Well, 2012 finished with a splutter, having been laid up for about two weeks and making a conscious decision not to do any wargaming activity over the last two weeks has enabled me to fully recover (fingers crossed) from my back problems.
I gave up making plans for doing things in 2012 as few if any came off, rather, I winged it and did bit and pieces as well as I could given the effects of drugs (prescribed medication that is) and my rapidly deteriorating eyesight in the latter half of this year. -Hence the picture

WIP - Tenements

For 2013 I still have about 200 figures to paint, (not including figures other than zombie related ones, which could be well over a thousand others), these of course wiull have to wait until I've had my two eye operations, sometime after January. I have about eight buildings in various stages of build to complete and three more terrain boards I'd like to do; I also have numerous wc's to finish. On the plus side I do have two more finished urban terrain boards to put on my blog (probably next week), but that will be the last of my "reserve" blog posts, so I'd better produce something in 2013.
Probably my biggest objective in 2013 is to at least get some games in with whatever I have available, I've just about sorted out which bits of which rules I'll be using and which bits I'll have to alter (I can't envisage having people running faster than vehicles).

Yep, another short post this week, but once I'm back in the swing of things, hopefully my output will improve and I'll finally manage to finish off a lot of the things I've started.

Hope you all have a prosperous New Year and I look forward to reading your blogs and comments for the inspiration and encouragement they give.

Happy New Year Everyone

Merry Xmas

Yes, I know it's a bit cliche but who cares, it's Christmas (or Mithrasmas if you prefer).

I haven't read the book shown here but I did think its fairly appropriate and if anyone has read it let me know what it was like.

2012 has been a strange year for me, I've painted more figures and made more buildings in the last year than I have in the last five years, strange how my priorities have changed. The last month though has been very frustrating as my troublesome back has been well, troublesome. It's all but stopped me from producing anything of note foir week. Couple that with my rapidly deteriorating eyesight (soon to be remedied thank goodness) it's not been a good close to the year.

The year has however had many, many highlights.
I've made some great friends on the blogosphere and found great amusement and inspiration (in about equal quantities) from the blogs I read/follow.

I do have my favourites of course, but it would be invidious of me to name them (and would probably take forever - and nop doubt I'd miss some). My complete list og blogs I follow can be found in my profile.

Just to finish off, then, to my two new followers Headologist and Alvaro and all my regular followers, friends and lurkers Have a very Merry Xmas, here's hoping you're not on the naughty list.

Happy Holidays Everyone.

More Urban Terrain

Although I've been unable to paint or do much these last few weeks I have managed to wield a three inch paint brush and to finish off some more terrain boards.
On the right can be seen my latest board and  it's obviously a car park.
The photograph shows it to be much brighter than it actually is (it's the fault of that rubbiush cameraman - again).
The board is 600mm x 600mm and the technique for making the whole thing is exactly the same as the previous boards I did.

The photograph on the left  shows the 3mm MDF with the cork tile pieces gluing in place, whilst the right-hand photo shows the masking tape applied for the road and parking-bay markings after the inital painting of the oarways and pavements. The road-width is the same as my previous road widths, namely 100mm as are the widths to the entrances/exits to the car park. The bays themselves are 100mm x 50mm. Pavements (sidewalks) are 50mm wide. As my eyesight has been deteriorating very rapidly these last couple of months I haven't been able to manage any of the "SLOW" signs or any directional arrows that might be expected on a terrain piece such as this, but hopefully this will be rectified in the new year.

So, a bit short this week and just in case I don't get time to get another blog done next week (there seems to be some sort of festivity going on), I'll take this opportunity to wish all my followers, lurkers and friends a very Merry Xmas.

Comments, as always,  are both welcomed and appreciated.

