Anybody there? Well, yes, technically...

Man, time sure flies! For the casual reader of this blog, one might imagine that I have not done any hobbying this year.  Well, not quite. The past few months have seen sparse action, but the first few months of 2016 were so busy... I just did not get a chance to post!

Why?  Because I participated in my first Lead Painters League! For the uninformed among you, this is a fun painting competition held over on the Lead Adventure Forum which consists of 10 (this year was 11) rounds of painted miniatures.  Each round you must paint 5 new figures, photograph them, and then users get to vote on which ones they like the best. I am going to take a few entries to post up each of my 11 rounds in turn, and discuss some of my experiences.  It was a lot of work for me, what with the rest of my real-life commitments, but I genuinely feel I came out a better hobbyist at the end.

Without further ado, here was my first entry, entitled "Camp Life"

This being my first entry, I learned a couple things... I think my photo was a tad over-exposed, and my background was a little too busy.  It might have looked better against a white background, and using some foliage to mask the base edges may have made it look more natural.  It was fun to paint though. The figures are from the Pro Gloria range (now owned by Warlord Games). They have a delightful range of Landksnecht civilians and I was happy to paint up a few of them.

Next up, my round 2 entry...

Some civilians... with a bear!

Time for something a little different.  I decided to paint up some civilians.  In this case I made a begging troupe with a dancing bear.  The bear and the pipe player are from Pro Gloria Miniatures and the beggar and guitar player are from Lead Adventure Miniatures. I would like to think of them as a ragtag group of washed up entertainers.  Perhaps the poor legless chap used to be the pipe player for the bear, but one day the bear got hungry and/or tired of dancing.  They were quite fun to paint up, and I must say the Pro Gloria figures are a pleasure to paint up, along with the always-entertaining LAM stuff.

Here is the group, along with them performing in front of the Merchant's House:

Here are a few more closeups on the group as well:

I should add that Pro Gloria is planning on eventually running a kickstarter for hard plastic landsknecht soldiers.  Based on the quality of their metal figures, I think this is something that will be a very nice product for both historical gamers, and human fantasy gamers as well - they will likely be great alternate troops for warhammer empire players.

Hope you like the Bear Beggars.