Large Scale Figures

A Crimean Officer of the 19th Foot

I finally finished my Roll Call Crimean Officer - which is meant as a belated birthday gift for Mrs Kinch's great uncle. I'm relatively happy with the figure, my first of this size (120mm) and it has certainly been a learning experience. The figure itself is cast in resin and comes in multiple parts. The resin needs to be washed and trimmed, as there are large pieces of sprue still attached. This is not quite as easy as it looks and requires a firm hand, patience and plenty of sandpaper.

Once assembled with superglue, I undercoated the figure white and painted him with my normal vallejo acrylics with virtually no shading or highlighting. There is little need to in this scale, the light does the work for you. I'm not convinced my choice of glossy black base and I may repaint it in a warmer brown to give an effect of the mahogany type before he takes up his new billet. I'm hoping Mrs Kinch's great uncle will name him, he has a rather excellant collection of old teddy bears all of whom have names. My favourite by a country mile is Paget Soames.

Some years ago, Mrs Kinch and I were married. It was a wonderful day, but one that was not without its troubles the week before. The main problem being the fact that the venue that we had booked for our reception effectively withdrew eight days before the wedding - anyone who has attempted to book a venue for 170+ persons in Dublin city centre at a weeks notice, can attest I'm sure to the fact that it is an impossibility for anything less than a Kings ransom.

Enter stage left, the man of the hour, Mrs Kinchs uncle - who put his Georgian town house entirely at our disposal. He and his family took time off from work and college to clear the bottom two floors of their home and plumbed in extra bathrooms in order to accommodate our guests. There are some debts that can never be repaid, but when I discovered that the relative in question liked 120mm models - I think I may where to begin.

With that in mind I purchased two new figures, a British officer of Waterloo (who may have to be transfered into the 88th) and a trooper of the French Dromedary Corps. Time will tell how well I get on with them.

Who knows, I may even get better at this modelling lark.

An experiment - or is the video working?

120mm Roll Call figure
Officer of the 19th Foot in the Crimea

Today was Mrs. Kinch's great uncles un-birthday.

He has been loudly telling anyone that would listen that his ninetieth birthday was due this week and he didn't want any fuss made of it for nearly a month now. So naturally we didn't make a fuss, but we did all happen to drop by the house casually, while coincidentally holding a succession of cakes and books about war, grande horizontales and cinema.

My contribution to the proceedings was the (just finished, the video is of work in progress) chap shown above, an officer of the 19th Regiment of Foot made by Roll Call, which he seemed to like. I spent the rest of the afternoon chatting to family and sitting with Mrs. Kinch's grandfather, who despite a heart problem, dicky legs and the frailty natural to a man in his early nineties can still swear like a sailor when presented with a picture of this man.

Pleasant dinner of egg and chips with Mrs. Kinch and thence to bed.

A Christmas Miracle

A work in progress.

Ressurection is traditional at Easter rather than Christmas, but I'm back on my feet again. It has emerged that I did actually have swine flu, but that it seems to have subsided except for a rather impressive cough at present.

Unfortunately this has meant that life has consisted almost entirely of work and as much bed rest as I have been able to cram into 24 hours. Our Christmas was effectively written off which is unfortunate, but hopefully I'll be able to take some time off soon and we'll be able to spend some of it together when we're both awake and upright.

Naturally enough this has meant that there has been very little wargaming and Mrs. Kinch's great uncle's gift, pictured above, has been delayed. I have never painted such a big figure before, so I'm learning as I go along. The shading typical of 28mm figures isn't necessary and I've been working with flat colour so far. Getting consistent coverage has been difficult, but a little ink to tie layers of colour together seems to have worked.

I stickered all my Command & Colours blocks over Christmas, a long job, but I wasn't fit for anything else. However, the process did answer my questions about French dragoons as the plain "heavy" (i.e. non-cuirassier) cavalry pictured are dragoons. I'm still puzzled by the pictures of Portugese light and heavy cavalry, but that is a matter for another day.

To all a very happy New Year!