Landsknecht Sharpshooter Team

I realize that its gone a bit quiet here on the blog these past few weeks. Summer has made its glorious appearance and so outside pursuits have taken priority at Schloss Campbell-Hanks. Nonetheless, I've not been completely idle on the hobby front and to back this up here are two lads ready for their puff-and-slash debut.

One of the things that wrapped up a little while ago was the Seventh Season of the Lead Painters' League. I had a great time participating in this event, managing to get a wide range of stuff assembled and painted over the League's 10 weeks. Some of my efforts were well received while others were, um, less successful, :) but that's how it goes and I had a blast working on each of my entries and especially enjoyed seeing the work of my fellow competitors.

At about the half-way mark of the League, an anonymous follower of the competition generously awarded three prizes to several submissions that struck his/her fancy. I was both surprised and delighted to find that my Spanish Civil War Moroccan Regulares was one of those lucky enough to be singled-out for a prize - a choice of a pack from the fabulous offerings over at Lead Adventure Miniatures. How very cool!

My fifth LPL entry: Moroccan Regulares

It took a little bit of hand-wringing as so many of the models from Lead Adventure are brilliant, but I finally made up my mind - deciding to choose a characterful Landsknecht Sharpshooter Team from their Bruegelburg range. 

These Lead Adventure miniatures are beautiful sculpts, crisp, clean and with loads of character. One reason that I went with this pack was the fabulous dwarf 'spotter', calmly teetering on his stilts, identifying the target for his colleague below. 

A pre-op shot of the dwarf spotter.

While on the whole I really liked the sculpt of the stilted spotter, I thought that his pose seemed a bit two-dimensional as the alignment of his body, arm, spyglass and stilts were all on the same vertical plane. So I cut him along his shoulders, under his gorget, and with the help of a little pinning and sculpting putty I repositioned his torso 90 degrees in an attempt to make his pose a little more dynamic (I also gave him a bit of a hunchback as I thought it would fit in with the sensibility of the period). Overall this mod seems to have worked alright, and as an added bonus his right-hand stilt now serves as an impromptu musket rest (I think they called them 'Swinefeathers') for his sharpshooter partner. (I also had to replace the stilt's foot-strap to allow the firelock's barrel enough room to pass through.)

As the figures have an almost cartoonish quality about them I wanted the groundwork to reflect this while also serving to compliment their colourful garb. So I added a load of grass, shrubs and flowers to give the base a verdancy bordering on the Disneyesque. It seems to work fairly well, with the tree also providing a backdrop for this garish duo. 

Again, my great thanks to the League's anonymous benefactor - I really had a wonderful time working on this vignette. Cheers!