If you see Norman, tell him!

Apologies for the hiatus, loyal readers! Been rather busy doing hobby and real-life things.  But only the hobby things are of interest here! :)

Specifically, I've recently assembled and primed 31x 40mm Old Glory Normans for the Old Glory Speed Painting competition that Sheffield Irregulars will be running at the Triples show in Sheffield next month! The Triples event is run by the Sheffield Wargaming Society and is on 17th & 18th April at the English Institute of Sport, if you're going to be in the area!

I'm really rather impressed with the figures themselves.  There was a bit of fash to clean off the five different bodies, three variant heads and four types of kite shield, but so much fash as to be annoying. Once they'd been cleaned up, they went together really quite easily with just a bit of superglue. If I was assembling them for myself, I think I might have pinned the heads, but since they're for a speed painting event, I'll take the risk as well as taking some superglue with me on the day :)  Overall they took me about three hours to assemble, although I was faffing about a lot as I was enjoying doing it. Could have done them in less than 90 minutes if I had been more focused!

The it was just a quick squirt with black primer - Boris insisted on black primer, since she's seen speed painting entrants repaint a figure with black before starting on their paintjob before now *faceplam*. They look pretty nice already and they're done and ready in plenty of time!

They're not quite as stable as I'd like them to be on their integral bases, so I think I might have to make up some simple larger bases for them using mounting board before the event. We don't want any of that great speed painting ruined by minis falling over whilst wet! :)

I'm not 100% sure which models this are as they were handed to be in a ziplock bag in a pub (an event that is becoming all too common!), but I think they are this pack on the Old Glory UK website

No photos of them, though - nearly three dozen figures just primed black do not photograph well!! So if you want to see them, you'll just have to pop along and say 'Hi!' at Triples and enter the competition yourself! :)  There will be six sessions of 30 mins, with five entrants in each one: four on the Saturday and two on Sunday morning,  Brushes and Paints will be provided - although make sure you come in plenty of time to get a seat!

The 31st figure I primed will be painted by Jason from Sheffield Irregulars in advance of the competition - although I think he plans on spending more than thirty minutes on his paint job, the dirty rotten cheat! :D

Hope to see you there!

Prince Azalea.

Super Tiny Speed Paint

I like to try and enter the Sheffield Irregulars monthly painting as often as I can as I think it has helped me improved my miniature painting, but circumstances have prevented me from doing so for the last few months. So, I was determined to enter this month; even having managed to select a suitable miniature for the current contest theme: 'Duel'. Other things just kept coming up, though, that I had to get done and it wasn't until I attended the Sheffield Irregulars session today that I could even start it!

Needless to say, undercoating a miniature after 1:30pm when the deadline for a competition is 6:00pm the same day is less than ideal. However, never being one to be deterred by adversity, I pressed ahead and at the end of the session about two hours later, I was pleased to see that I had just about finished the piece. Now, this is not quite as impressive as it sounds when I let you in on the fact that the miniature I painted is The World's Smallest Wargame which was the givaway miniature at the Newark Irregulars' 2007 Partizan show (previewed here). It was sculpted by Baccus6mm.

So, all I really painted were two 6mm tall wargamers and a suitably sized wargames table in a couple of hours. But you know what? I'm really pleased with the way its come out :) I hope you agree but go ahead and comment, whether you like it or not!




Prince Azalea