Boot Hill

I had hoped my small order of WWII British would have been here but I am still waiting so have not had much to do recently. I was going to do a bit of weathering to my WWII buildings but am uncertain whether to go ahead with this, I have lightly drybrushed them but looking around at houses in the village unless the building is empty or derelict they are all in pretty good repair, including the paintwork. Now I don't know if the Normans in '44 were a lot less house proud than people in Warton in '16 but I could be going OTT if I went too far. I have seen some lovely examples of heavy weathering recently on the Bolt Action Facebook page but that kind of work should have been done before I built them, but we'll see.

Friends are also working on terrain at the moment, Andy at Tiny Hordes  and Matt at Wargames Table.

I have managed at last to do my Dead Man's Hand cemetery, it is not huge, simply a piece of plastic card covered in sharp sand, painted and drybrushed with the odd grave marker plonked down with enough room between them for figures to run through. The grave markers are from 4Ground as are the weathered picket fencing in the background, I thought I would use these to surround the graves and also have them available for WWII, so two birds with one stone. I thought white fencing would be out of place in Carefree and I like the look of the pre-weathered stuff. I still have about 20 kilos of sand remaining, sigh.

I have been sounded out in the last couple of days about doing a set of around 120 maps for several volumes pertaining to the American Revolutionary Wars and once I receive more information if I could put together a couple of examples for the author and editor. I was pointed to this site Obscure Battles and if you like military maps I urge you to look at this, they are superb, if you do go there read the page on how the maps were created.

I don't get to use colour very often and I always try and keep the map as simple as possible so as not to detract from what it is trying to tell the reader, I have seen beautiful maps which completely miss the point but are works of art. These I think are spot on and the balance is perfect as is the use of colour, I have certainly been given something to think about, although most publishers I think would baulk at the cost in time to produce such stunning visuals. It is the groundwork which takes the time, the drawing of all the symbols required, houses, guns, figures, woods etc. once you get all your symbols drawn they can then be used time and again very quickly and colours can be changed en masse. An artistic flair also helps, something I am working on.