Hussar…part 2

Welcome back to part two of painting my Perry hussars. As you will recall we are painting six perry hussars and have so far applied the first three colours.


The next colour I used was Dark Prussian Blue (899) to paint the pelise and the dolman. The pelise is the short jacket worn over the Hussars’ shoulders, and the dolman is the tight fitting jacket that they wore underneath with all the equipment strapped around them.
When it comes to the blue you are going to paint over lace and I don’t think that’s a problem, because when you come to paint the white lace you’ll need the blue there to show through.
The next colour I came to paint is Iraqi Sand (819), which I have used on their haversacks, which are shown in the reference pictures as an off white colour.
Having painted the haversacks, the next job was to paint the water bottles, which are a light blue. I mixed this colour myself, as I didn’t have anything suitable on my workbench.

The next issue was the colour of the lining on the pelise, which according to the Perry’s instruction sheet should be red, but in my other sources… Mont Saint Jean shows no colour; Osprey  show the pelise lining in light blue; and in CE Franklins’s British Napoleonic Uniforms, there are some very clear pictures and a table both of which are contradictory!  The table  in the book says light blue on the officers pelisse and on the troopers, white. There is a picture of an officer and the pelisse lining is light blue, but the picture of the trooper shows it as light blue too…and then I looked in the general introduction section of the book and there’s a picture of the pelise with light blue lining…so I am confused! I decided that the light blue lining looked better than Red and so went with this. The point of all this is to illustrate the discrepancies that you find when researching uniforms. I suspect that all of the lining colours are correct and it depended on the  squadron but who really knows… I took prussian blue and mixed with white, to get a nice shade of light blue and got on with the painting!

Next up was to paint the overalls a dark grey (994), the leather water bottle belt (871), steel(864) for the sword holder(?) and stirrups and red line on the overalls(947).  And so onto the most complex job – the white fur & lace!

I’ve put the white lace on as you can see in the picture above, the minute you put the white paint on the figure starts to come alive. As I am painting this colour I will often touch up the other colours, and I decided when I got to this stage I would carry on and finish the figure. So I have also done the brass on the sword hilt, the various buckles and on the sword holder- I must find out what that’s called [ed: scabbard?], and  the chinstrap. I have also painted his mustache, all my troopers will have chocolate brown mustaches…
As you can see the addition of the white has brought him together, but there are two colours missing; the yellow (953) for the cord on the hat, and the blue bag on the hat needs to be a strong bright blue (844), and I wanted it to be a different blue to the lining of the pelise.
I’ve used steel on the sword and I will paint over that with silver, and I will just brush up other colours before we use the quick shade.

So we’re nearly finished. In part three I’ll show you the finished models and discuss how I use the quickshade and how I finished basing the models.

Hussar! (Part 1)

Long term readers of our blog will know that I am gradually building a Napoleonic army, and with the release of the Perry’s  British Napoleonic Hussars set, I have the opportunity to add some cavalry to my army, and of course a chance to extend my painting experience. The following article is a step by step guide to how I paint these figures.


I have already assembled the Hussars, apart from the officer and trumpeter, which I will leave  for the time being. I just wanted to get on and get the 12 troopers done, which will allow me to field them in our club Sharp practice games. 

As with all  Perry figures, they are beautifully moulded, although there were a couple of challenges: the horses did not quite go together as neatly as I would have liked and also on the hussars themselves,  the fur caps had a bit of a sink hole from the moulding process,  which I had to fill.

This gives me the opportunity to talk about the fillers that we carry at Arcane Scenery. Now, most people reach for the green stuff  to fill blemishes,  but for filling plastic models, a much better solution is to use  Squadron White Putty. The beauty of this product is that its based on a plastic solvent, so it bonds very well to the plastic and it dries really quickly and smoothly, so you can get on with your model without having to wait for green stuff to set.
Now other than that, the moulding is very, very good and the actual cast lines in the figures are very light,  they need the merest of scrapes with a file or a scalpel. So  just another quick plug… we’ve recently started stocking Albion Alloys’ Flexible Files, which I suppose you could say look like glorified nail files, but they do the job brilliantly. By all means carry on using the wife’s or girl friends nail files, if you can get away with it, but I have found the flexible file to be much better.

With prep done, I continued by assembling the horses , undercoating and painting them, and then setting them aside whlst I built the Hussar riders. I’m not going to cover painting the horses in this article – painting horses will get it’s very own section!

So this means that I’ve chosen to paint the horses and riders separately, and thats not to everybody’s taste – some modellers say that the best way to deal with them is to glue the rider onto the horse and paint them as one, but I thought  that given the Hussars are quite complicated it would be better to paint them separately.

Now on with the painting…I’ve undercoated them with Army Painter grey spray paint. The hussars are difficult to handle, as they have no bases. To make this easier I have some plastic straws, that were holders for balloons  and the riders are blu-tacked to the straw  at the groin (and that doesn’t really matter because we want that clear to attach to the horse). So just to show you how that looks on my workbench we have them all lined up…

[Steve likes to live life at an angle…]

 

First 3 lots of paint on the figure as you can see from the photograph (apologies for quality I am using a phone camera)

I always start my figures with flesh, I think if you start painting the face and hands, it gives the figure some personality and its pretty clear where the colour goes (955 Vallejo). The next is Vallejo 950 black, for the boots and satchel and cartridge case, and again its a nice easy paint to use, and as you start to work on your figure you get an idea of whats to come and the sequence in which you will paint the figure. The next colour is for the hat, which is 822 German Camouflage Black Brown. The interesting thing is I am using several references,  Mont Saint Jean which is a superb website, and gives the colours for all of the troops uniforms at Waterloo . I have also got the Perry’s colour painting sheet, which is supplied with the set (and I applaud the Perry’s for doing so- it’s a rarity in the business), it shows all of the Hussar regiments in great detail;  and the final reference is from an Osprey book, Wellingtons Light Cavalry, which shows the regiment I have selected, the 18th Hussars in the 1815 period. All the pictures show the hat in a very different colour. The Osprey book: black, Mont saint Jean: a light brown (which may be due to the screen limits) and the Perry’s: a dark brown. Since two out of three are brown I am using Vallejo Camouflage Black Brown(822) which gives me the opportunity  to bring out the texture on the fur by dry brushing with a lighter brown later on.

So three colours on and its taken me about an hour, and as usual I paint six figures at a time, which means I change colours every twenty minutes or so.

The next part of the figure to paint was the Pelisse, (the slung jacket) and the dolman, (the tight fitting under jacket) and I’ve used Vallejo 899 Dark Prussian Blue.  But for now it’s time for a break…….

[Join Steve after his coffee for more painting]

Napoleonic Farmstead by Pete Harris

We’re always pleased to hear of other modellers projects, this post comes from modeller Pete Harris…

If like me, you are interested in the Napoleonic period, and specifically Waterloo, you will know the significance of La Haye Sainte and Hugomont. These buildings were pivotal during the battle and I was keen to have something similar for my war gaming table. Obviously, it’s possible to buy the exact replicas, but there are two drawbacks :

  • They are relatively expensive.
  • They take up a lot of space.

So I decided to produce something that had a similar look to La Haye Sainte, but with a smaller footprint. I started with the main farmhouse building and for this I purchased the Hugomont Farmhouse from Hovels, together with their 20mm wall sections and pillars. I chose 20mm sections instead of 25/28mm because the height is just right for a firing line to stand behind without a need for a firing step.

The rest of the farmstead is scratch built using an old Hornby station building, plasticard, Wills tiled roof sheets and Milliput. The base is two pieces of thin hardboard,  laminated together and then covered with PVA  and sprinkled with sand. All the structures were base coated in coffee coloured acrylic paint and then dry brushed in various shades to achieve the finished effect.

During construction I noticed the Hovel’s building, although stated as 25/28mm scale, had small doorways. So I cut out the stone framework to enlarge them and then used  Milliput around the new openings to replace the stonework. The doors and gateway were made from strips of balsa, and green scatter was added around the base of the walls and buildings. Finally, I added some Renedra barrels and sacks made from Milliput under the lean to shed.

