Tuesday 10 September 2013

First Post


This is my first posting on my new blog. Some of you may know that I have another blog called ‘Painting Wargames Figures’ (see link on the right hand side under ‘Links’) so the question I must answer is why another one. I’ve felt for a while that my blog jumps all over the place with the various different projects I do. If you find that sometimes confusing, so do I. I paint professionally and many of my postings relate to what I’m doing at any given time for my clients. I’m pretty fussy about what I will paint so almost everything I paint professionally is focused in the 18th century. Then sometimes I take a week off here and there and that’s when I paint for my own collection (talk about a busman’s holiday!). My personal collections include (in 25mm) Ancients, ACW, Eastern Renaissance, Napoleonics and in 40mm, the WAS/SYW. These I will continue with and they will appear on the other blog as will my professional work, which, by the way, is booked through to 2018.
But I wanted to work in greater detail on one of my favourite armies of the SYW and that is Hessen-Kassel. My plan is to paint the entire army prior to 1760. It was, actually, a small army of 12 battalions of foot (plus two battalions of converged Grenadiers), 4 regiments of Horse, 2 regiments of Dragoons, a small artillery part plus a few light troops. So this is do-able in 25/28mm. For sources I will use Kronoskaf (see link on the right) as well as my Pengel & Hurt booklets, Mollo etc. I’m also in contact with the Museumlandschaft which is situated in the Schloss Wilhelmshöhe, so if I can dig up any new information it will be on here. Although I expect there will be many fewer posts here each of them will be more substantial and I will also try to do min-biographies of the individuals who commanded the Hessian forces.
I’ve also been in communication with Franco Saudelli and Marco Pagan, which has been a real pleasure as I’ve been able to dust off my rarely used Italian. Franco is a magnificent illustrator who has done many original colour illustrations for Kronoskaf. They have kindly allowed me permission to show their work on this blog and, to wet your appetites, I’m showing one of their drawings here. Expect to see many more.
I have ordered Foundry infantry so expect to see my first battalion quite soon

6 comments:

  1. You should take a good look at the Minden Miniatures range for your Hessians as they are very nice figures.

    I misread your other blog and thought that this would be a post-1760 Hessian blog rather than pre-1760. Sorry about that.

    Can you tell us which military orders the Landgraf held? It looks like the British Order of the Garter and the Prussian Order of the Black Eagle, Amon others

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  2. I really dislike the Prove You Are Not A Robot gadget as it is hard to type the letters on a smart phone or iPad. The keyboard sometimes freezes making it difficult to post comments.

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  3. DAF, The Landgraf's orders are interesting. Over his left shoulder he wears the orange sash of the Prussian Order of the Black Eagle and the star is the lower of the two on his breast. The higher star is certainly the British order of the Garter but he should also have a pale blue sash over the same left shoulder but it's not visible. It could be tucked underneath? The red sash over his right shoulder is unknown to me and may be a Hessian order.

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  4. Look forward to seeing your progess, I would love to follow your blog but I need ther to be the follower Gadget so I can as I am following too many blogs (according to blogger). I to love the 18th best but I end up painting anything and mostly my professional work has been ECW
    Peace James

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  5. Looking forward to seeing how you get on with this project.

    -- Allan

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  6. good luck Nigel with this project I will be following with some interest!

    cheers
    Matt

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