Workbench Update

Right, first the Roman cavalry, two units, the top eight are the Gripping Beast lads, the bottom 10 - when I purchased them from Sean - were Newline Designs EIR cavalry. Sean has since somehow transferred these, with most of the rest of his ancient ranges, to SHQ. (EDIT: I've heard since I first wrote this that it is a license agreement of some kind.) For different reasons I really like both of these references. Obviously, the painting of these miniatures is nowhere near finished.


These are the horses for the Newline Designs Roman cavalry. The harnesses with pendant straps fastened by metal discs (phalerae), and the decorative fringed chest band, or peytral, are seen on various Roman tombstones of cavalry troopers from the period. I'm no expert on saddles from the time. Peter Connolly has posited a construction of leather stretched over a wood frame in the shape of four horns, which you can see the front two of sculpted into the GB troopers above. The basing of these is coming along. The wash of dark umber has been applied. Next comes Citadel Shadow Grey on the rocks, then a dry brush of bone over the entire base, and then flocking.


The Gripping Beast horses. I like these, but I'm not sure they were meant to come with the troopers that Darren gave me at Britcon 2003 (Thanks again!). What's important for me about these are the new techniques in painting the horse hair that I'm trying for the first time.


Thank God the postman always rings twice. I am a Calpe Prussian man through and through, but I just had to get these.

The Wire - the best television I've seen in years

We can all agree on just how desperate most television is. Hell, I'm going back to radio. There are very few shows that I'll even drop the paintbrush for - the fourth quarter of the Superbowl is the only time I did so in recent history - and then there is the issue of trying to faithfully watch a television show in the hurly-burly of it all. Over the past year I read several articles on The Guardian Online about just how good HBO's "The Wire" is, so when I recently came into some pin money I picked up the complete 5 season set, that's right, sixty 60 minute epidodes of a show I'd never seen before for, shipping in, about CAN$150.00, or the price of three shitty movies at the theatre with sig other. I watched the first two episodes last night and, well, just Wow! Brilliant, gritty and delicious writing, great acting, splendid camera work, just a breathless, amazing beginning. Life is short. I have no more time to waste on crap, however well intentioned. This was not a waste of my time. Five stars.

http://www.hbo.com/thewire/

A Picture of Kovnik Markov

For some reason, this photograph has not been released by Privateer Press. I found it on an English eBay listing and I thought I'd post it so that its goodness might be appreciated by my friends. My blog has thereby acquired a limited social utility. If you see what I mean.

New Feature-Book Reviews

I've decided to start a new feature on my blog, namely, book reviews. All books that I review will be related in some manner to the hobby. I'm going to start with Peter Heather's The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians, a book my father gave me for Christmas this year. The review will be finished some time in the next week.



As far as my painting is going, I have been feverishly working on Roman cavalry and on my basing for both the cavalry and my infantry. I will post pictures of the cavalry in the next few days.

Next up, I am selling my collection of limited edition (a number of which are OOP) JJ Fedorowicz folio books respecting WW2 on eBay at the following link:

http://shop.ebay.ca/merchant/okeir

I was just gobsmacked when I saw this latest release from Helldorado. People are saying the face of the Naga is a bit featureless, but I think the art of the piece is far superior to anything I've seen in the hobby for many a blue moon.



By the way, the English rules for this game are at this link:

http://www.helldorado.fr/ressources/telechargements/telechargement_id19/fichier.pdf

Finally, I picked up the Impetus rules and the first supplement, courtesy of a fellow from Phillie who had a hankering to read up on Jochen Peiper.

That's all for a few days.