If you’d like to share your work with us, then leave us a comment or drop an email to arcanescenery@gmail.com. 

Tomb Stalker

Too much of a good thing can get to you and after weeks and weeks of Napoleonics, Steve decided he needed a break. Having for many years been a devoted necron fan, he still had plenty of necron stuff around the house, so decided to break out and complete the Tomb Stalker…

I started with the base and had decided I wanted the stalker clambering over a tank and so went to my bits box, and found an old Leman Russ model that I bought from eBay sometime ago. To make it fit to the base I chopped it in half very roughly, using a junior hacksaw and sprue cutters, and then attached it to the base with polystyrene glue. To hide the joins and to provide some groundwork I used standard milliput to cover the base, and blend in the tank hull. At this point I also added a few skulls and bones from the bits box to represent the remains of the crew.

I then coated the base in PVA and covered it in sand, and set it aside to dry. The next stage was to assemble the tomb stalker. The instructions supplied are a bit sparse, so it is important to take your time and make sure you know the difference between the various legs, antennae and other appendages. As the model is in resin a certain amount of cleaning up was necessary, but there was nothing too demanding as the moulding was very good.

I first assembled the model using bluetac so that I could pose it over the tank, and then piece by piece superglued it together, checking the positioning as I went. When I had completed the Tomb stalker I added some more damage to the tank to simulate where the Stalker’s claws had damaged the tank’s armour, this was done by heating a scalpel blade and chopping into the plastic. Once everything was assembled it was onto painting. The groundwork on the base was simple enough, in brown, and then highlighted with Iraq Sand from Vallejo.

The tank was painted in Desert Yellow, and then dirtied down with washes of Devlan Mud and then dry brushed with Desert Yellow/White mix. I also used the stipple brush technique to add scratches using boltgun metal and black. There’s no scientific method to this just keep going until you are happy with the result. I then picked out a few details on the tank, the tracks being in gun metal and the gun on sponson in red. A final light wash of Devlan Mud tied everything together.

The Tomb Stalker was sprayed with gun metal and then silver. I then gave it a wash of black ink, followed by a dry brush with Mithril Silver. Again it is sometimes necessary to repeat this process until you are happy with the effect. I then picked out the eyes, and the detail on the guns with a bright green. The antennae were picked out in gold.

 

The final stage was to glue the green rods into the guns.

Et voila a Tomb Stalker.

Friday Round Up

Well howdy there boys and girls…this week’s round up is very make and do focussed, but we have some models and rules first of all…

We have in stock now the Crusader Rules which cover 1740-1900, Napoleonic period and the American Civil war, with a supplement available for the American period.

New from Airfix the 1:72 Aichi D3a1 aeroplane, which is probably most well known for Pearl Harbour, and is a rather stumpy nosed looking little aeroplane…I have to say (sorry beloved American readers) it is a kind of cute little thing…also we have a lovely T34/85 because we can never have too many Russian tanks.

From our favourite Italians, Italeri we have a 1:72 scale station, which is perfect for World War 2 European skirmishes…your table will be massively improved by the inclusion of the greatest piece of technology ever, the train…more on that in a paragraph or two…

In Steve’s ever growing desire to stock every kind of glue ever we now have a growing range of Deluxe products which include some incredibly specialist items such as the rust kit…

On our webshop you can now find our range of resin bases in all kinds from cracked ground and gravestones, to a pile of skulls…should you wish to stand on a pile of skulls.

More prosaically from Expo we can now offer the poly cutter with its battery…which is for cutting polystyrene not parrots. We do also sell the battery and replacement wires if you already have the cutter.

Also, we have catalogues…you can buy the Pocketbond catalogue from the store now (ignore that it’s the old picture, we will beat Rob soundly for not updating it)…but we also have the Expo catalogue…which you can have for free…if you email the bossman at steve@arcanesceneryandmodels.co.uk and title your email “I would really like a free Expo catalogue pretty please”…and if y’all want to mention how the webfairy needs supplying with more (lactose free) chocolate I shan’t object.

