British camp

The primary purpose of this post is to showcase the amazing vignette that my New Jersey friend Bill Nevins kindly sent to me earlier in the year. This was totally unexpected. Bill had made a number of these vignettes and I had expressed admiration for them and, as always, how he attended to the basing. The next thing I knew, this piece appeared on my doorstep - such is the generosity of a man I've communicated with for several years but, in the manner of internet friendships, never actually met! The second purpose is to show some other terrain bits I've been working on to give Bill's piece some company - I didn't want to blog about it until I had enough other bits to create a proper camp scene. And, of course, once I set up these bits, I kept adding others, until I had an artillery park and prisoners as well. All these other bits and pieces have been blogged about before, but I don't get my stuff out that often and it was nice to see what sort of scene I could create.     

I painted the Perry Miniatures AWI camp set almost ten years ago - see here. Of course there's nothing stopping you having a few extras on any table, but when I painted my Old Glory Continental command stand, I noted that camps play a a part in the following scenarios:

• Long Island - American
• Germantown - British/Hessian
• Whitemarsh - American
• Stono Ferry - British/Loyalists
• Brier Creek - American (militia)
• Savannah - American and British
• Eutaw Springs - British/Loyalist
• Yorktown/Gloucester Point - American 

Bill's piece takes figures from various Perry sets, but mainly the British "dragrope men" pack that I discussed here (wow, was it really 19 years ago they came out?!), and turns them into a lovely vignette of troops resting and having their wounds looked at. I think it's fantastic - such an inventive ande clever use of the figures and "props", which will be centrepiece of any British camp scene (it actually featured in a made-up game I did with Monty a few weeks ago, but I forgot to take photos). I particularly like the bloke who looks as if he's filing his water bottle with wine (or is it medicinal brandy)? If you're on Facebook, then go the various American Revolution groups and you can see more of Bill's stuff under his pen-name "Dan Morgan". He specialises in creating very accurate terrain, based on consideration of (i) the precise location and (ii) the time of year; Bill's provided me with much advice on this over the years.  

Before posting about Bill's vignette, I wanted to paint more bits to create a proper camp scene. The tents are from Renedra - £3 will buy you 4 dog tents and £9 gets you a collection of 6 different tents and a few other things. The free standing crates and barrels etc are off Ebay, from a seller called Highlands 3D Prints (whose service was excellent - I also bought some Egyptian ruins that I'll post about shortly). I like that these aren't based, so can be used in a variety of settings. Also, I see Bill's vignette features one of the crate pieces, so these 3D "sculpts" must be widely available. The based items are a mix of metal sacks and barrels from (I think) Front Rank and more plastic stuff from Renedra. I've had those knocking around for years, so it was good to finally paint them up.   

There's a helpful essay on 18th century barrel-making by the Revolutionary War Journal here. This explains how the design and size of barrels, together with the type of wood used, often depended on what was going to be stored in them. Larger barrels usually contained dry good like tobacco leaf or flour. White pine was often used for barrels carry wine or other liquids. I wanted a mix of barrel types and followed the pictures in this article - so I included a bunch of wine barrels made from white pine and some others using a "redder" type of wood. So for those interested in such things, the painting schemes used were:

• tents: undercoated in GW "Zandri Dust", and then dry-brushed with GW "Ushabi Bone", "Screaming Skull" and with a final light dry-bush of Foundry "Canvas Light 8C";
• sacks: mainly Foundry's "Deep Brown Leather 45" palette;
• crates: mainly base of GW "Rhinox Hide", then wood-grain effect highlights with Foundry's "Spearshaft 13" palette;
• wine barrels: undercoated in GW "Wraithbone", then wood-grain highlights with Foundry's "Buff leather 7" palette.  

I wanted to kick-start this blog again with Bill's piece. I still have a large backlog to post about and hope to keep that moving over the next few months. I fly to Australia and NZ in 7 weeks, so I'll do my best to squeeze in as much as I can before then. Next up will be more First Carlist War stuff and 1920s 7TV!  

Various bits and bobs. Painted May 2026.

Bill's piece:

Crates and tents:

General camp scenes: