Pirates IV

A productive week.

I've managed to complete the 16 pirate crew and the 4 monks that were my target, plus the final 9 Royal Marines and started the last the last 9 pirates!

It's been a strange few days as I've been busier than usual but have actually managed to find more time for painting. There must be a moral there somewhere.

Anyway here are the results of my painting:

This just leaves the final 9 pirates and that is the first project of this three month challenge complete (well at least for the time being!!)

The next challenge is to complete my Frigate which is, at least in the main part built. All I need to do now is rub down the exterior of the hull, fit the 20 gun ports, finalise the configuration of the masts, fit them, paint the whole model and finally tackle the rigging!!

The next thing is to decide which project to complete next. I suppose it's a bit of a no brainier really as I have a unit of 28mm Sassanid heavy horse archers that I need for the Firestorm Games LADG competition in December. Once they are complete it's then on to the ACW Yanks that need finishing, thereby completing my first Sharp Practice II forces.

Pirates IV & Priests

A very quiet week painting wise.

I managed to almost finish the first 10 Wargames Foundry Royal Marines for my Pirates project. Still a bit of final highlighting to go but overall I'm satisfied with the results.

Next up are a group of four priests/monks

With regards to pirates I have 16 crew to tackle. I believe they are a mixture of Artizan and North star.

I'm still struggling to get decent photos using my camera but I'll persevere and maybe even master the dark art one day!!

Pirates III

Generally a quiet week painting wise v and very pirate orientated.

The Naval boarding party is almost complete. Just dip and final highlights to go:

Next up are the first Royal Marines:

Most of my remaining time has been spent putting together my DarkOps Frigate. So far I've managed the hull:

It went together remarkably easily and the online video instruction were invaluable. I've built many MDF buildings from a number of manufacturers and this is up there with the very best.
The masts have been put together but not glued so the next step is to finish and glue them them and then to commence painting the hull. I'm really very excited about this project.

Pirates II

Well it's been a quiet week as far as painting goes.

I've managed to complete the first pirate crew, although I'm not particularly happy with the results. I'm going to paint the 2nd batch and then decide whether to repaint the first lot.

Anyway here's a photo of them so far.

Next up is a Navy Crew.

Apologies for the poor quality photos; something else I can't seem to get right!

The work on My Dark Ops Frigate is well underway and construction was a doddle (that's as long as the excellent video is followed!!). The Theresa, as she's aptly named will be the subject of the next post.

Pirates!!

My first painting project to start using the before and after approach are Pirates.

The first unit is Calico Jack's Crew fromNorth Star via Bristol Independent Games (BIG):

Once these are finished I have Blackbeard's Crew and some Crusader Miniatures pirates plus Royal Marines from Foundry and British Line from AW Miniatures.

The centrepiece will be a 28mm MDF frigate from the DarkOps Dark Seas range:

Progress During September

September has been been very productive painting wise but yet again I failed to keep up with the blog. No excuses; I was just obsessed with painting.
In a normal month, if there is any such beast, I would be happy to paint 100 pieces. In September I managed over double that.

The breakdown is as follows:
89 28mm Foot, Sassanid, ACW and cowboys.
48 28mm Cavalry Sassanids.
64 15mm Cavalry Sassanids
2 28mm Sassanid Elephants.

Apart from 16 ACW and 4 Sassanids the decks are now cleared and ready for a more structured approach.

From now on, well at least until the end of this year I'll be posting a before and after photo of each unit/project.