I mentioned the glory of trains…and glorious all train things are and our final new item this week celebrates one of the things that railway modellers do with finesse. Scenery. Now here in the office, we have something of a divide. Rob, master of straight talking, doesn’t see what the point of the time railway modellers spend on scenery because “THEY DON’T LET YOU TOUCH IT!” (and yes he really does yell)…I, unsurprisingly as a woman who would rather like a train set in every room of her house, am a big fan of a fine model railway…and the master of all things Arcane sits somewhere between the two. What we now have, so you can see where you fall on the spectrum, is  a book Creating Realistic Landscapes …it shows how railway folk make spectacularly realistic landscapes, and whilst you may feel that some of it will be a lot of work that is going to get mussed up when playing, there are, we’re sure, tips and tricks you might want to incorporate. Plus if at anytime you wanted to make a diorama or something for display rather than play there’s plenty of information in here for you.

Till next week folks.

Another putty history post

Yes folks it is indeed another history post that isn’t about a specific thing. We mentioned last week that history lurks all around us, so we thought we’d mention a few things that we are hoping to cover…

In Nottinghamshire/Derbyshire…POWs, Civil War (the most inappropriate description of war ever “civil”), bunkers, shot towers, aeroplanes…

Further afield locally…battlefields

From our own histories…a lot of sinking ships (it is probably wise never to get on a boat with any of us just in case luck is hereditary)

(PS-apologies folks for the delay in the post, web fairy had exams)

Friday Update…..or not

It’s that dreaded time of the year. Just about got over the numerous bank holidays, the feasting and drinking are a distant memory, (although everytime I try to do up my belt I’m reminded as to how many minced pies I ate), and it’s back to work with the end of the month and next pay day looking a very long way a way….

Nevermind though! There’s plenty of models kits and soldiers to make and paint and if the weather’s a bit miserable it’s all the more reason to stay indoors with a nice cup of tea and get painting! If moneys a bit tight, now’s the time to dig out those models you’ve been meaning to make and get busy. As for New Years resolutions, well dont worry about what you need to give up – how about planning your next army or kit to make. If you are looking for inspiration, fear not, whilst the new releases are thin on the ground this week I can promise you that there is a whole host of new goodies on the way. 

Watch out for some great new kits from HobbyBoss, Italeri and Tamiya as well as releases from Warlord (do they ever sleep?) and yet more goodies from Northstar. And we will keep adding to our ranges to give you ever more choice.

If you haven’t already seen them, check out the new range of abrasives & glue dispensers that we now have from Albion. I particularly recommend the sanding sticks if you are building plastic models.

So get busy with the paint & glue and get modelling while you can. It will be Summer before you know it and you’ll be getting dragged off to mow the lawn and cremate meat on the barbeque…….

In case you’re wondering, Lotte is away on holiday, sitting her exams….which means she will have a degree soon and it will be official that she is the brightest spark in the office.

 

Richard I

This is a basing project on one the D’Agostini knights that we sell. The knights were originally sold on the front of magazines, as part of a part work collection, we’ve managed to acquire quite a few of these, and they’re really very, very nice figures. I thought that we could make them look even better if they were on their own little base. So this is an opportunity for me to show you how simple it is to base a figure and just a few of the techniques that we use to improve the way the figure looks.

We’re starting off with a prepainted figure, its a model of Richard I looking very resplendent in his armour and red circoat. The first job is to fix him to the base; for which I’m going to use Devcon two part adhesive. Just recently, people have resorted to using superglue for almost every job, but there are other glues and we’ve done a previous article on the blog on this subject. We actually sell devcon, and epoxy adhehesive is a much better glue for this job, the thing about devcon, is that it is a two part adhesive, which will set off hard and gives a really really strong bond.

The difference between epoxy and superglue is that is that superglue is great if you’re trying to pull a joint apart – you will get exceptional strength , but it falls down on its shearing strength, when you tap it really hard. When you use epoxy resin you get an all round strong bond so even if the figure gets dropped the joint should stand, and the figure should stay in one piece.

