Napoleonic French Artillery - In Progress

I've slowed down alot this month, far too much happening and too little hobby time or enthusiasm available. But in what time I did manage I've been putting together some Napoleonic French artillery.

It's a Victrix set which I've had for a good year plus (possibly last year, or the year before Christmas present), and it's very nice looking.  My creativity seems to have taken a hammering I the last few years so I've struggled a bit with picking arms and poses but overall I'm happy. I've made two cannon and crew and here they are stuck to plasticard ready for (spray) painting.  The third artillery piece from the box I'm doing as a howitzer and I've yet to make the crew.

The Black Coach - An Undead Relic

In a land before time, back in the early 2000s, I purchased a Black Coach.  It was painted...well Black obviously, no self respecting vampire is ever going to be seen in anything else.  I didn't want to hide the vampire in his coffin so left his coffin and it's lid loose so he could pop in and out of the back, and with the addition of a couple of skeleton horses, a whacking huge MDF base and a very early 2000 paint job it was done.  It even travelled to university with me, spending a couple of years on the mantlepiece of a fireplace in my room.  

In the follow years it saw much use, scaring the forces of good across the land, and with this it became a little tatty.  It was a time before I'd worked out varnish coating, and there was plenty of scratching on the metal.  It was in need of a revamp; the base in particular annoyed me because it made the model an easy target, and also look very 'meh'.

Stage one of the revamp saw me tear the model from the base, something which the horse still took badly, and still haven't recovered from.  That wasn't something I worried about however as I planned to give it a spookier vibe with some 'real' horses rather than skeleton cartoon ones. Painted black of course.

The model then lay in a box all but forgotten for a while. Days stretched into months, and months into years, and one day I decided that while fixing up the Skelton chariots the coaches time had come.  Stage two appeared, with the cleaning of the paint from the metal, then plenty of green stuff helped me put it back together on a custom made base (customer made by me out of plasticard).  The coffin lid was glued shut, and the coffin itself glued into the back of the coach.  A little bit of bending of the traces saw the new horses 🐎 fit it nicely, even if one of the tails was a bit long.

Overall I'm very pleased how it looks on its new base with new horses, although I am getting nervous about making a decent job of the Black.  The next stage will be sand on the base, then a base coat (most likely brown) before I see if my painting kills are up to the task.  If it comes out similar to my black robed wraith I'll be happy.

Old black.