Hitting a Wall

It's been quite a while since my last post, I was originally optimistic about getting a couple of battalions of Pavlov grenadiers finished by the end of April (yeah right!). Well now we are slap bang in the middle of May and I don't even have 1 battalion completed as life as usual has a way of changing my plans. However I am not down hearted as there has been loads going on.

I attended the Falkirk wargames show and spent far to much money on US FOW however we had a great time and probably the best show I have been to? Also I was lucky enough to be voted 2nd place in the painting competition over at La Bricole Forum with my Saxons so I was very pleased with that and it was real fun with loads of nice people involved and well run by Robert for the 1st time out.

 

 

  Also I haven't taken the time to thank Dave over at One man and his Brushes for the wonderful gift of the Band of Brothers DVD box set, This is brilliant and I have no idea why I didn't add this to my collection long ago? Dave again thank you and when I get myself together I will look out some goodies for you!

  

My Pavs, well where to start? After getting through my St. Petersburg Grenadiers in super quick time I thought I would attempt to do all my Pavs at once by doing them a pose at a time. This seems straight forward but as well as the 2 battalions I also have 44 spare figs making 108 figs in total!

   

I managed the 22 of the 1st pose but this pretty much skunnered me (not sure if this is a real word?) as I spotted a small flaw on the pose that took a good deal of time to correct (see below). 

  

This is my test figure for the Pavs. The figures are the same poses you get with the regular grenadiers except they have the mitre instead of the 1812 Kiwer. When looking closely at this guy there were a couple of details around the right shoulder I couldn't figure out? I realised the figure had been head swapped from the regular grenadiers and some of the cord detail had been left on the collar (removed on this guy) and also next to the cross belt buckle. I had base coated my figures when I noticed it so had to carefully remove the extra detail. This guy I left as is as he was already finished.

  

So this is hopefully how my Pavs will turn out although I somehow managed to drop superglue on this figure and that is the shine around the turnbacks (dooh!!!)

  

I had read many discussions online about the Pavlov mitre and if the officers would also have worn it. My buddy Robert took the easy way out and put all his officers in bicornes instead of kiwer. I went 50/50 with 1 officer of each battalion having a mitre, this is the 2nd officer of the 1st battalion.   
 

And this will be the 1st officer of the 2nd battalion.
  

Now some head pickling dragoons! I have a few command stands sitting around needing finished and I  had the commander for this 1 finished ages ago so I decided to complete the 2 dragoons to go along with him. This is where the trouble started, I planned doing the Kurland dragoons with sky blue and brass buttons however my references contradict each other on the lace for the trumpeter as well as some other detail.
  

My poor trumpeter, I originally painted him with white lace and cords and no colour background to the nests then on reading some more I ended up following the books and over painted yellow lace (button colour) and facing colour nests (this makes sense right?). However it was bugging me as I remember the guard having yellow lace? So I looked again at Greystreaks dragoons and seen that he had went with my 1st approach then I searched on TMP and found a thread from 2008 that confirmed that I had messed up. So as soon as the AP is dry this guy's going for a bath in simple green!
 

The officer should be fine, however I am now not so sure about the trim around the saddle edge, should this be gold (button colour) or simply sky blue (facing colour)?

Anyway I will continue with my Pavs and stick to a battalion at a time. I noticed recently that my blog now has over 60,000 hits and 161 followers. Thanks a million to everyone and hope you enjoy your visits!