For the base itself we’re using a wooden mdf base. We stock a vast range of bases but they basically fall into three types:
*We do the Renedra plastic bases, which I favour for my napoleonic army. These are really nice extremely well moulded bases, exactly the dimensions that they say, and are nice and thin, which means that the figures can be put into a movement tray and still look about the right size on the battlefield. These are particularly good for plastic figures.
* The next range are the plinth type plastic bases (similar to a certain large brand) these are also very good for plastic figures too, but the little plinth gives a little extra height, so I quite like these bases for hero figures. If you’ve got an officer, or a hero figure that you want to stand out, giving him a taller base is a great idea. We also have circular bases which have a little lip around them that makes it look like a little diorama and I think these are super for officer and command groups.
*Finally MDF laser cut. Absolutely precision cut bases which will allow you to put all your figures in very neat formations. I particulatly like MDF for metal figures, using expoy resin to glue them in place. For this metal figure I’m using a Sarissa Precision 100mm by 50 mm MDF base.

To use the epoxy, simply squeeze out equal amounts of the resin and hardener onto a piece of paper and mix with a toothpick. Then apply to base. It’s rapid drying, so it will be set in about ten minutes, though it probably needs about 24 hrs to fully cure, but it will be workable in the ten minutes.

Richard I has been drying for about 15 minutes, the epoxy is nice and dry and he is held firm. The next task is to cover the base in sand. You simply use watered down pva glue, a white woodworking glue. Cover the whole base in the glue, being careful not to get on the model, and once the base is covered, plunge the model into a box of sand. We sell basing sand, and I quite like to mix up the diferent types of sand so that you get a mixture of coarse and fine sand on the base.
I’ve also included a a few little pebbles to add a little extra interest. You might need to to give the base a little tap to shake off the  excess sand. We’re going to leave it a good thirty to forty minutes for the glue to dry properly.

I let the sand dry for a bit more than an hour to make sure it really was dry. The next stage is to paint the sand. To do this we use an emulsion paint rather than a modelling paint. The cheapest way of buying paint for scenery and basing is to go to your local DIY store and buy a can of emulsion. A colour that I like using is called Dehli Bazar II, which is a nice browny greeny colour. When painting over sand, use an old brush as this work can be quite hard on the brush. Bear in mind pva is water based, so paint fairly quickly, so that the watered down emulsion doesn’t take the sand off.

This first coat of paint will take some time to dry, because its watered down. So take a break for an hour or so!

Once the base coat is dry, you can dry brush the base. You take a sploge of your original paint and mix it with a lighter colour.  At this stage I am happy to use the vallejo paints and don’t worry about mixing the types of paint. As long as they are water based the paints will usually mix quite happily. I used light Iraqui Sand to lighten up the emulsion but a white or even some spare magnolia emulsion would have been fine!
To dry brush, you first load your brush with paint and then wipe most of the paint off. This means that only the detail or raised areas on the base would be highlighted, and the depths will stay the original colour. So you get a really good textured feel , and you can repeat this with increasingly lighter colours, to build up the effect.
These coats of paint will dry very quickly and you can really finish all of the highlighting in one sitting.

The next part is to add some foliage. I started with Javis coarse scatter which I splodged on using PVA, and then some Highland and Jungle tufts from Army Painter attached with superglue. I also outlined the base in a brown colour to tidy up the edge – there’s a lot of debate in our office as to whether you should edge your bases in brown, green or black. I prefer brown.

So that’s it, a nice simple project but a really efective finish. So how do you like to base your figures?

Edam good figures

We wanted to show some newly painted figures from our favourite painter, TheStug …

 

Painted as a Dutch regiment the figures are a range new to Northstar Figures,  and are sculpted by the very talented Steve Saleh. Steve also sculpted the Northstar Wazungu figures that our Steve loves so much, and  the Persian Satrap limited edition  exclusive figure that came with the most recent Great Escape rules set The Rise and Fall of Persia.

