Paint Table Sunday: Warriors of Rohan

I'm carrying on with my three projects at a time approach, so my current work is some Savage Core Jaguar Tribe and Atlanteans and some Star Wars Battle Droids.  The Jaguar tribe are coming along and I did a bit on them today but they have fiddly shields to do so they will not be done this week, I think.

Yesterday I finished twelve warriors of Rohan from the Fields of Pelennor boxed set. I had to find the shields which were in the box and was depressed at how many figures there are still to paint, considering I did army of the dead and orcs a year and a half ago!  I had more varnish problems with these. Some time ago I switched to Vallelo polyurethane matt varnish as the Humbrol was drying and leaving white patches. However this time the Vallejo didn't not dry matt on some paints I had used a Citadel shade on. Frustrated I stirred some Humbrol for twelve minutes and put it over the shiny bits. Seemed to be OK but was still leaving the odd white patches which I had to paint over.  I wish there was a matt varnish that actually worked reliably!

I need to start thinking about what should come in next.  Ideally, I want something that is not just started but well on the way so I can get them done reasonably quickly, as I find figures with a lot of work still to do on them rather depressing. I keep some of my most recent (i.e. the last seven years or so) figures in little plastic tubs behind my chair on one of my bookshelves.  I need to look at what is in here and see what I could push along. At present I am thinking of my 1864 Danes as there are only a few (nine?) of them and they have a quite simple uniform.  At least none of these need preparing as they are all based and undercoated at least.  However Charlotte wants me to do some riders of Rohan. I did start six some years ago but they are in a box somewhere and I don't know which box. 

The redoubtable Mike Siggins commented on Facebook this week that he hadn't worn a watch for thirty years but was now thinking of getting one. I find this very peculiar. I have worn a watch every day since I started senior school at eleven. I really cannot understand people who say that they have the time on their mobile phones. So, when they want to see the time they have to get their phone out of their pocket and look at it (and maybe even unlock it first), as opposed to just a quick flick of the wrist and there it is. Also what if the sun is out? Then you can't see anything on a mobile phone screen. Do people then have to find a tree to stand under? Also I cannot see the numbers on my phone as they are so small, so then I would have to get my glasses out too. Hence why my everyday watch is this one, as it is so clear. I went to a meeting once at a big architects firm and they were all wearing this watch (based on the clocks at Swiss railway stations) as it is a design classic! One more thing, of course, I don't usually carry my mobile phone on me as I don't want it microwaving my brain every hour of the day. Mostly I forget to charge it up too. 

This weeks annoyance is people drinking beer out of bottles. Again, just why? I have been watching several US TV series lately and I'm sorry but I think men drinking from silly little beer bottles looks childish or even, he said, not worrying about being politically incorrect, effeminate. They look like they have baby's beakers as they sip, sip, sip ineffectually. The worst example, oddly, is the otherwise estimable Perdita Weeks in Magnum. When she does it, obviously to look like one of the boys, she looks very uncomfortable doing so.  She purses her lips and tries to sip, sip sip, a tiny amount of beer. Glasses is what you need for beer. Big glasses so you can get a proper mouthful not a baby beaker serving. Cognac is for sipping. Beer is for quaffing! And as for that idiotic idea of sticking citrus fruit into the neck of the bottle to restrict the flow even more and make the beer taste like washing up liquid. Really. That is why you live in a Third World country, Mexicans! I absolutely refuse to drink beer out of bottle!

Today's music is the soundtrack to  Prehistoric Park by Daniel Pemberton, who went to the same school as I did. It goes very well as background music when painting Lost World type tribesmen. Speaking of which, I have discovered I can get Amazon Prime on my TV. This has been available for years for me but I didn't know how to do it but Charlotte set it up so she could watch Shaun the Sheep: Farmageddon for her birthday. The Old Bat watched it too but as she walked out of Star Wars and has never seen another science fiction film in her life all the in jokes were totally lost on her. I have always wanted to watch the Man in the High Castle but instead I am watching Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World. Excellent! Dodgy CGI dinosaurs, the same location as I'm a Celebrity Get me Out of Here, lots of Australians with equally dodgy English accents and tribe of the week (no more than twenty of them) in a forty foot across set.. And, of course, Jennifer O'Dell in her little leather outfit and Rachel Blakely looking lovely too. I wonder what Conan Doyle would have thought of it? I wonder what he would have thought of his estate taking the money and running, as well? 

