Whats on the work bench? – Page 16

There’s something about a uniform….

I mentioned in a recent blog post that I was having a break from painting my Napoleonic army and I am now concentrating on clearing down my back list of projects. This is really my way of painting all of those odd figures that I have picked up from shows over the past couple of years. To be fair, I am fairly disciplined when I go to shows and only tend to pick up items that will fit in to my planned collection. I have yet to go off on a complete tangent, tempting though it is!

Mohawk Indian Character

So next on my list of painting subjects were some very nice Indians that I had picked up from ‘The Galloping Major’ at a show at Owthorpe, of all places. ( see my review of the show here). I intend them to be the start of my French – Indian Wars/AWI skirmishing force that I will use in future games of Muskets and Tomahawks. My initial thought was that these would be quick and easy to paint, after all, there was no uniform to worry about. I could paint them in what ever colours I fancied. Well, not quite, it seems. Even Indians have their own style and one Indian tribe will tend to be slightly different to another. I guess it makes sense. If you are a Mohawk Indian, of the Iroquois tribe, you would not want to be mistaken for a Huron Indian, your deadliest enemy.

Mohawk with two Huron friends…

Fortunately, there is a great painting guide on the Galloping Majors web site to help out, so I had somewhere to start. I had of course chosen Mohawk Indians as my force ( they were allied to the British) but had also acquired a couple of Huron Indians – they were limited edition figures that had been given to me by friends that didn’t need them. Regardless, I decided that they would be part of my force and I would include them in the painting project. It was now that things began to get complicated.

Woodland Indians a bit more at home

When you are batch painting a group of troops in uniforms, once you have worked out the colours, it is just a question of working in a logical manner and every figure gets the same colour painted in the same sequence. These Indians weren’t like that. They are all dressed differently and would have been wearing different colours – they wanted to stand out as individuals! So even with just three figures, two of which were identical, I just couldn’t get a painting rhythm going. Sure, the flesh was all the same colour – I used Vallejo Beige red, washed over with a skin coloured wash and highlighted with the beige red again, with Flat flesh mixed in to provide top highlights. The hair is black. The muskets are painted the same, Flat brown stocks with light brown to give a bit of wood grain effect, Steel gun barrel & lock, brass for the fittings, Beige/Ivory powder horn. But after that, although the colours that I used were similar, they were not the same and they weren’t going on in the same place at the same time if you see what I mean! It has taken me as long to paint three Indians as it would to paint eight Napoleonic Prussians!

Mohawk Character is waiting for his base to be finished!

I eventually decided that the best way was to pick a few good colours and use these. So, Prussian Blue, Light Blue, Burnt red, Leather Brown, Light Brown, Iraqi Sand, German Camouflage Beige all made it on the the work board and I finished each character individually. The first three Indians are more or less ready for the basing process. As you can see I have started, with my latest preferred basing method. Vallejo Desert Sand paste spread over the base, the figure pushed into this and then a sprinkle of real sand as I wanted a bit of a rough texture for the bases – I’ve also added a ‘rock’ or two. I now need to paint these and add some grass & tufts.

I’ve certainly learnt a lot whilst painting these three characters and there is another six to go! Rather than trying to batch paint them, I think I’ll do them one at a time, it might be faster and will save me faffing about trying to figure out if I can use the same colour more than once!

An offer of roast chicken fails to impress the Indians!

STOP PRESS!

I managed to get the basing done, a few little corrections and took a few pictures using a light box. Here are the results. I’m a bit happier with these now. They are ready to endevour to persevere!

Mohawk Character, AKA Bubba!

Huron Warior 1

Huron Warrior 2

Three indians

Wheel Wagon, Pig and Partizan

It’s been a bit of a hotch potch week for painting. I’ve managed to finish a few bits and pieces. First of all, I was very kindly given one of the Historicon figures by those very nice guys at Warlord Games. The figure is based on a scene from the film ‘Waterloo’ when a soldier of the 1^stBattalion 27th (Inniskilling) Regiment of Foot is caught stealing a pig by none other than Wellington himself. You can see the clip here on youtube. Rather than add the figure to my ‘lead mountain’ I got on with him straight away, using the superb painted example by Andrés Amiàn on the warlord site as a guide. I had intended to rebase him and perhaps add a figure of Wellington but in the event, I finished him as intended. I can always revisit this option but for now he is done and in the cabinet!

Historicon Figure

Defending a hopeless position

The next project that I managed to complete ( well nearly) is my Napoleonic Wheel wagon. Based on a drawing from C E Franklins superb book on British Napoleonic Field artillery, it is now almost ready to take the field. The sharp eyed will see that I just need to make some wheel hubs to finish the wagon. I couldn’t find my leather punch that I use to make the wheel caps with, so rather than wait, I painted it as it was and I’ll add them later. I am writing a step by step article on how to produce the wagon and hope that it will be included in a future issue of Wargames Illustrated. If not, you will read all about it here!

