3rd annual analogue hobbies painting challenge is a pretty damn long title :-)

Curt kindly invited me and here I am!

I wouldn't expect to win as I rarely paint "en masse", but I enjoy the remote competition as it really helps me to get a few miniatures done! Huzzah!

With this in mind - witness the horrible disorder that is my ad-hoc painting environment!

Somewhere in there is a fresh Saxon battalion that I paint and intend to sell once it's done.

Have a close look, there's Curts Samurai in front of the bottle-rack.

Then I got sidetracked and started my own Jaegers. Mostly because a certain someone was sending me the new Andrea green-palette and I had to try it since Im a great fan of their black and white palettes.

I'll take myself the freedom to paint one of the Sleigh-masters with some modified miniatures. I hope this one will make it into the competition!
The model too on it's way to the Griffins. And believe it or not, the Ambulance too...

Work starts soon again, and I rather finish the current miniatures in the queue to a pleasant standart than rushing them to score some extra-points. Shame the number of layers of paint applied isn't part of that scoring system ;--)

Thanks Curt for hosting that comp!

Les Genie

Niels was just sending me some pictures of what will be another sweet asset to my french siege force and every company of Genie to come.

The Carpenter-Cart used by French Engineers to transport their tools.

It obviously has the French standard wheels, and a nice Ueberbau.

Once open, things look quite different.

And here some unrelated fun we had with the greens from the raiding party.

Happy Christmas !

Les Miserables - Another unlikely Ambulance!

You've seen the drawings - and here is what Niels and Paul made of it.

I simply love the digruntled German couple.

                                            

Westfalia Plates

I've had some people wondering how to paint the Westfalia sets.
While pretty obvious with some, it might be a right pain with others.

I tried to draw a first plate to shed light on the details. I took very loose reference in the
work over at "mount-st-jean" and I'm quite pleased with the result.

I'll upload them soon to the Westfalia site, but please let me first know what you think.

Regards,

Kawe

News from the front

It's Christmas soon, and I am stressed! Yet I'm forcing myself to keep certain things (amongst them this blog) going.

Now for the news:

1. I've been nominated for the Liebster Award. Thanks to those considering me and  to everybody who enjoys my rather irregular blogging efforts.

I think most of the blogs that I like and read have already received and I think everybody does deserve it more than me, but I really like Lt. Hazels painting orgies, 28mm and sometimes even smaller, Chistophers Bunker Hill, Sadas unique painting and last but not least Helens Tankgirl blog.
Again there's already coming countless others to mind which are as good if not better than the fore-mentioned ones, so please excuse me if you don't find yourself on that elusive list.

2. NR's finished his brilliant Sleigh. He'll make the masters before Christmas and we send the set to Paul to make some frozen Frenchies (or even Poles) to ride that thing.

3. Our friend Bernhard Hennen has sent me these pictures of some heavily modified French Assault Engineers. Really fantastic work!

4. It's now official.  Westfalia will release an extensive range of 1810 Saxons. We hope to release the first sets at the "Hamburg Tactica" in February. The rest will hopefully be available at next years Salute. Just in time for the 200 year celebrations!

5. I managed to send out all orders that have been paid for. Quite some achievement after all the forth and back one's facing at times. Apologies for the wait.

Now back to the painting table. :--)

Des chiens, dogs und Hunde.

A big part of the hobby to me is digging through illustrations (of whom Michael Bartling seems to have a never ending stream off).

I really always liked the images where dogs accompany uniformed men, or even take action in one way or another. I even bought a Sheppard-set from Foundry just to get my hands on the dog.
I used him with this formation of frenchman.

I soon came to realize that I wanted more dogs on my battlefields and spoke to Michael Bartling about it. We tried to find dog-races that would work in the 7yw too.

You'll see a release of Napoleonic era dogs in the beginning of next year.


Il est gris et triste.

The son exclaimed "he's eating his face!" -  I think it's a touching image.

River-crossing

Again quite touching.

Healthy peasant with his dog.

Wealthy peasant with his dogs.

Well-known picture.  :--)

I love the facial exression of the riding bloke.

A Hunters dog.

I hope you liked the images.

On y va Monsieur Kelly

Martin over at BFK 13-14 has started some limited miniature project with the help of Peter Fitzgerald and I recommend to have a look at Martins dedicated project-page.

Good luck with the venture Sir,

Wir verbleiben in der Hoffnung auf viele ungewoehnliche Miniaturen!

Kawe

P.S. This affair reminds in how Westfalia came to be. :--)

Calpe French Line Battalion

Models for the Connoisseur. Perfect casts, easy to paint. And the rather huge bajonets will never break. About the only thing I've painted lately, and it was worth it.

