Category Archives: Modelling Tips & Ideas

warlord figures, assembled & primed

Last week I started painting the 32nd ‘Cornwall’ Regiment. I am going to paint the rank and file of 18 troops in one batch – quite a large number for me – I usually paint in batches of 6 or 8. I’m going to use the blog as a means of keeping motivated whilst painting! I hope that the stage by stage pictures will be a help to any newcomers to the hobby and perhaps to anyone looking for ideas on painting in general. There are advantages and disadvantages to ‘batch’ painting. On the one hand, you do get a large number of figures finished in one go but this is off set by the time it takes to get to the final stage and see that the figures are table ready! A degree of patience is required to stick with the process. I think that there is also a drop in quality when painting a large batch as opposed to individual figures. However, as these will form the main bulk of the unit I don’t think that it will be quite so apparent and I will of course spend a bit more time on the officers.

My other name for ‘batch painting’ is ‘soap opera painting’… Basically, when Emmerdale or East Enders start on the TV it’s time for me to head out to the garage to do some painting. That is another advantage of this method. It is easy to paint in short bursts as you know exactly where you are in the process and it allows me to use any free time to keep things moving. I find it difficult to paint for long periods of time any way – my back seizes up and my eyes get tired, so batch painting is a good way for me to keep producing units.

Hair and black equipment painted.

After assembling and priming the figures I blutack them to temporary bases to make handling easier and then start the painting. I try to paint from the ‘inside to outside’ of a figure and I always start with the flesh. I mentioned previously that I had left the back packs off to see if this made the painting any easier and you can see from the picture above, that they were primed in black rather than grey to save a bit of time on painting. Once the flesh is done I paint the hair on the figures – usually I choose three or four shades of brown and mix this up randomly. If I am feeling particularly lazy, they all get dark brown hair! The next stage is Vallejo Black 70950 for the hats, Boots and Bayonet scabbards.

Iraqi sand for the linen food bags

The next colour is Iraqi Sand 70819, for the linen food bags. You could use a lighter colour or even a white but I think this looks about right and these bags were likely to be discoloured with use. You will notice that at this stage I am not too fussy about how accurately the paint is applied. My general rule is not to worry about over runs, particularly when another colour will be applied adjacent to this colour. I do try and be fairly tidy where I have already painted a colour though. I’ve also painted the wooden bits on the rifles in Flat brown 70984.

Red coats on!

The next colour is Flat red 70957. Now I know from the chatter on the forums that I could write a book on what colour red the coats really were. Any shade from brick red through to dark pink would do it. However, these are war gaming pieces and the coats need to be red, so no surprise, that’s the colour I’ve chosen. If you prefer something different, feel free to use which ever shade of red you think appropriate on your figures.

Work starts on the equipment.

Once the red was finished I moved onto the steel, 70864, for the musket barrels, bayonets and pans on the back packs. I also painted the water bottles 70901 in pastel blue. It is also worth mentioning at this stage that I will be using the army painter dark tone quick shade and I know from experience that this will alter the colours that I have used very slightly, as well as providing the shading and lining.

The 32nd battalion of foot starts to take shape!

The next colour is the white straps, facings, cuffs and lacing. I’ve changed brushes from a ‘1’ to a smaller ’00’ for this job. I’ve used Vallejo off white 70820 – I prefer this colour to the Vallejo pure white as it is a bit softer. The unit is beginning to take shape but still looks a bit rough around the edges! Just to give you an idea of how long it has taken me to get this far; the White takes about 10 minutes a figure. So 18 figures represents about 3 hours of painting! To be fair some of the other colours are much faster but I estimate that so far I have spent 7 to 8 hours on this batch and I am about halfway there before basing! This means that I have missed the wedding heartache on Emmerdale and will never find out if a family fallout will ruin Ashley and Laurels big day… But Hey! That’s the price you pay for having a hobby like ours!

If work, family and life in general permits, I should get on to the next stages in the coming week and I will have more to show in the next blog!

This project has certainly turned out to be even more of a challenge than I originally thought. It has been as much of a test of my patience as my modelling and painting skills. Indeed, I think that if it wasn’t for the fact that there is no other project that is really pressing, I would have shelved this one and moved on. However, I have found a bit of time through the Holiday season to work on the coach and I’ve made steady progress.

As often is the case with this sort of project, I have changed my mind somewhat in how it will be finished. I had originally envisaged the coach being captured by the Prussians after Waterloo. Two things changed my mind. One, being the amount of additional time and resource to complete this diorama ( I hadn’t even got any spare Prussians to add to the diorama) and two, the more I looked at the model of Napoleon, the more I wanted to include him in the piece. There was also the issue of the size of the base required. Just basing the carriage and figures was going to need a fairly big area. So, I decided to finish the model as shown in the Warlord box art, albeit with the door of the carriage open.