The figures depict Louis XIV’s army and the opposing forces for the period 1665 to 1680, and due to the lack of standard uniforms at that time can be used flexibly as a range of armies.

Though new to Northstar’s ever growing range, the figures are originally from a range formally called Glory of the Sun designed by Mark Copplestone of Copplestone Castings.

Since they are so flexible, we’re interested to know what armies you might use the range for…tell us in the comments!

Friday Round Up

Unfortunately, Lotte, our webmaster blogger and technical genius is suffering from a bug and so we’re a bit short on pictorial content this week but there are so many new goodies I couldn’t miss the friday update. The links should all work so you can still see the goodies!

Once again we have had a busy week with lots of new releases arriving in our ebay shop and on line shop. As well as the new releases, we are continually adding extra ranges to improve our offering to modellers and a good example of this is that we have now added the range of Vallejo Earth and Oxide pigments to our shop. This product is superb for producing weathering effects on your models and we will be using these to good effect on our next projects!

In a similar vein, we have been looking to source model chain for some time and we’ve now got the Trumpeter chain available in our ebay store. It’s one of those really useful items to have in your ‘bits’ box and useful whether you are modelling tanks, figures or, in my case , Napoleonic wagons…..

Talking of Napoleonics, we’ve been able to add some of the Perry miniatures metal packs to our ranges to supplement the plastic sets. Long term readers of my blog will know that I am a committed fan of these figures, I think that they are amoungst the best figures available and I will be adding a few of these to my army!

The other item that has caught my eye this week is the new metal set of figures from North star. The pack is called Wazungu and contains four european hunters. These are beautiful sculpts and full of character. Click the link to see the painted miniatures but beware, you will be tempted to buy them, they are so good! If you are interested in wargaming with or collecting African themed figures, the North Star Africa range is a great place to start. As well as hunters we have Matebele or Zulu’s available as well as cattle & oxen. Incidentally, the Wazungu pack will make great characters for the Tooth & Claw rule set where the aim is to track down prehistoric beasts! Oh! and we’ve added a couple of new beasts to this range as well, you can now have Mammoths to hunt or Pumas to hunt you!

Changing tack yet again, we’ve received our new releases from warlord games, so we now have the Russian Pavlosk Grenadiers, Russian command and Casualties.

For the military modellers we have received a couple of new releases from Hobbyboss in 1/35th scale. For the modern era  there is the Landrover defender, and from World War II, the M3a1 White scout car half track. If you are not familiar with this manufacturer, they produce extremely detailed and accurate kits that are every bit as good as Tamiya , which of course we also carry!

Finally, very hot off of the press, we have the new Wargames Illustrated Magazine issue 290. In fact it’s so hot, I have not been able to list it yet but that’s my next job, so check out our rules and books section later today!

So that’s just a small selection of what’s new in, normal service will be resumed next week once we’ve run the virus checker over Lotte……

L’eau de Steve’s Wagon

Today we are starting a new project and once again its one of my favourite topics, which is wagons and the support for Napoleonic armies. In this project, we are going to make a water wagon, or it could even be a beer wagon if you prefer! It is a simple conversion and makes into a nice model. Basically we’re taking a Gribeauval Limber from the Trent Miniatures range and we’re combining this with a Cask from the same range, to make a simple water wagon. So first off let’s just show you the components, and then it will be a question of filing them all down, making them fit together nicely and putting the parts together.

So, having laid out the components you just need to take a file and clean up any cast lines, and dry fit everything so you can see where it’s all going to go. Obviously, the two halves of the cask need to fit together, so you need to file these to make them nice and flat so that there willl be a nice join there. The two cask supports, the stands, will be stuck to the limber at either end. So file off the bottom to make sure you’ve got a nice clean fit here. Then, just tidy up the wheels with your file.

Once you’ve done that, the limber itself needs a bit of a clean up. In the middle there’s a spiky piece, which is where the French gun would be attached. You need to sand this flat, because it’s going to get in the way of the cask. Once that is sanded flat, the cask will sit quite nicely on the limber. So we can now assemble the water wagon.

