...and enjoying it enormously, to be honest!
And, of course, I am laughing at myself as yet again I make the amazing discovery that a simple refurb job expands beyond belief as you work on it. What started out as a 3-session touch-up job on some figures which were quite nicely painted (albeit 50-odd years ago) has grown before my eyes; after a week of evening sessions, I reckon I still have about 4 sessions to go to complete them.
Just freshen up the white paint, fix the chips, tidy up the horses, change facing colours, humanise the faces, varnish, rebase - fit new flags. Easy-peasy.
Yeah, right. I've gradually rejected almost all of the original work - it has become a re-paint, and as such is in many ways more laborious than a fresh-metal job from scratch. I have spent a lot of time working round existing paintwork that I subsequently replaced. All good fun, of course; in the time-honoured principle of the executioner's axe, these will still be Old Eric's original figures (Gawd bless 'em), though the laboratory would struggle to find any trace of Eric's 1970s paint.
So - one week in - here's a work-in-progress shot which is actually more satisfactory than it might look. I am now halfway through the black, which will be followed by white, blue officers' sashes, lots of leather straps and harness, gold, silver, a touch-up of the edges of the coat colour, then varnish. Maybe 3 more sessions, say 4, for traditions of Estimate Creep.
When they are based and ready I'll post a proper photo. These will be the Bavarian cuirassier units of Wolframsdorf and Costa. Figures are mostly Les Higgins, vintage 1970 or thereabouts, the officers and standard bearers are SHQ figures with some small tweaks, the trumpeters from Irregular's Malburian range; all the horses are Higgins. I did some work with Plastic Putty to add neckties, to try to update the ECW figures by half a century or so.
All good fun. I know all about diminishing returns, and how there is a very definite limit to how good a job I can do on these, but I also have this growing conviction that in a few years I will not remember how quickly I got them finished; the important criterion, in the end, is how much I like them. I'm working on it.
Ah yes, as much as you try to avoid perfectionism, you end up having to go the little bit further just to stop little things niggling....
ReplyDeleteI find this with modelling especially.
Painting is always tough when you try to match styles; it doesn't even need to be someone else's! I recently added to my F&IW French. The units (2 battalions of Berry) had been undercoated black, drybrushed grey, some had white gaiters. What I thought would be a simple touch up and adding facings turned into a struggle to match the rest of the French line. I had gone for lighter grey and off white for the different regiments, the grey the new ones had was way too dark.....
Neil
When I first started smartening up Eric's former collection, I was keen to try to reproduce his house style (which I now realise changed from time to time!). First unit was a minimal touch-up (Dec 2019), and for the next few I used a style which involved outlining areas in black, and colouring them in. I hadn't done this before, and found it quite laborious, then realised that unless you stood units next to each other and used a magnifying glass you couldn't tell the difference in 20mm, so my refurb style has gradually morphed back to my usual toy soldier approach, which has block colours, no shading or highlighting (apart from faces), clean edges, and is ideal for gloss varnish (gloss finish makes any attempt at realism look ridiculous - my WSS troops are deliberately presented as toys, which suits my use of generic figures, and avoids masturbatory arguments about whether the bayonet scabbards are correct for Anhalt in 1702 etc).
DeleteThere are some things which would definitely jar with the house standards (as they have developed for this period), but there is room for quite a range of vintage painting styles in there! I have started writing down the paint shades used for various units, where possible, because my ability to judge shades for myself is very poor.
When in doubt, write it down. The paint will be OOP next time you need some anyway...
I always find a refurb job is never a simple task and seems to take on a life on it's own, I have some to do and I really have been putting it off as I know what will happen! Looking forward to seeing the finished product they look lovely figures.
ReplyDeleteI used to worry that being surprised by the scope creep every single time I did a refurb indicated something suboptimal about my learning skills, but have come to accept that I quite like doing it that way - the units always finish up rather more glamorous than I intended.
DeleteI think I am just about to meet the same problem with reworking my "ancient" Airfix British Hussars. Still it need to be done to make them last another 40 or 50 years.
ReplyDeleteAll the best with those Will - I hope you post the results. Mention of Airfix reminds me that when the time came (c2000) to move on my Airfix Gauls (vintage 1970), I found that some of the original figures (the ones made of grey plastic) needed repairs because they had started shedding arms. My views are old-fashioned, I admit it, but plastic soldiers, lovely as they are, still make me anxious.
DeleteKeep soldiering on, no pun intended, they look grand. I wonder how many les Higgins were made and more importantly what percentage of them live at your house?
ReplyDeleteThank you JBM - the answers to your questions, as far as my researches have revealed are:
DeleteHow many Les Higgins figures were produced? - the answer is 7.
How many of these do I have? - both of them.
A better answer is that I have a lot less of them than Old John does, which is all we really need to know.
Keep calm and carry on - I'm sure it will all be worthwhile in the end.. I confess I have just used my 'Erics' as they came to me - mainly because even his 50-year-old paint jobs were better than I could do!
ReplyDeleteIt may be too late already, but how about showing 'before' and 'after' pictures, when they are done?
I fear that before-&-after presentation might be less impressive than you maybe expect. I would have to have poor lighting and miserable faces on the "before" picture to emphasise which was which. I am enjoying this kind of painting - lots of football and music on the radio - I'm keeping the painting room warm and bright (all right - and tidy) and should be done by the weekend. I am keeping the sessions down to 2 hours max, though.
DeleteYou are doing great work here Tony. I also struggle with refurb work which means that 99% of the time they just go straight into the bleach!
ReplyDeleteI have found myself in this situation so often over recent years that I can only assume that I actually enjoy it like this! Hope you are impressed by my new supply of bigger bottle-tops, cavalry sized! These are from Lucozade and some protein drink I can't remember. No expense spared. Getting through the backlog of unfinished batches will also release a load of the little mineral-water tops back into the system - I will be bottle-top rich!
DeleteNice figures - but it does sound like a grind redoing them. Makes me glad to be a flag maniac and not so much involved in figure painting, at which I have never been very good anyway. Still, I do have figures I really ought to tackle at some point so the pain may become more than theoretical... ;-)
ReplyDeleteFor me it's a bit like interior decoration - doing it involves a lot of drudgery, but finishing it is just brilliant!
DeleteYou know it's worth it - going the last half-mile will make you so much prouder of them when they appear on the table-top.
ReplyDeleteThat's absolutely correct. I had a choice between starting these fellows, who have been in the queue for 4 years now, or painting two Hessian cavalry units using virgin metal, and I chose the refurb "because it should be quicker". I am sitting here, shaking my head at how I have done this again. It might be that the refurb stuff in the queue nags louder than the fresh paints - I shall have to think about this...
Delete