!

More pics on his blog here.

Pics of Batch 7

In his posting today entitled The Last Stretch, Armchair General mentioned that he had now sent out the latest figures for painting.  Here are the pics of what is in this batch.

This batch includes the main character figures for the diorama, such as Lieutenant Colonel Malone (the subject of the book No Better Death that I previewed earlier) and the VC winner Cyril Bassett.

There is one more box to arrive, only a small one with mainly one-off figures.