Old West - Viva Zapata!

When I opened my Xmas presents I found another wonderful 54mm casting by Andrea miniatures of an Old West era Mexican.

I have a collection of these 54mm cowboys by Andrea Miniatures from Spain. They are great to paint. This one had such a dynamic pose too. I challenged myself getting some facial hair and 5 o clock shadow on as well. I even had to resort to the magnifying headset to paint the bottle label.

I have another 54mm figure to complete this painting season as well - so the 54mm collection is growing nicely.

"The pay is $20"...Its Chris Adams

I finally managed some brush time over the weekend, and finished off the latest 54mm cowboy figure. Chris Adams from the Magnificent 7. A fairly simple paint job as it was kept in a black outfit. Once more another finely detailed figure , even has a cast eyeball!  There guesses what Western I shall be watching shortly.

More progress made on the rest of the stuff on the table, The 18mm French Cuirassier have been finished ready for basing by Steve who's present they are. - I will post up when he has them done.


Also on with with final preparation for the Blog Con meet up next weekend. I will be doing an update post tomorrow

Billy The Kid

In between doing some work on the cavalry I have been tickling the brushes over the Andrea Miniatures "Billy the Kid". I am beginning to sound like a broken record when i say these figures are superb, but I just can't help it - they are!

I really enjoyed painting this one. I also used the new Scale 75 paints for the flesh. I must say I am very impressed with the quality. They also dry very matt. So I think i need to try some of the colour packs .

Not bad comparison , although perhaps should have had darker trousers,
 

Painting what appears to be a ribbed / corduroy jacket was "fun"

 And here is a group shot of all the Andrea figures together.

 

So  I need your help on which figure from the range to choose next to order up from Historex, just leave a reply , the one with most votes will be the next 54mm project.



Wild Bill Hickock

High Noon - Gary Cooper

Pale Rider

Magnificent 7 - Yul Brinner

Winchester 73 - James Stewart

Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid

So with the painting challenge.drawing to a conclusion Curt had set a special "Last Stand" (visit the GALLERY and cast your vote) bonus round. As the challenge had started with a cinematic theme I wanted to try and stick to that. I had thought of a few colonial type ideas , but kept being drawn back to the Western genre. I had thought about The Alamo as one option, but did not find 28mm figures I was happy with. Having found a rich vein of 54mm goodness while browsing I came across the Andrea Miniatures Butch & Sundance - once I saw them I knew that would be it.

They are based on individual but interlocking bases so they can be posed. They are another wonderfully sculpted and cast set. There is so much movement about them. I did find these a challenge to paint and get to standard I was happy with , so it was fun, and I am still learning something about painting 54mm. Something mounted next I think.

I still have a few more items to drop into the main challenge  to try and maintain momentum to the end.

"The Duke"

My submission for the favourite character round in Curt's challenge (visit the gallery and vote for your favourite submission) was driven by all those boyhood cowboy movies. Of course you don't get much better than that icon of the western genre John Wayne - "The Duke". This is another of the 54mm figures by Andrea Miniatures. They a really are fantastic to paint. The sculpt on this one really captures the look and classic stance. I looked around for various images and selected what I thought was good colour scheme.

I have another classic 54mm set planned for the last challenge round.

I have enough of these figures to think about a small game now I think.

New Year - New Scale - 54mm Wyatt Earp

Something new for you this year. I was given some larger scale cowboy figures for Xmas. It's been a long time since I did anything in this size, at least 20 years. I had also only previously used oil paints and I did wonder how i was going to tackle these. But new challenges are always enjoyable. I switched to using acrylics and the increase in speed to paint amazed me. Using some acrylic flow enhancer really helped the finished , slowing drying time and allowing for some better blending of colours.

The figure is by Andrea Miniatures. A wonderfully sculpt and really well cast. A real joy to work on.
So there will be a few more of these along this year while work my way through a small collection to run a larger scale game.


I thoroughly recommend the the Andrea Color paints set - really good to work with.

Oh and a lot easier on the eyes!!