As regards the base, I decided to use a laser cut Movement tray measuring 9cms by 21cms. It’s actually designed for 4 x 10 20mm infantry bases but it looks about the right size. I glued on the frame and then lined the tray with cling film. I then filled in the tray with standard milliput. The reason for doing this is to produce a infill slab that will not warp the base when I start to ‘landscape’ it. It’s a trick that I learnt from the military modellers. So once the milliput had dried, I removed it from the tray, peeled off the cling film and then super glued the ‘slab’ back into the tray.

Milliput slab cast!

slab glued into tray

The next stage was to carefully drill into the  back wheels of the coach and insert two pins that would secure the coach to the base. Now if I had thought about it, I should have done this before painting the coach but I managed to get the pins into place without causing any damage. Using these as a guide, I then drilled two holes through the milliput so that I could fix the carriage to the base. Before this was done, the whole base was coated liberally in Vallejo Sandy Paste. This allowed me to sculpt some wheel marks into the base as well as hoof prints  and generally texture the ground work. I then pressed the coach into the base, using the pins to locate the carriage and carefully added the horses whilst the paste was still wet. There is enough adhesion in the paste to affix the horses but the slow drying time gave me the chance to adjust everything. Finally, I used the two figures of Napoleon and his guard to press out an indent for the bases. Again, the slow drying time gave me the chance to move things until I was happy with the layout.

Once that was dry, I gave the base a coat of Vallejo Chocolate brown and then turned my attention to finish painting the horses and figures. Incidentally, before I talk about the figures, I ought to mention that prior to fixing the coach down I had repainted the coach itself. I noticed that I had painted the top of the coach green where it should be black. I was also not happy with the various greens that I had managed to get. Just to add to my dissatisfaction, I tried to copy the style of shading shown on the warlord box art and that hadn’t worked for me either. So I repainted the black bits black & highlighted them with sea grey. The green was repainted with Vallejo Reflective green (70890), shaded with a light brown wash and then I decided that I wanted a slightly gloss finish to the paint work so I gave the panels a coat of satin varnish. The final touches were to add the gold lining and detail to the coach body, springs and the lamps and to paint the box on the back of the coach brown with brass details.

To finish off the coach, I used some thin clear plasticard to glaze the windows. I also painted the wheel rims with steel but then dulled this down with a black wash. The final thing was to add some light weathering to the wheels, springs and bottom of the coach itself using various shades of brown. I didn’t want to overdo this as I had left the horses in a near pristine finish but I felt a bit of mud would help the overall look!

Napoleons Berlin Coach gets a base!

The picture above shows the coach on it’s base before the weathering and with most of the figures in place. As far as painting the figures, I pretty much tried to copy the art work and the superb painting by Andres Amian Fernandez. A bit of a lazy approach as I didn’t do my own research as I would usually do. However, my excuse is that I am unlikely to be painting many French in the future…

Art work from the Warlord website

The coach outriders when finished looked a bit darker than I had intended and Napoleons coat a bit lighter but I was happy enough with the overall effect. I wont detail all the paints used for the figures but I used my basic technique of block painting the main colours, washing with a black ink and then re-highlighting. The other addition to my technique was to give the figures a couple of coats of anti shine varnish in between paint layers. It seems to help protect the paint as you are working and somehow adds depth.

Napoleon & his Guard

The final job was to complete the base. First of all I added some extra material around the bases of the figures and horse to blend them into the base. Everything was then painted chocolate brown and then highlighted with various mixes of Flat earth & Iraqui sand. Once dry, I added the green scatter, The static grass and my usual mix of grass tufts and flowers. So that’s it for now. I do like to contemplate my work before it is finally finished and I will go back and tweak a few bits. For example, I know that I need to repaint the sides of the base to tidy this up and I may add a few more details to the base –  but for now the model is finished and it’s on to the next project!

Napoleon visits Little Bingham

With all the time preparing and fighting the Battle of Bitteburg, my painting time has been somewhat curtailed. It’s also that time of year when the pressure is on to get ready for Christmas a month in advance of the actual event! To be fair, some of this is driven by family get togethers, when presents are exchanged early, whilst socialising and catching up. The net result is that very little progress has been made with my various modelling projects.

