This Week in the Hobby 30/03/2014

Les dernières cartouches , 1873

This is a painting by Alphonse-Marie-Adolphe de Neuville which I stumbled upon the other day, I can't really remember how. I love this painting, which depicts a scene from the Franco-Prussian War. de Neuville did loads of war paintings, this is the famous Rorke's Drift painting.

The Defence of Rorke's Drift , 1880

Of course this got me rabbit holing into the history of the Franco-Prussian War and all the surrounding wars, such as the earlier Austro-Prussian War. I naturally started searching through the ranges on offer, what can I say, standard operating procedure for a wargamer. By the way, Pendraken do some great figures in 10mm. 

Inspiration is a dangerous thing, it can strike from the strangest places. Paintings like those above, novels (Flashman is particularly good), and of course films. Part of the problem though is parsing this inspiration into reality. How feasible is the Franco-Prussian War as a project for me really? I don't know anyone who plays it or intends to. That means I will have to paint up both sides, find someone who wants to play and then make that happen. So, the Franco-Prussian War inspired by a painting comes crashing down, consumed by the flames of reality. 

My update is a little late this week, but I have been working away, but not at the rate I would have liked. Good weather means I like to go outside and enjoy myself. So therefore, little hobby gets done. I am almost done with April's commitment for the HPC, as of twenty minutes ago this is the state of Squad Gabriel:

As you can see, only three marines to go. I also managed to finish a 30k Ultramarine amongst all the green. I will be doing a little Dark Pact update about him soon. Time to finish off Squad Gabriel and pray that this rain stops so that I can take some nice pictures in natural light.