First of all glue the two halves of the cask together. I use superglue, you can use epoxy resin, but I find that a thick superglue (we sell the expo variety) and some accelerant means that it will set off quite quickly, and the thick superglue will provide an element of filling. So some of the imperfections in the casting of the barrel will be taken out, and that will make life easier when it comes to painting.

Now you’ve glued the barrel together, the next thing is to glue the supports for the cask onto the limber. I glued one support to the very rear spar of the limber, and one support to the front. Once you’ve done that, attach the wheels and the main construction is complete.

If you look at the picture you’ll see that I’ve got a separate barrel on a separate limber, but it’s a pretty straight forward job for the cask to be glued onto the top and hey presto you have what looks like a passable water wagon already. You could just stop there, a little coat of paint this would look quite nice, but I’m going to add some more detail.

The picture shows the water wagon assembled, and as you can see I have added a few little details. On the back there’s a little tap, very straight forward to make,if a little fiddly. I’ve used some 5 core solder which I’ve bent into shape, drilled the barrel and inserted the tap into the hole. I’ve then used another piece of flattened solder to make a tap top. Then there’s a hook with a bucket on it; again fairly straight forward to make. I took a small square piece of plasticard to make a little plate, and then taken a piece of florists wire and bent that to shape, and I’ve super-glued that on to the back on the limber. There’s also a cork on the top of the barrel which is a little bit off of a plastic. The assembly is very straight forward, the key is to file it well.

I’m going to paint the Gribeauval Limber dark green as if it were French, so even if I use it with my British army I will claim it was a captured piece of equipment as I imagine many were. I won’t claim that this is an actual scale replica of a water wagon as I found it very difficult to find a picture of such a thing. However, I think that it makes a nice piece of scenery and it’s fairly convincing! No doubt it will feature in a future skirmish using the Sharp Practice rules to provide the background.

Beginners Guide to Painting British Napoleonic Infantry (part 2)

We are moving on with our flank company figures and in the last picture you saw they had just been dipped. We’ve now got to the stage where they’ve had a coat of matt varnish.
Tips when using varnish:

  • Make sure the figures get to dry for at least 24 hours, the dip will be touch dry after 1 to 2 hours, but you really want it to set hard. If you use your varnish too quickly on top of dip there is a danger you will end up with the varnish fogging.
  • You should make sure you shake your varnish. I cannot stress this how important this is.
  • When you come to use your varnish use it very sparingly.

I may need to go back to these figures a second time and matt them down a bit more as they are a bit shiny on cuffs, coats and on the hats, though I am not too worried about the hats as they would have been wearing oilskins, but the coats need to be matt.

Prior to painting the bases I have coated them in pva glue, and dipped in normal fine sand. You don’t want the sand to be too coarse as it can look a little out of scale. I have painted the bases the same colour as I painted my wargames table, using an ordinary emulsion called Dehli Bazaar. To highlight the bases I have used some Vallejo White to give a bit of contrast.

I have added also  some static  grass to the bases. I use flowered flock, Expo Static Grass Flowered Field effect, and I’m going to use some Army Painter Highland winter tufts to give the bases some more texture.

 

The final picture shows those six soldiers from the flank company of the 27th Enniskillens.

 

I am quite pleased with them. I was initially a little disappointed, because I felt the buff didn’t look as good with red as white might. I have gone back and touched up the white highlights on the shoulders because the quickshade had dirtied these down, and I have slightly retouched the buff strapping. I haven’t re-varnished the hats, and they are still a little glossy which would be a reflection of how the oil skins would be. I have gone back to the red, almost dry brushing with the flat red to improve the colour density.

I will continue with the rest of the battalion (32 figures) and at some point we will do an article on the officer, sergeant, drummer and two ensigns. We are going to paint these a little differently with more highlighting and less reliance on quickshade. I was talking to a professional painter and he said if you concentrate on the faces, bases, flags and officers and then your figures will always look good on the battlefield.

If you’ve got any modelling and painting projects you’d like to share email us at: girlfriday@arcanesceneryandmodels.co.uk