Oh, alright here is a picture of O'Dell as Veronica (a name which holds a lot of resonance for the Legatus). She designed this outfit herself so was not exploited by the costume department as you might think. As the credits say, ' befriended by an untamed beauty'. Apart from her hair, that is, which is always tamed to within an inch of her prehistoric curling tongs.

Today's wallpaper is this lovely breakfast time study by William Breakspeare (1856-1914) from Birmingham.   Not a very well known painter but he exhibited at the Royal Academy Summer exhibition eight times and studied in Paris for a time.

A bit of painting...and where I have been

Argonauts yesterday!

A few days ago Eric the Shed sent me an email asking what had happened to me, as I hadn't been blogging for a while (well six weeks).  A friend of mine sent me a similar missive on Friday too.  I wonder whether it had anything to do with the fact that I am getting lots of adverts appearing on my Yahoo mail asking me if I had made financial plans for my funeral.  Everyone expects me to be dead.  My sister actually sent me a note asking me if I was dead, following the fatality of someone my age on the recent Surrey Ride London event as I had been contemplating (not very seriously) having a go, as it goes past the end of my road.   Only my sister would send me an email asking me if I was dead.  

Coming up the hill in Oxshott

Not dead, exactly, but having taken the Old Bat to work that day we had to park the car on the other side of the course as the main road was closed for the event.  I had to walk back home but first I had to cross the road.  This was not easy given the number of people coming along the A244.  In fact, that morning, "an older person like you" as the helpful but faintly insulting marshalette had said to me, had been hit by a bike trying to cross in the village and had to be taken to hospital.  I was now trying to cross the road at the same point and had been waiting for fifteen minutes for a break in the traffic.  The problem is that this is not like the London to Brighton Bike Ride, which I have done four times (admittedly twenty years ago).  These are good club cyclists from all over the country and they are bowling along at 25 mph.  However. I used to be a good sprinter, or at least, 400m runner (admittedly forty years ago) so, glimpsing a short break in the peloton I took off from the kerb in the direction of the The Victoria pub opposite (not a pub I have ever been to as A) I don't like pubs and B) it is often full of Premiere League footballers).  Ping, went my calf muscle two thirds of the way across but I couldn't stop, as plunging down the hill towards me, shoulder to shoulder like the Light Brigade, was a pan-highway frontage of rapidly approaching wheels.  I know that at this point on the road, as I have to follow pelotons of cycles every weekend as they all have a crack at the Olympic road race route, they are pushing 30 mph.  My leg was so bad by the time I reached the other side that I couldn't even attempt to walk for fifteen minutes.  It then took me twenty minutes to cover the half mile home.  Well the result of all this was that I was in considerable pain for about a week and by the time I got back from work I was too tired to paint or blog.  When you are an "older person" you don't recover as quickly.

Just before this at the end of July we had had a week in the Isle of Wight for the Royal Yacht Squadron 200th anniversary.  As Guy was busy being a marshal it meant the Old Bat and I had to talk to each other and we went on a walk around Carisbrooke Castle.  March's Miniature Wargames had a Lion Rampant scenario set around the French invasion and siege of the castle in 1377.  

We have been to Carisbrooke many times but it is only when you see it from a distance that you realise how it is built up above the surrounding landscape.  Worth bearing in mind if trying to recreate this action (as I would like to do) as it really sits on top of a substantial mound.

We took the Old Bat's parents to Ventnor Botanical gardens which is really not my thing but just above the cliffs they have a small planting of hops.   They are tucked in a little hollow between the coastal path and the cliff edge (above).

I hadn't noticed when visiting previously, but now they make a beer, Botanic Ale, from these hops.  I bought a bottle for my friend Bill but decided to keep if for myself in the end.  What a meanie!   I haven't tried it yet but will do very soon.

