Not all my modelling is Ancients related (although a lot of it is), so I've started a separate personal blog where I can blab on about all things model related. If you're interested, feel free to have a look.

I use the same colors and procedure for painting skin as Jaume Ortiz. That's to say, I like his colors, the method makes sense, but I make no pretense of being as awesome a painter as he is. Still, one tries...

Scott MacPhee is certainly not the only wargamer to paint his Roman Montefortino and Coolus helmets in a nicy shiny bronze.

When it comes to modelling, I have the attention span of a ferret: plenty of projects started (in various scales), few finished... And now I've got a new plan!

Johnny Shumate's artwork in issue II.6 is wonderful as usual and helped by the strict guidance of author Christian Koepfer, it provides a fairly unusual image of soldiers of the Roman imperial army. Already having Soldiers' Roman 3rd century legionary (SR-40) lying around, gave me an instant fix for the inspiration Johnny's image conjured up (this is how modelling projects often start for me). Hopefully doing a Step-by-step blog will give me the discipline to see it through.

Parts and assembly

I detest cleaning parts for assembly, so I was delighted that flash was absolutely minimal. The man himself consists of one large casting with his legs, upper body and right arm, his head, his left arm and the right wrist area with left hand. I glued the right wrist, head, scabbard (should probably not have done that yet...) to the body and let it dry overnight. The next day, I burnished the mail with the wire brush attachment on my Dremel tool to make it all nice and shiny. Next, I painted the mail with thinned Vallejo black glaze to add relief to the nice sculpt. I went over the creases with some extra black glaze when the first layer had dried. Highlights were added by drybrushing with a mixture of Vallejo silver and natural steel. When the mail was dry, I primed the rest of the figure with Citadel grey foundation paint. No particular reason for using Citadel, but it makes for a nice thin primer.

On his blog Ferrous Lands Ancient Warfare illustrator Andy Brozyna is running a sort of collaboration project. All figure and mini modelers are invited to paint a winter scene and join the fun at his site. I think I'll paint some wintery Romans. I've got an old model lying about, but maybe I'll use something else completely.

As I , I have taken up an interest in wargame figures (and likely the game too, though finding opponents in NL may not be easy). I'd bought some Foundry Macedonians on Ebay and planned to paint those before carrying on and buying more.

Yesterday I found a package of Baccus 6mm Late Imperial Romans and Huns in the mail. Having never seen wargames figures, I wasn't just surprised by their size. I mean, 6mm is small. Capital letters online is ugly and seems like you're shouting, but it's almost appropriate here. They are still nicely detailed.

I really like my Sony A100. I've taken it along to every museum I went to since I got it last Spring and it worked magnificently. It is also responsible for quite a few of the photographs in almost every issue of Ancient Warfare. To be able to photograph my models (of the miniature kind, sorry...) and perhaps also tiny stuff at museums, I recently ordered a macro lens.

I don't think I'm a book collector, although Christy might disagree. At least I'm not a book collector in the strict sense of the word. I certainly do buy pretty much any recent book on warfare in the Ancient World, but not all of them, not without seeing them first and some consideration for our poor creaking bookcases.

Dutch children get their December treats on Sinterklaas (Saint Nicholas ), December 5th and until I started to spend my Christmases in the US, I'd never received presents on that date. This year Santa brought me, among other things, a nice 54mm (1:32 scale) model of a Spartan hoplite.