Almost finished my FEMbruary female figure painting challenges for 2019.
The new figures for my 2019 FEMbruary painting challenge are Annie Norman’s excellent WW2 Land Girls series – this year I chose the Land Girls at Work set, sculpted by Alan Marsh.
https://badsquiddogames.com/shop#!/WW2
A tractor is newly available in 28mm for this Land Girl range.
To match last year’s effort, I kept with my usual shiny toy soldier style of painting, right down to the pink cheek dots and glossy acrylic paint. This extends to shiny green bases rather than flock. A restricted gloss palette but a cheerful one!
I like the cartoonish element that comes out with this paint style, it is not quite Jane, slightly more Peter Firmin Noggin the Nog / Ivor the Engine for some reason.
Each figure looks like she has a real character. You can name them with suitable 1940s names in your own time.
Grouped together, I wonder what they are chatting about or thinking?
I am thinking possibly of putting these figures in for my local Spring Flower Show in a couple of weeks time under the rarely competed for adult craft section (with very few male entries). There is a local connection – many Land Girls were trained and worked in my Southwest UK area on the hundreds of small market gardens that were once around.
To get an idea how this might work, I bought a couple of wooden fence post caps as simple bases and painted them sap green (the dark green colour of land girl jumpers). A few more coats may be required to deepen the colour.
The Land Army lapel reproduction badges come from CJ Medals online http://www.cjmedals.co.uk
The addition of a hay stook (once the Mexican woman’s broom from Steve Weston’s Mexican Peasants) and a plastic tree from a recent fantasy figures True Legends set add something to the scene.
I have moved the figures round on the bases several times to get the right arrangement. Still not sure, especially as some of the Land Girl figures could easily intermix between the two rest and work sets.
I have a couple of 54mm Britain’s type Land Girls for repair that gave me ideas for the shiny gloss colour palette.
FEMbruary finishing touches?
When Alex at Leadballoony set this year’s challenge,
https://leadballoony.com/2019/01/31/more-scumbos-and-the-fembruary-challenge/
he said he would round it all up by March 8th International Women’s History Day https://www.internationalwomensday.com
I still have the Bad Squiddo 28mm Russian Women of WW2 Command set to put the finishing touches to. I found these less interesting to paint, well sculpted as they are, as shades of khaki green just aren’t my thing really at the moment. I shall feature them again when finished in the next week or two.
Posted by Mark, Man of TIN on March 2nd 2019.
Man of Tin blog 
That is a lovely little scene. I have the Britains seated land girl.
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I like the collar and tie detail on the seated Land Girls.
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Looking really great with the glossy colours and I think the post cap basing is an excellent idea. The badge is also a perfect addition in my opinion.
I think the potato picker is my personal favourite. Engaged in such a seemingly mundane task but at the same time utterly essential aspect to the war effort. I think I’ll name her Charlotte (after the potato variety…)
Now go and kick ass for all us figure painters at that flower show!
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An excellent choice of female 40s / potato names – somehow Maris Piper and Arran Victory don’t sound so feminine.
The cap badge or pin badge works well. Difficult to place a larger badge without it becoming too dominant. I think these Bad Squiddo figures doing mundane tasks are excellent. I look forward to painting more of the Bad Squiddo WW2 civilians, maybe next year?
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Agreed. I got my eye on maybe some more snipers too!
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I love the figures – really different to what you usually see.
if you want another alternative to your fence post cap, try having a look at the Castor Cups that they sell in Homebase.
they do them in two diameters of circle (60mm and 100mm) plus square about 120mm on a side. they are in both wood grain effect and a chrome finish.
The trick with them is to turn them upside down 9so the cup faces down, rip out the felt pad and you are left with a nice indented inner section with a raised rim – glue on your figure(s), fill the indent with filler or sand and PVA up to the level of your base, landscape – and you have a nice sculpted figure base at about quarter of the cost of a wooden one
I use these for basing all of my large scale (54mm plus) figures, but they would work just as well for groups of smaller figures
Assuming the link works, have a look at the figure of Garibaldi from our 2016 Continental Wars Society display game:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/117794468449297696700/album/6274631648586347921/6274631841352120354?sqid=115592900162441740283&ssid=7c429daa-5427-4f0f-9491-f1a49a423346
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Ian Many thanks for the suggestion about castor Caps – I will check them out next time I visit home hardware stores – and the Google images (before Google goes away). Lovely figures including the flats.
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[…] got onboard again this year with more Land Army gals from Bad Squiddo – this time, it’s the ‘Land Army at work’ minis, beautifully presented to match his submission from last […]
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Many thanks for the mention, and the round up. Good to be included again this year. Enjoyed the wide range of female skin tones and the unusual spaceport crew figures.
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