Sunday 6 November 2011

Through the Swamp


Who knows where my next distraction will come from as this post will surely illustrate.  Some will remember the dubiously entitled post 'a beer and a bag' where I was given the most bizarre mix of miniatures you could ever imagine, one of which was a crocodile like creature and I immediately envisaged building a wonderful terrain piece reminiscent of the rope bridge scene from 'Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom'.  (I even went as far a ordering up some additional crocodiles and vultures!)  It wasn't until the 'Laughing Ferret' (his tremendous blog can be found here.) pointed out that the said beastie was in fact a gator that stirrings of a possible project began.


Many, many years ago I was presented with a set of trading cards depicting scenes from the American Civil War.  This gift from my father left such an impression on my young mind as the illustrations were incredibly violent but brilliantly presented, full of dynamic composition and colour.  On the reverse of each card was a news report relaying was happening in the war at any particular juncture.  Some cards left more of an impression than others but I had a very vivid memory of one with a gator in it.  Sure enough after several hours of scrambling around the dirty loft space at 'Awdry Towers' the collection was unearthed and to my joy and delight 'Through the Swamp' was there, just as I remembered it!

Well that I was it, I now had to recreate this scene using my Gator!  Phase 1 is now complete in that I have found a suitably large base and painted up Mr. Alligator here.  He looks far too happy, observed the  saintly Mrs. Awdry, but that is probably because he knows that he is going to be able to get his teeth into some Union Boys before too long!  


Just as an aside does anyone know if the red top the soldiers' kepis is accurate or is it just an artistic device?

13 comments:

  1. He's cute! Excellent paintjob done! Looking forward to the progress of this project!

    Greetings
    Peter
    http://peterscave.blogspot.com/

    ReplyDelete
  2. A great small croc this is, never seen one in this scale.
    Must be a cool vignette!

    ReplyDelete
  3. He looks great! I'm a big fan of swamp creatures minis

    ReplyDelete
  4. I was thinking something from 'Darkest Africa' along the Great, Grey-Green, Greasy Limpopo River all set about with fever-trees, ready to pounce on the Elephant's Child!

    ReplyDelete
  5. He looks very sweet. Wouldn't hurt a fly!! Never seen that type of kepi.

    ReplyDelete
  6. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Nice crocodile. Which company makes that miniature?

    ReplyDelete
  8. @Alcidas, thank you! Sadly we don't know where he came from.. It was part of a real mixed bag of miniatures given to me by a friend. The fun was trying to come up for a use for him!

    ReplyDelete
  9. That's a wonderful crocodile! And very well painted! Cheers, Karl

    ReplyDelete
  10. Union troops in the ACW often used to have Corps badges on top of the kepi. But not as large as in the trading card picture.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_War_Corps_Badges

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you so much, so there is some historical significance making these chaps I Corps, 1st Division. I really appreciate you taking the time to comment.

      Delete
  11. Browse all Instagram on the web, Instagram web viewer online, Picks the most popular hashtag and interesting users and story in Pikdo.

    ReplyDelete

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...