Charlotte's costume for the Tattoo took over forty minutes to get on for every performance

Anyway, after that it was off to Edinburgh for a few days, to watch Charlotte dance in the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo.  I have watched it on TV a few times as I really like military band music and it was a great show live.  We were also lucky with the weather. Charlotte had got soaked on at least one occasion as, unlike some of the performers, they didn't have waterproofs for inclement weather and umbrellas are banned in the arena.  It was nice to see her, as she left for Edinburgh in January and we hadn't seen her for more than seven months.

We all went round Holyrood House, which we hadn't been to before.  It was quite spooky to see the site of the murder of Mary Queen of Scots private secretary, David Rizzio, which I remember reading about when I was studying History A level at school.  Just as impressive for me was visiting the ruins of Holyrood Chapel.  Felix Mendelssohn visited the place on 30th July 1829 and wrote home: "In the deep twilight we went today to the palace were Queen Mary lived and loved...The chapel below is now roofless. Grass and ivy thrive there and at the broken altar where Mary was crowned Queen of Scotland. Everything is ruined, decayed, and the clear heavens pour in. I think I have found there the beginning of my 'Scottish' Symphony."   He even enclosed, on a piece of paper, what would become the opening theme for the symphony.   It is my favourite Mendelssohn symphony and it was wonderful to stand in the place that directly inspired it.

We couldn't avoid shopping (I wondered why Charlotte had asked us to meet her in the Edinburgh Tattoo shop when we arrived - that was expensive) but at least in Edinburgh they have the wonderful old style department store, Jenners.

However, Jenners was the site of my biggest disappointment of the trip.  On the top floor they have a branch of superb Italian-Scottish delicatessen Valvona & Crolla (this is the firm who FedEx fruit and vegetables from Italy direct to my foodie friends in Bath so they don't have to eat supermarket vegetables).  There were many tasty looking things in the shop but they would have been out of the fridge too long to get home.  Even worse was the fact that we had hand baggage only so I couldn't buy anything from the tantalising display of Scottish beers there.  I really want Orkney Porter!  I want to try Kelpie!  But I couldn't. We had already checked out of the hotel.  Grr!  First stop on my next trip! 

We were back on the Isle of Wight a few weeks later but this time with Charlotte who had actually decided to leave the delights of Edinburgh to come home for a fortnight.  While Guy went out in a RIB to watch the powerboat race starts she and I watched them from dry land and then headed across the Island to Freshwater Bay (adjacent to Freshwater, home of Fighting 15s).  It was low tide and we found a pirate cave (well that was what it looked like) although Charlotte decided it was actually the Cave of the Sea Pigeons as they seemed to be the main inhabitants.  Even at low tide we had to wade through eighteen inches of water to get in.  An easy place to get cut off in.

Freshwater Bay

Actually, in retrospect, it probably wasn't a brilliant idea to go inside the cave as on this, the south side of the island, bits of cliff are constantly dropping into the sea which is how they keep discovering dinosaur fossils there.

In fact, when we got back from the Isle of Wight we watched a rather bizarre TV documentary called Dinosaur Britain where they visited this very same bit of coast and even recreated it as it looked in the time of Iguanodons! 

The real reason for going to Freshwater Bay, though, was to restock on the sand I use for basing my figures.  It is quite coarse but not too coarse and the lot I picked up should keep me going for a year or more.  I also got another hundred washers from Hurst (or "Urrrst" as the locals call it), the ironmonger in Cowes, for my skirmish figures.

Even better, although the RNLI shop has replaced my favourite Lifeboat tea with inferior Lifesaver tea, Charlotte spotted the original in Waitrose in Cowes and. of course, we got 15% off with the Old Bat's discount.  I stocked up on that too!

Anyway I was determined to paint something this past weekend even though I haven't had many free weekends lately.  So I finished the two Foundry Argonauts at the top of the post and this Warlord Games slave girl who reminds me of a Greek girl I used to work with.  When I told my friend (the one who gets the air mail vegetables) about how lovely she was he didn't believe me, until he met her with me in Leadenhall market!  Anyway, although these slave girls are supposed to be Roman and are due to serve with the legions in the Marcomannic War, she will probably turn up in the Jason and the Argonauts campaign Eric the Shed and I are planning for 2016.  The Greek ruined temple in these pictures was an uncharacteristic present from the Old Bat off eBay.   The grey paint offends my sensibilities though so I intend to repaint it in a more Mediterranean shade.