New Projects on the horizon

We're planning a couple of new sets at the moment.

Our next release will be Napoleonic wheel-barrows. Paul already agreed in sculpting the accompanying miniatures and I hope to release them before Christmas.

Barrow Nr. 1:
The smallest ambulance of the Napoleonic wars:

Niels already finished the model:

Barrow Nr. 2:
A most important asset for our growing Genie range:

And Niels Modell:

On a different note: Our French train project is moving forward and we're sure a first set will be ready at the Hamburg Tactica. The prussian Ambulance remains elusive and I hesitate to pusblish it without a suitable soldier or horses. Those who made a pre-order should've received a note of compensation.

And yes, there's another small piece of fun for the spanish theater in the tube, and of course some retreating french-men.

Hurra!

New Release - Kielmannsegges Jaeger.

Now finished and ready for pre-order.
The set of 8 miniatures consists 1 Captain,1 Hornist,1 Scharfschuetze, and 5 Jaeger.
Price is £12.

Detail-pictures below:

The brits took over!

Also - here's the first finished miniature-art-work for our "Retreat from Moscow" micro-range that we hope to start releasing before Christmas.

Auf wiedersehen!

my first napoleonic painting pt2.

PT2. Dismounted polish guard Lancier.

Things that happen while planning new Miniatures for Westfalia... Figure number 1 is almost done.  I might add some sprinkles of dirt to rough up his appearance. Also really not sure on the uniform of this gent, but the retreat from Russia allows for a lot of fantasy I believe.

More to come!

Alles neu macht der Mai

 Hello there,

There's a couple of new things that I wanted to share for a long time and now I found the time to actually post them.

1. The French ammo caisson is ready. It's a thing of pure historical accuracy made of 12 separate parts.  Niels and Michael were really out-doing them-self and we're happy to offer an asset that is aimed at serious collectors and Napoleonic connoisseurs alike.

Now available in our shop in the usual Griffin Quality: http://westfaliaminiatures.com/product_france_ammocaisson.html


2. The Prussian ambulance Peter at calpe is a very busy man, but I'm sure he'll release a model that's tweaked towards the needs of his range sometime soon. The cart itself is ready (and beautiful) but Peter wants to add up suitable horses and a Trainsoldier. I however have no clue on when that might be the case. 

Because of this and since we accepted pre-orders for that piece 2 months ago we decided to make a small release with Westfalias usual channel of production available to finally serve the costumers that were pre-ordering. This model won't be as perfect a match for Calpe as the one Peter will be releasing. It will consist more parts, and it'll come without horses nor Train-soldiers.
...
At least that's what I thought until last week.
Dirk Tietten, known as former member of the incredible Croebern-team, only recently decided to join forces with Westfalia.  Prussian-train will be just one off the many new projects we're planning to work on. On the list you'll find French Train, Saxons, Russians, Spaniards and hopefully many more related carts.

3. Kielmannsegger The ever so busy Mr. Hicks is fighting greater demons than Westfalia atm but we gladly wait for his return to finish this set! I have a feeling that we'll see a serious update within next week.


Until the next Post!

Kawe

That took some time

Dear friends,

The Westfalia micro business really eats the few hobby-hours I have away and barely leaves me time to do what I enjoy most - Painting, modelling and generally adding stuff to my collection.

Yet I've finally found some time to do exactly that, and I am happy to present you with a little Vignette and few other things of interest.

First a Vignette that I initially started for the Salamanca competition over at La Bricole. Obviously Im like 2 months late, but it's better to be last than just chickening out!

The piece shows french amoured engineers at work in the trenches of Cadiz.
Still sloppy in some places, and the fotos are far from perfect but this is as far as I can go without adding another couple of weeks time:





Next item is a pair of Highlanders painted by the very talented Adey Burt.
I've been told that he's offering painting-services. He can be contacted
at adeyburt (at) gmail (dot) com





Lastly a piece for the napoleonic connoisseur.

The German "Figuren Symposium" is an annual meet-up of more seasoned and mostly German Hobbyists. Last year they did run a comparison between the commercially available french ammo-carts in 28mm. Soon it became clear that none of them was too close to the available primary sources. Niels and Michael, the A-Team of napoleonic vehicle-making, started research into that particular field lately. And now I'm more than happy to present you with Westfalias next "bigger" project.

French ammunition cart 1792 - 1815






Lastly: Getting the ambulance done really takes much longer
than I expected, so I was a bit ashamed of posting something
else that has wheels rather than legs.

The ambulance will be available from Calpe eventually, but
I don't dare giving a release-date anymore.
The few of you that placed a pre-order and wanted to pay for it
will be remunerated, or receive a master.

Have a nice day!