CONVERSIONS BACK FROM THE PAINTER

I wanted to make this my last post of the year, but life got in the way, so it is now becoming my first post of the NEW YEAR.

First off, I'll wish anyone and everyone reading this blog a very HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Next are some pics of various conversions back from the talented Igwargminis, AKA: Ig, AKA: Igor Olshansky. Included are a couple of conversions I have yet to put up a post about -- a WOODBINE DESIGN "WWI In the East" BRITISH CASUALTY SET (available from Gripping Beast: LINK). I swapped the peaked-cap head of the kneeling chaplain offering the wounded solider some cigarettes out for a Glengarry-wearing head from the Empress Miniatures Zulu War ACCESSORIES RANGE. I also converted an additional kneeling figure offering a sip from his water-bottle, putting one of Woodbine's WOUNDED HEADS (available here: LINK) onto the body of a kneeling Wargames Foundry Indian mountain gunner, whose own head had already been donated to create the Sikh orderly for General Roberts! I removed the ramrod from his hand and replaced it with a spare WATER-BOTTLE from the same Empress Miniatures Accessories range.

The other thing in these pics that I have yet to blog about is converting the turbans of Perry Sudan Bombay/Bengal Infantry into 1880 Bombay Grenadiers, wearing uncovered turbans with visible folds, kullahs sticking up in the middle and one end of their wrapped lungis poking out in front. It's a simple conversion process, all focused on the figure's headgear. Doing it twice for my pair of standard bearers was no problem at all, but doing it for an entire unit -- which I'm still in the midst of -- has been more of a challenge. When the entire unit is done I'll put up a post about how I did it, in case anyone wants the details. I took a few pics with the converted Bombay Grenadier NCO side-by-side with the version that came straight-out-of-the-box. The British officer has a puggaree inspired by a waist-sash worn by a member of the regiment in this illustration from a decade or two later:

I found it on the British Battles Maiwand page. If interested, you can find it about halfway down the page, on the right-hand side: LINK.

The pics below are the first I've ever taken OUTSIDE, rather inside my garage. I lugged one of the terrain boards out to the driveway and set up the figures, while the sun was still out. I think the natural light looks good. On the other hand, I wish I had a camera with true "selective" focus, since no matter how hard I tried to use the touch-screen select, my iPhone camera kept wanting to focus on the ground cover as much as the figures, but I think the ones below turned out okay.

Here's some pics of the figures...