Horses for Napoleons Coach

I have made some progress, though. The horses are nearly finished and I’ve started to paint the coach itself. I’ve decided to paint pure white horses for the coach, rather than greys. Just to make life difficult for myself, I’ve been layering the paint on to build depth of colour and highlights rather than my usual technique of ‘paint & wash’. So the horses were undercoated in Black, painted Light Grey, then Sky Grey and then Off White. I have used a Vallejo Light Grey wash over the mane and tail to bring out the texture. I then touched up the horses tack in Black, painted their eyes and decided that I had enough of painting them for the time being!

Off Side Horses

There is still much to do though. The hooves are black at the moment and these need to be painted either in a light brown or beige. The metal parts of the tack need to be picked out and the tack will need highlighting with a black grey to show the detail. I also need to do some more work on the faces, to add detail to the muzzles, nostrils & ears. Finally, I might add a bright white highlight to the horses. I’m deliberately going for a very bright stark look to the horses. I realise that they would in reality have muddy hooves & legs and I may yet add this but I wanted the horses to look over exaggerated in their pristine appearance, as though they were specially chosen to pull the Emperors coach.

The coach itself

As for the coach itself, I’ve started to paint this but I’m not happy with the shade of green. I’m using Vallejo flat Green but it looks too bright. I think that I will go back and repaint it in the darker Reflective Green shade. I’ve picked out the interior seats with a Red Black and used Saddle brown for the coach mans seat. The wheels are also painted green although I’ve experimented with a darker green for the front wheels. All this messing around has meant that I’m still a long way from finishing this project. I think that given a good long painting session rather than the odd half hour here and there I could get this done but with even more commitments looming for the Festive season, it will be a couple of weeks before I can even think about basing this project.

Napoleons Berlin Carriage

It was some time ago that I mentioned that I was about to start work on Warlord Games version of Napoleons Carriage – see my blog entry ‘A Confession’ . I was hesitating to start the project for two reasons. One, I was struggling to find the information that I needed regarding colour scheme etc and two, I had decided that I wanted the door to the coach in an open position for reasons that I will explain later.

Well, I’ve tracked down a brief account of the famous carriage. I didn’t have to look too far – on page 419 of the book ‘Waterloo Companion’, by Mark Adkin is a short description of the coach and how it was used. Incidentally, Mark Adkins book is a must have item for any Napoleonic Wargamer. If you haven’t already got it, then put it on your Christmas list now!

Waterloo Companion

The carriage is described as ‘ a large green carriage’ used by Napoleon as a mobile command post. It had strength, stability and manoeuvrability and was weather-proofed. It must have been quite a large affair, as one seat across the back was partially partitioned so that two persons could work, without being thrown around. Opposite was a lockable cabinet that could be converted into a writing desk. There were other cupboards containing everything that Napoleon might need. A silver chronometer hung on one wall and Napoleons seat could be transformed into a bed!

Napoleons Coach assembled.

The Warlord Games version is clearly not a scale model of this actual coach but is a very good representation as far as a wargaming piece goes. Which leads me to remind myself that I am neither interested or capable of making a detailed scale model of this subject, merely a passable representation that will look good on my wargames table as an objective or conversation piece. In this respect the Warlord Games model is an excellent model.

Napoleons Coach under coated – dare I take a scalpel to it?

The real coach was captured and plundered in the chaos and confusion after the battle of Waterloo. Indeed on the 19th June 1815, Commissariat officer Tupper Carey passed it, still surrounded by Prussians ‘scraping and sifting the ground, in consequence of a report that some diamonds had fallen from their settings in the night scramble’. Although the Prussians stripped and plundered what ever treasures were aboard the coach that day, the coach itself was returned to England where it eventually ended up in Madame Tussauds in London but was destroyed by fire in 1925.

So having decided that I would like to build the model, I decided that I would depict it as being captured after the Battle of Waterloo. In my minds eye, this would simply involve the Carriage being halted by the Prussians and the start of the search for plunder. It is quite an ambitious diorama for me to build and I suspect that it will take some time. The first task was to see if I could safely remove the door of the coach. Using a new, sharp scalpel blade, I carefully cut around the frame of the door, both inside and out. Fortunately, Warlord Games use a good quality resin, rather than the cheap & nasty brittle sort used by some manufacturers, so after about 20 minutes of patient cutting, the door was safely removed!

Napoleons Coach – door removed

And that’s about as far as I have progressed with this particular project. I think that it will take me some time before it is actually completed. I intend to paint it in stages and the horses are the first on the painting table. Having undercoated them, I’ve given them a coat of light grey, the idea being to gradually highlight them up to white. I’ll post updates as I progress with the painting.

The horses get their first coat of paint.

