Sunday 25 November 2018

The Spanish Project Kicks off in Earnest!

In the early years of the 20thCentury its was thought human race had been saved by a medicinal compound invented by a lady called Lily the Pink. The story is captured in the words of a 1968 song that opens:

We’ll drink a drink a drink,
To Lily the Pink the Pink the Pink
The saviour of the human race
For she invented medicinal compound
Most efficacious in every case…

Supposedly a notorious raunchy version of this tune had existed in the music halls around the time of the Great War.

A little bit of searching on the web sadly showed me that the story on which the song was based was one of quackery. This is probably why the human race has been on its downward slide for some time. But in these early years of the 21st Century there is fresh hope. A new compound has been discovered.

An alchemist called Aly Morrison has created “Aly’s Brown Liquid”. This is special blend of three and a bit ingredients (not to be confused with that other brew of 11 herbs and spices – the thought of which still turns my stomach from when I ate a bad batch of the stuff after playing an indoor cricket game in the winter of 1991 and haven’t touched it since). Fortunately for us the formula for this magical brew has not been kept secret like that of a certain brand of cola – although oddly the colour of Aly’s Brown Liquid and a glass of that sugary elixir look alarmingly similar - and can be found here.

I had been intending to mix a brew for experimentation for quite some time, but never had the right ingredients on hand. Last Saturday, when I topped up my GW paint supplies, gave me the opportunity to get those ingredients and set to brewing the stuff – which took all of a few seconds.

My first attempt to use this magical brew has been a roaring success. On the white coats of the Spanish infantry from Second Battalion of the Toledo Regiment below (whose flags are somewhere between Spain and New Zealand), it provided a much more subtle shading than I had been using.





On the yellow coats of the Numancia Dragoons (also awaiting thier standard) it also did its magic.




The white shirts and trousers of the gunners in this second gun set similarly benefitted from the application of the brew.




All of this is wonderful since white and yellow are the two colours I dislike working with the most and are the most common in the Spanish army.

I am now convinced that Lily’s compound was indeed quackery and that “Aly’s Brown Liquid”, although not medicinal and unlikely to save the human race, will preserve my sanity while I am painting the white and yellow coats of the Spanish army of 1808.

18 comments:

  1. Great stuff Mark - good to see you are not slacking around as we approach the end of the year, but have kicked off ANOTHER project! Early Spaniards should be useable with Paul and my Peninsula War Brits

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    1. And the project plan has phase one of this project completed by year's end. The goal is to be able to use these guys back to 1805, when they can fight the British, then go forward to 1808 as allies, then, with the addition (phase two) of a few more units in top hat and in mixed uniforms to go through to 1810. Don't forget I have a bunch of Brits in stovepipe shako from the Egyptian campaign, and I WILL be doing one or two of those flat boats for operations around the Med.

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  2. Your Spaniards look fantastic, Mark!

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    1. Thanks Jonathan. They are great figures...lots of character.

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  3. Superb and realistic painting, wonderful job Mark!

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  4. Splendid Mark
    That put a smile on my face this morning... :-)...
    The figures look great...
    I particularly like the cavalry...
    Does this mean that in my small way I have given you the ability to paint a bit faster.... god help us ;-)

    All the best. Aly

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    1. What indeed can be better than yellow uniforms with black facings! i think there is a need for a second regiment of dragoons. The liquid probably won't speed up painting, but it certainly gives me a softer shading that I prefer.

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  5. Great looking Spanish! Got to love a unit in bicornes! Alys brown liquid appears to be efficacious in every way!
    Best Iain

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    1. Thanks Iain. I agree about the bicornes. I did a Spanish army in 15mm way back in the 1980's. it was long since sold, but I have always wanted to recreate it, althoug this army will be quite a bit smaller than the one of all those years ago.

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  6. Nice work!

    PS. Your link to the miraculous brown liquid site comes up "Sorry, the page you were looking for in this blog does not exist. "

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    1. Thanks Steve. I will finish the next battalion tonight, this one with the grenadies, that are very nice. Oddly the link works fine for me, both on the iPad and on the PC. I will place the url again and see if that makes a difference.

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  7. Really nice work Mark. I gave up on my laptop by the way and decided to use my iPad instead. Much better than having to grapple with our firewall!

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    1. Thanks Lawrence. I have another battalion nearing completion and expect the third done by the end of the week.

      I hardly use the PC at home any more and work with the iPad...although after all the problems I have had with mobile solutions this week I may rethink that idea.

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  8. Some how I managed to delete this comment from Chasseur:

    I wondered where the hell you were going with the text at first, but glorious results Mark! :)

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    1. When the intial thought for that post came to me I too was wondering where the Hell I was going because I was stuck on the Mangere Bridge in a Friday evening traffic Jam. Then a Lily Allen song came on thr radio, I thought of Lily the Pink, that stupid song began cycling in my head, then there was the thought of special potions, Aly's liquid and one thing led to another...One and a half hours later, when I had finally cleared the jam and made it home, I had written the whole post in my head.

      The Spanish are a joy to work with, but I suspect will be a nightmare to game with!

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    2. You are talking about my brown liquid...
      I hope that you realise how much of a “Carry on Wargaming “ double entendere situation this is...

      This of course never crossed my mind when we came up with the name... honest...no... really... honest... matron....

      All the best. Ooo!...ere!...Aly

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    3. You can be rest assured that the double entendre did not slip by unnoticed!

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