Sunday, November 4, 2012

The Guns of Brixton


The Guns of Brixton

Please forgive the awful camera phone pictures, but I did some painting the other day. I've been slowly taking the War Room apart in preparation for replacing the floor, consequently there's been damn little gaming happening.

These are Liberation miniatures from their Urban Meltdown range. This range was begun at the behest of the Winter of '79 chaps and depicts militias, home guard and other scruffy oiks in the midst of a What If? Civil War occurring in Britain in the late seventies. I have a complete set of the available figures and hope to pick up the rest in time.






Hardly the Eton Rifles

I painted these with rather more attention to detail than usual for my 1/72 figures. In some ways, one of the most difficult bits was colour choice. I usually work from a uniform plates when I'm painting, but this obviously wasn't an option. I hadn't even been thought of in the late seventies, so most of my visual reference is from early memory and TV. With that in mind, I found some clips from “The Sweeney” on Youtube and took some screen shots of crowd scenes. I used these to work from.



DI Regan in a reflective mood

For those of you unfortunate enough not to know “The Sweeney”. It was a TV show produced by Thames Television in the late seventies, whose avowed intention was to shake up the cosy world of Dixon of Dock Green and Z Cars. Now as it happens, I rather like George Dixon, though I only know him from “The Blue Lamp”. He always struck me as a decent, no-nonsense copper. However, “The Sweeney” is something rather different. The name comes from London slang for the Flying Squad, who were a specialist unit of anti-robbery detectives and “The Sweeney” chronicles their exploits. While George Dixon was a beat man through and through, dealing with volume crime, DI Regan and DS Carter, spend their time screeching from one bank job to another in a series of beautiful cars. Bureaucratic infighting, corruption and firearms all make frequent appearances.


I wouldn't mess with him

While it lacks the scope of “The Wire” and never really escapes the episodic format; it is well written, sharply observed and informed by a wry and often quite black sense of humour. “The Sweeney” is intelligent television and a great deal more subtle than it is typically given credit for.

The three figures here took me an evening to paint and I took a leaf from Krisztian's book and blu-tacked them to a cork for better grip. I used Vallejo acrylics with the odd Citadel colour and got all three of them done in about two hours.

The jeans were painted Vallejo Flat Blue with a white highlight, something that worked rather well I think. The brown leather jacket was Vallejo Red Brown with some Citadel Brown Ink to give it a bit of shine. I had intended the third figure in the black to be wearing a donkey jacket (a thick heavy woolen jacket, traditionally worn by working men and sometimes with waterproof patches on the shoulders), but the black rifle seemed to disappear into the black of the coat, so I gave it a coat of ink to make it shiny. So Johnny's workaday donkey jacket has been ungraded to shiny leather one. The third chap is wearing an army surplus jacket, these if I recall correctly were usually ex-Bundeswehr items. I debated painting on the little German flag, but it seemed a waste of time.


Not a single lens reflex 

The weapons were all SLRs. In retrospect, I should probably have given them wooden furniture as was the case with the early SLR, but in the end I stuck with the black plastic look that the SLR shared with the FAL. A coat of GW Bolt Gun metal looked far too shiny to my eye, so I did them in black with an off black highlight and that looked a lot more like the FN FALs that I toted around Wicklow in my teens.

Overall I was happy with these fellas, though I'm still mulling over what I'll use 'em for. What I do know is that I won't be up to much until I get the War Room sorted.





13 comments:

  1. Ah, the SLR. Still reckon I could strip one and put it back together blindfolded! Excellent looking fiures-especially the Bundeswehr jscket.

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    1. Thanks - I reckon I could probably do the same with the FAL. The Bren always gave me more trouble.

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  2. George Dixon is much maligned - surely he was gunned down in the film? So much for the peaceable culture of the late 1950s. (Or does my memory play tricks with me?). SQUEEZE was wonderful in them days. Sighs. When I was young. As were The Jam. Later, I actually commanded part of the (real) Eton Rifles ('The Corps'). And me an oik too!

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    1. He was - but he was resurrected for the TV series. I can't imagine policing austerity Britain was easy.

      As for The Jam and Squeeze, you can't keep good music down. How did you come to command part of the Corps?

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    2. I taught there for five years (I was, in the parlance, 'a beak'), and was officer-in-charge of the RAF section of the Corps. Unusually, it is only made up of 17 and 18 year olds, and although it still claims to be the 5th Ox and Bucks Light Infantry it has, as you might guess, very close links with the Household Division. A unique set up, with some interesting aspects.

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  3. excellent looking geezers there .I will be interested to se what you do with them...

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    1. Started on a new batch last night - cue more freeze framing from The Sweeney.

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  4. Those are looking good. I think I'd favour going with the wooden furniture for the SLR - it'd make it more identifiable at that scale, with the black plastic they're awfully easy to mistake for early M16s.

    Nice result on the denim too - I've tried to get a good denim a few times, I seem to usually settle on a pale blue with a dark wash over it, followed by a drybrush/highlight in pale blue again. Luckily, the nature of jeans means consistency isn't important, so one can get away with lots of experimenting to find what works.

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    1. Well done that man, good observation on the composition. I shall try the wood furniture next.

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  5. Nicely done!

    Even my 9 year old runs about quoting lines from the Sweeney much to the trouble and strife's dismay.

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  6. The Sweeney was an excellent series, no romantic policing myths on that one.

    Having been around in the Thatherite destruction of Britain the concept of a civil war c1979-83 wasn't that unrealistic, and now thy are going for another attempt! Strangely enough not something I want to wargame, even though I have plenty of 20mm modern figures and vehicles, and do like collecting them.

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