Once again, masterful work! I love how whatever clothing you paint, with your layering it looks as if it has been lived in roughly for the past six months. Brilliant.
Once again you have managed to get the atmosphere exactly right in my opinion with another fine collection.
Unfortunately the faces of some of these guys are horrible and obviously not your fault.
Newline have a wonderful group in their ACW artillery section of bareheaded chaps ideal for head swaps.
Alternatively, Egberts inspirational method of slicing faces between the neck and cap allows beautifully expressive faces for those who had the misfortune of not pleasing the sculpter .
A very good collection of figures, excellently painted. The lighting and muted colours reminds us that the sun is not always shining in South Africa!
Egbert's innovation mentioned by Chris regarding faces is a new one on me, but i presume this entails slicing off the face and 'transplanting' a better new one from somewhere?? I can see that this would work for a few highly-detailed diorama figures, but I doubt I will be embarking on this exercise for the 300 + ''faceless' 'Canadian (British) infantry that are from HaT and are in my WW1 stash for future wargames army purposes.
I have to say that whole head swaps with the headgear retrofitted back on sounds slightly easier to me.
My favorite face is the sailor holding the ram rod in the final two pictures.
Some of the men have their hat brim lowered so the shadow obscures the face.
Good to see Joan painting some more stuff. I have probably asked you this before, but how do you store all your prodigous output? You have painted up enough armies to fill a small gymnasium during the years I have been observing your excellent work.
Another unit for my anglo-zulu war's british army: the 60th King's Royal Rifle Corps. I like how these green uniforms came out. I tried to improve my washing because I wanted them very dusty in some areas but not too much brown covered... Little by little...
Normally, on a unit like this, I base half of the figures on skirmishing deployment. Here I made just a 25%. I do not think the british dare to skirmish much on foot when the zulus were around...
Peter, I used a slightly lighter shade than in my previous Zulus, which may be less realistic but I think it allows you to better see the differences between light and shadow on the skin. Again, noticeable on the pictures but unapreciable with naked eye once displayed on their battlefield.
Susofrick, yes, somehow I did it. I glued the shield on the right position but I'm not a green stuff guy; too much work for such an small details... So I bit of glue to fill the gap and thats it. You can see the mess under close inspection but I can live with it...
despertaferro wrote:My Zulus are being outnumbered ... So here comes the uTulwana ibutho to increase their army's size.
War is like that. One side gets bigger, you have to paint more for the other side - a never-ending escalation. As always, just fantastically beautiful figures. Especially en masse they work so very well - and your painting on these is terrific.
Natal’s native contingent was perhaps not the most glamorous unit in the British army, but it was certainly the most numerous. At the time of the Zululand invasion in January 1879, the contingent accounted for approximately 62% of the invading force.
Despite the usual representation shows them lead by a boer style officer, truth is that more than half of the officers who served as commandants of the Natal Native Contingent were Imperial officers on special service duties. Most of the rest were British ex-officers who lived in South Africa, while the remaining being adventurers and mercenaries. Many of them had already found service with the South African force during the Ninth Cape Border War against the Ngqika and Gcaleka which had only ended in mid-1878.
I wanted to protrait all this variety. The obvious choices were a mix of civilian and military clothes but somehow, I wanted to give some officers and NCO's a bit of uniformity. Something more personal and intersting than the classical red or dark blue jackets. Then I came across the Durban Rifles gray uniform and I did love it at first sight. And again beauty beat, somehow, accuracy...
I hope you like them and many thanks for your time.
I'm glad you opted for beauty. There is a lot of beauty there in this latest offering - the texturing and shading on the shields is particularly impressive! Although a splash of red coat might have looked fantastic...