Current Project

I just started painting a few French Soldier, retreating from Moscow in 1812 (for a friendly painting competition at http://bricole.46.forumer.com/index.php). They are part of a huge series, edited between 1932 and 1936 by Werner Scholtz in Berlin (you can still get them from the Berliner Zinnfiguren). There are many multi-pose figures in this series, which means that some cleaning up is required.

The figures:

Cleaned up, primed, and ready to go:

I choose my blog's name because I consider most flats and 28 mm to be 'toys'. Flats really 'started' as toys for children, then taste shifted, and they became 'toys' for grown-ups (although of course children are still fascinated by them). Sometimes I admire flats for their charm, sometimes for the skill and knowledge that went into creating them, often for both, and I also enjoy to paint something which has been made from a form created more than a hundred years ago. In some cases there is more, though, and these pieces of skill become art (at least for me). The 'Retreat from Moscow' is one of them - not only is the series huge and depicts the brutality as well as the heroism of this long march well, due to its time of creation it also reflects upon the slaughter of the first World War and foreshadows the horror yet to come in the second World War.