Mish-Mash

"More bloody rubbish"

Well, today as the title suggests is a mish-mash.  I've been able to do next to nothing new these last few weeks due to my back problems and have had to rely on using material that I've previously made and this week is no exception, except that I've all but ran out of past "work".
Sid the Sweeper, shown on the right,  is  looking over two mattresses that I'd made at about the same time as my beds, but they missed last week's photo session. I was reminded of them by another Bloggers post (http://rogzombie.blogspot.co.uk/) showing casing his Black Cat Bases' fly-tip scenery. It was made in the same way as my beds - namely a piece of foamcard covered in tissue, the only difference being I rounded the corners off and I was a bit more careful gluing the tissue.

When looking at various blogs I tend to get side-tracked and look at the blogs others follow and this last week was no exception. I was very pleasantly surprised to find a model I'd built about 15-20 years ago being used at "Claymore 2012" in the League of Augsburg Borodino Game on Davestoybox blog (http://davestoybox.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/borodino-at-claymore-2012.html).
The model in question is the church, not the village and it left me with a warm feeling reading his comment:
" The gorgeous Russian church was scratch built and bought by Barry many years ago but has hardly been out on the wargames table which is such a pity for a lovely building."
There's also an excellent close-up of the model on :  http://wappinshaw.blogspot.co.uk/
The materials used were card and what may appear to be the ubiquitous coffee-stirrers, but are in fact tapers (known as spills in this part of the UK), used to light Bunsen burners in the days when children were allowed to light Bunsen burners ! 

 Whilst looking through the various Claymore pictures I also noticed another model I'd made for Durham Wargames group about 10 years ago, but for the sake of me I can't find the blog or site where I spotted it. Nevertheless, here's a very old photo of the model. It's a representation of the citadel of Troy based on a drawing in the excellent book "The Ancient Greece of Odysseus" by Peter Connoly. (Published by Oxford University Press.) Its footprint is about 1200mm x 600 mm I think (the terrain boards beside it are 600mm x 600mm)

So, that's it for this week, it's been quite a departure from zombies, but by next week I should have finished a bit more of my Zombie-project.

Comments, as always, are both welcomed and appreciated.

Beds and Backache

These last few weeks I've been fairly incapacitated with back problems, necessitating large periods of time lying on my back to recuperate. Progress on my zombie project has been next-to nothing, but a couple of months ago I made the prototype for some beds I would be making. Since then I haven't had the opportunity to show the progress I made with them, until now.
The top two photographs show the prototype (and a WWG bed) and the batch of beds I made.

Construction of the all the beds followed the same pattern, more or less with a bit of variation here and there.
The body of the bed was a piece of foamcard, though any similar material would do, corrugated card or cork tile for example.
This was wrapped in a piece of tissue. I used both toilet paper and kitchen roll as they have different patterns on them and are very useful aids to detailing the models.

The headboards and foot boards are a piece of card with a short bit of matchstick glued about 1cm from the base, this will support the body of the bed. For the pillows I rolled some tissue into a "sausage", glued and cut it to the size of the pillows I needed. For the sheets and blankets the tissue was cut into a strip about the length of the bed them wrapped around the bed and glued in place (mostly on the underside of the bed's body ). This phot shows some of the tissue texture and the rolled tissue used for pillows.

Not all of the beds I made were in pristine condition, looking like they had just been made, because that would have been fairly boring, even if a little easier to do.
I found that having to design different headboards for variation much more of a pain and I ended up with quite a lot looking very similar, if not identical, but it doesn't really bother me.

What does bother me, the bit I don't really like about having made all these things, is having to paint them !
 Here's as far as I got painting them, before boredom set in and I had to move onto to something else. The idea is that I'll finish of individual beds as I need them, they mostly need shading highlighting and varnishing.
I'm really not that creative with my colour combinations  and en-masse they all look very samey, but individually I think they're OK.
Currently painting of any sort other than with a three inch brush, has had to be put on hold as my eyesight  have deteriorated enormously in the last nine or ten months,  probably due in no small part to age and accelerated by the medications I'm taking. So, in the next two months or so I expect to have two operations which should enable me to see what I'm painting once more !

That's it once more for this week it only remains for me to welcome my latest follower Shintokamikaze - "Welcome !".
All comments are, as ever,  welcomed and appreciated.