Shire Dragon and Red Admiral

 Once again I've been trying to sort out some of the models that have been sitting on my desk for ages. About two years ago, I bought myself a Mirliton Miniatures "Shire Dragon" for Christmas. I assembled it (I remember that a lot of drilling and pinning was involved), put some basic colours on it, and then left it there. I thought it was time to finish him off.

I was slightly surprised to find that I'd used a dark blue wash on the green parts of the model. I'm not sure why I did that, but I decided to leave it in place. I seemed to have highlighted the green scales in two ways, one involving a lighter green and the other involving adding yellow to dark green. Oh well, it seemed to work.

Making the base was enjoyable. The metal model came with a lot of sculpted grass around the lower legs, and I stuck it onto an MDF circle. I added DAS clay to make the ground undulate a bit, and pushed some bits of cork and slate into the clay to be rocks. I painted the base as usual: green flock with patches of watered-down dark green and brown, followed by a light yellow drybrush. I added quite a lot of static grass tufts and flowers.

He actually came with a couple of small human figures, but I didn't add them as they would have been out of scale.

I could have done the wings a bit better (I never like painting wings) but otherwise I'm pretty pleased with that. His face looks nice. In fact, his expression of vague contentment makes me think he's been at the hobbits' weed. 

I also painted another Durgin Forge model. Again, it's a great sculpt: very slightly caricatured, but with excellent detail. This guy is, apparently, a Bluecoat Admiral (I thought that was a sort of butterfly) but I painted him to fit with the other two soldiers. 

"Napoleonic" Warband

 In my continuing search for wild thrills, I bought a copy of The Silver Bayonet, the latest offering from Osprey and Joseph McCullough, the people behind the excellent Frostgrave and related games. It's basically a skirmish game set in a supernatural version of the Napoleonic Wars, and looks like a mash-up of Sharpe, Hammer films, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell and various bits of folklore. If you ever wanted to wargame Jane Austen's lost novel Night and Nightmarish Spawn Of The Crypt, there you go.

Anyhow, I wasn't blown away with the models released for the game. They're fine, but I don't find them terribly inspiring. However, I did find some fantasy-Napoleonic miniatures made by an Italian company called Durgin Paint Forge, and they're great. They've got a slightly cartoony, caricatured quality, like the people in the old computer game Fable 3.

I ended up buying a load of them. They're very much 32mm scale, so really big and slightly spindly. I painted a standard bearer, who has a vaguely British look. His banner got a rather goofy-looking freehand lion (it dates back to the Medieval times, you see, before anyone had seen a lion). I added an "Albion" as a nod to Fable. For some reason there is a piglet on his shoulder.

I also painted a scout from the same range. According to Durgin Paint Forge's website, she's supposed to have a blue coat, but I wanted them to look coherent, so that got changed. Again, I think she's an excellent model: slightly cartoony, but full of good details.

Once again, my camera has let me down here. You're just going to have to take my word that they look good!