Prussian Landwehr Cavalry – Work in Progress

I guess that you can make painting horses as easy or as difficult as you like, from just a brown coat to the more complex spotted greys. I have tried quite a few of the different techniques over the years but I’ve been trying to improve my results to make the horses look a bit more interesting without spending too long on each horse. It’s also been a good way of practicing highlighting and shading, without relying on Quickshade or Inks.

There are two techniques that I’ve been trying with this latest batch of horses. Both are very similar and both are based on using the three colour; shade, main coat , highlight technique that the professionals, such as Kevin Dallimore use to such good effect. Lets be clear, I’m a long way from that standard and I’m still set on producing regiments for wargaming rather than high quality figures for photography. However, practice makes perfect, as they say, and learning a particular style will help me speed up my painting process.

If any one is interested in seeing a master class in how to paint horses using this method, then I recommend this youtube video by Toby of Art Master studios – it’s an hour and a half of watching paint dry but still better than 90% of the stuff on TV these days! There are some great ideas here and I’ll just summarise them, as much for my own reference, although I hope that it will be useful for other wargamers.

First choose your colour pallet for your horse – using three colours will allow you to get variation on horses, even when using the same colours on a batch of horses. Here’s a few of my favourite recipes using Vallejo paints! All of them are used over a black undercoat.

For Browns:  German Cam. Black Brown,70892, Flat Brown,70894, Orange brown 70891 or Mahogany Brown 70846. Be careful with the mahaogany brown, it is quite red and adding white to it will make your horse look pink so if you want to lighten it, use a Light brown, 70929. Another useful combination is Chocolate Brown 70872, Flat Brown,70984, Cork Brown 70843.

For a light brown or cream horse, try Flat earth 70983. Cork Brown 843 and Green Ochre 70914. Or try  gold brown, 70877 as the mid colour.

For black horses, use Black 70950, Black Grey, 70862, and highlight sparingly with light grey,70990.

For Grey horses, Dark grey 70984, Neutral Grey 70992, Light grey 70990.

And for White horses ( still Grey really!) Light Grey 70990, Sliver grey, 70883 and Off White 70820.

So that’s the horses body done. I stress that these are just some of my paint combo’s that I have tried. There are plenty more out there but using three colours in combination will give you plenty of variety. I mentioned that I was trying two techniques when painting. The first one is to carefully paint one colour over the other building up the highlights by picking out the muscles on the horse. This is the most time consuming and if done well gives superb results. The other method is to use a dry brush technique with the the colours. This is much faster and the results are still pretty good but you will need to go back over the harnesses etc as the paint will cover them if this method is used.

Prussian Landwehr Lancer on Brown horse

Next up, is the detail on the horses. The obvious ones are the mane & tail. You can either paint these in the same colour as the body of the horse or use black or green ochre to give variation. On the Cream horses, Biege 70917 looks good and on the greys, either a dark grey or white mane & tail looks fine. As these areas tend to have more texture, using an ink and then dry brushing with a light shade or even white will really bring the detail out.

The next area to look at are the legs – painting white or black ‘socks’ on one, two, three or four legs is fine and will  give variation in your regiment. Finish off the legs with the hooves. I paint them either black or a dark brown, it just tidies them up. You can also paint the horse shoes in steel if they are showing but it’s something that I tend to leave as a detail too far – besides , my thought is that they will be covered in mud…..

The last thing that I paint is the head. Again, a bit of variation here can make all the difference. I usually paint a white ‘blaze’ on the horses head. You can leave the muzzle the same colour as the horse or paint it black, dark grey or even a dark flesh colour. The eyes are painted black, although I will sometime use gloss black for this to get a shine.

The final bit is to paint the horse furniture and that is dependant on your Regiment and an article for another time. I have mentioned variation in horse quite a bit. Some of the elite cavalry regiments would of course ensure that the opposite was true. For example, the Household cavalry would be mounted on all black horses but I think that other regiments were less fussy and of course when on campaign or in battle, so long as the horse had four legs, it would do!

Work in progress – light brown horse

The pictures in the article show my latest regiment, Prussian Landwehr Lancers. As you can see they are yet to be finished, with some based with riders & some still not quite painted fully and none of them with their lances yet! I tend to paint horses in batches of three using one colour combo and then finish with the command group. As the trumpeter usually rode a grey and the officer would have had his own ‘posher’ horse, I leave these until last of all. Once they are all painted, I’ll go back over them all adding a few last quick highlights, correcting any obvious paint errors and of course detailing the bases with a few tufts and flowers.

So that’s my take on painting horses – Cheers!

The latest resident in Little Bingham – just the basing to finish!