I officially retired on Thursday 28th March and with the Friday being Good Friday a bank holiday, it should have been an easy transition to a life of loafing and painting model soldiers. Hmmm. It didn’t quite work out as I planned. The fact that everyone else was off on their Easter break made it feel like nothing much had changed. As grand parents, we found ourselves on child care duty for a few days over the last couple of weeks to cover the school holidays, so again, my time wasn’t quite my own. Add to that the glitches involved in closing a business down and the queries that have arisen re ..read more

If you’ve wondered where my blog articles have been over the last few weeks, I have been distracted by my decision to retire at the end of this March and the consequences of doing so. Arcane HQ in the Lenton Business Centre I’ve been running Arcane Scenery with Julie for at least 17 years now and have clocked up just about 50 years working full time throughout my career, so it’s time for a change of pace and a chance to do something slightly different. Arcane scenery at Partizan As well as Julie, I’ve had tremendous support from the team over the years – the main players, Hayley, Rob and Kevin ..read more

My quest to paint every model in the DeeZee range continues, albeit at glacial pace. I have too many other distractions to focus on finishing this project! However, there are two Smilodons in the DeeZee range; DZ13 Smilodon or Sabre Tooth attacking and DZ15 Smilodon or Sabre tooth stalking, so it made sense to paint them as a pair and knock another two models off of my list! Although these big cats from the Pleistocine epoch are more familiarly known as Sabre tooth tigers, they are not closely related to either Tigers or modern cats and were inhabitants of the North and South America’s, rather ..read more

Starting a new army can be somewhat daunting. I can see the appeal of small skirmish games where only a dozen or so figures are required but even Never Mind The Bill Hooks requires about 120 figures and from a standing start that’s still quiet a commitment to painting. So when I decided to write an adaption to Never Mind the Bill Hooks for Samurai battles – Never Mind The Bushido, I quickly realised that the army was going to take some time to paint. Samurai vs Landsknecht – which is quicker to paint? I did have a bit of a start. I had in the past been playing Test of Honour and so had a few p ..read more

Christmas is nearly upon us, so a Merry Christmas and a Happy and Prosperous New Year to all of my Friends, Customers, Facebook associates and any one else that that takes the time to read my blog! To be fair, my blog is as much a self indulgence as it is anything else. I hope that it is of use to fellow hobbyists as I try to share my research and thoughts on the hobby. I think that there are some useful tips and techniques and perhaps reading how someone else goes about building a collection or army is useful. Even if this means you avoid my mistakes! Just some of the models in my Japanese co ..read more

I’ve found my modelling time somewhat curtailed these last few weeks. I have been doing quite a lot of painting, just the wrong sort. We decided to re decorate the Hall, Stairs and Landing, the sort of project that I should have delegated to someone else! For a start it involved painting 11 doors and the respective frames, the woodwork on the stairs and the skirting boards. Add to that the ceilings and stripping the old wall paper off, making good the surfaces and then painting the walls ( just two coats…) and it’s fair to say that we had our work cut out. At my age and now that I am carrying ..read more

Just a quick blog this week. As a change from painting the rather colourful Gendarmes, I gave myself a break and painted the free figure that was given out at the ‘Other Partizan’ in October of this year, General Sikorski, leader of the Free Polish army in the Second World War. As I am reducing my Lead Pile, I also decided to have a go at another Partizan figure, a Kelham Hall Monk. This figure is the 29th figure given out at Partizan, I think in about 2012! I actually had two of these for some reason – perhaps a friend had given me his, so it made sense to paint them both. WIKIPEDIA LINK TO G ..read more

Having finished my resin Gendarmes, I decided to crack on and paint the Gendarmes that I had picked up from Foundry Miniatures. They are actually listed as Casting Room Miniatures but are an off shoot of the Foundry brand and available from the factory shop in East Stoke. Once again, I have to point out that my research with regards to the actual colours that these knights appeared in is limited. I used the Foundry web store pictures and references that I found on Pinterest and Google images as a guide. To be fair, in some cases, I simply attempted to copy the superb work that other people had ..read more

The Other Partizan Show is held at the George Stephenson Hall at the Newark show ground, just outside of the historic town of Newark. The Other Partizan show is the second Partizan show of the year, held in the Autumn, with the original Partizan show held in the spring. I am happy to proclaim Partizan as my favourite wargames show, although I admit to being totally biased in this respect. It is only an easy 20 minutes down the A46 from my house. However, to back this claim up I would add that the venue is generally bright and airy, there’s free parking, the standard of games on show is the be ..read more

Having finished my Landsknechts force (for the time being…) I thought that I would add some heavy cavalry and I fancied painting some Gendarmes. Although it goes against the grain somewhat – adding French troops to my collection, that is – I couldn’t resist having a go at painting these ‘fancy Dans’! Having spent a little time researching the options to purchase some of these heavily armoured knights, I chose two very different options. I bought eight 3D printed resin knights from Terrain Store on eBay and six metal ones from Foundry Miniatures. I also had three spare Perry Miniatures plastic ..read more