About me

My name is Robin, I live in the UK and I have an interest in military modelling.
When I was young I occasionally made “Airfix” style kits of aircraft and ships, but stopped as I got older.

In the mid 1990’s I met an old friend of mine who introduced me to 15mm wargaming in Napoleonic times. It was soon obvious that I was far more interested in painting the figures, building scenery for specific battles and customising the shop bought figures.

As the other members of the wargames club fielded British, Prussian, Danish and generally ‘allied’ armies I had no option but to field French, hence why the bulk of my current dioramas are based on French Napoleonic troops. I also painted a number of 15mm Malburian French.

Then, a few years later I produced a set of scratch built 15mm Argentine Granaderos a Caballo (mounted grenadiers) that fought with Gnl San Martin at San Lorenzo (Entre Rios) against the Spanish.

This was soon followed by a commission by a local gallery to make a series of 15mm dioramas of Malburian and Napoleonic era battles that British troops had taken part in.

It was at this stage that my wife encouraged my to go upscale and do 54mm military figure models. This scale requires a very different painting style and needs more care with shadows, highlights and the standard of workmanship. For me, this scale is excellent and I have produced a number of dioramas based on commercial lead figures as well as a couple of home cast lead figures. All my 54mm napoleonic dioramas have custom made scenery and bases to give them a bit of individuality, and some of the models have had minor additions to add more details.

Although I really do prefer the 54mm scale in lead, in late 2008 I branched out into creating two very different plastic dioramas – “WWII Towards Berlin” in 1/35th and “Waterloo Corner” in 1/72nd.
I am also painting a set of British 1/35 figures in British ‘desert rat’ uniforms for a friend’s model bren gun carrier. So it looks as though plastic models are here to stay for a while!