Wheel Wagon and Limber

Incidentally, if you, like me are interested in the various support wagons used in the British Napoleonic army, you might find these two previous blog articles of interest:

Wagons Roll!

Water Wagon

Thanks to a very last minute invite, I was able to attend the Partizan Show at Kelham Hall in Newark. As you can see, I had a small stand of DeeZee Miniatures, Sarissa Precision buildings and Lucid Eye figures. This is the last time that Partizan will be held at Kelham Hall, the venue is moving to a much bigger and brighter venue at the Newark Show ground.

The Arcane Scenery Stand at Partizan

I enjoyed the show and although I was busy on my little stand – I was sharing with Trent Miniatures and squatting in some spare space between them and Wargames Illustrated – I did manage to have a look around. I wont review the show here, I would refer you to the Wargames Illustrated site for an excellent round up. The real drama for me was that during the set up, I managed to drop a case with all my painted figures…Aargh! So the last couple of evenings have been spent, retouching all of the chips and breakages that occured. Next weeks blog might not have much in the way of painting progress to report….

The DeeZee display before it was dropped….

The Legend of the Hartlepool Monkey!

Arrest that French Spy!

I’ve gone off on a bit of a tangent since finishing my last Battalion. I mentioned that I fancied a change and whilst sorting through my ‘lead mountain’ I came across a limited edition figure of a Pirate Monkey, issued by North Star. It instantly reminded me of the Tale of the Hartlepool Monkey. I wondered why the Hartlepool Town football supporters were known as the ‘Monkey Hangers’. Every Saturday on Soccer a.m., Tim Lovejoy would refer to the Monkey Hangers and laugh, so I had to find out what the joke was.

The story goes, that back in the Napoleonic Wars, a french ship was wrecked off the coast of Hartlepool. The only survivor was a monkey, who was dressed in french uniform to amuse the crew. The locals who found the monkey, had neither seen a monkey or a french man before, and decided to hold a trial, accusing the monkey of spying. Unfortunately for the monkey, he was unable to answer the questions put to him and was indeed found guilty of being a french spy. The poor monkey was duly sentenced to death and hung on the beach!

There are two other versions of the story. In one of the alternative versions, the poor unfortunate that was caught and hung was just a poor cabin boy, or ‘powder monkey’. The most plausible (for me) was that the whole episode was based on a comic song from the 18th century that was simply poking fun at the locals in Hartlepool. You can read the official versions on wikipedia and see the song lyrics for yourself!

Hartlepool Monkey!

So I decided to paint my own version of the Harlepool Monkey to use as a French spy in my wargames! It would amuse me to be able to poke fun at my French opponents and come to that, some of my friends from the North east – little things please little minds and all that… The plan is to create a little vignette, with two of Hartlepools’ finest, arresting the monkey. You will get the idea from the picture at the top of the page.

I painted the monkey using Vallejo paints as usual, the main colours being Beige Red (flesh), Beige ( Shirt), Off White (Trousers), Prussian Blue (waistcoat), Gold (trim) Black Brown ( fur). I use these little projects as a chance to try my hand at ‘proper painting’ rather than using the army painter dip method that is so useful for churning out Battalions! So, I’ve highlighted with lighter shades of the base colours and used a couple of thin washes to add shadow. It’s just the basing to do – I’ll keep it quite simple – perhaps just a sandy base! I haven’t yet decided whether to use the figures that are in the picture (a couple of spares from my earlier attempts at building battalions) or remodel some new ones. For now, I think I’ll go with what I’ve got, after all. it’s just a bit of fun.

A Clear Work Bench!

Osterode Battalion Hanoverian Landwehr

Well, not quite, but my final Battalion of Hanoverian Landwehr, the Osterode Battalion are finished, based and ready to take the field. As you can see, I’ve used my standard basing, four figures to a 40mm square rendra base. The base is coated in Vallejo sandy paste and then the figures are just placed into the paste. I use a sculpting tool to bring the paste up and over the actual figure bases to blend them all in. Once the paste is dry it seems to be strong enough to hold the figures in place. From there, the bases get a coat of Vallejo Chocolate brown, highlighted and dry brushed with Flat earth and then Iraqi Sand.

The final touch is to add some fine turf scatter and then a few grass tufts and of course, flowers! There was one other little addition that I made to the basing. The unit consists of Warlord Hanoverian infantry but I have used a command group from the Perry’s metal range. The Perry’s figures looked a bit on the short side compared to the Warlord men, so I added a thin piece of plasticard under the Perry Command figures to raise them up a bit. They now blend in quite nicely.

I’ve decided to take a break from churning out units for my Napoleonic army and just focus on a few of the random projects that have been lurking on the to do list.

Spare Wheel Carriage

The first of these projects is a spare wheel wagon for my artillery park. Ok, so it’s still a Napoleonic subject but it involves a bit of a conversion using a Trent Miniatures gun carriage and a pack of their British wheels. The picture above shows progress so far and if I like the way it turns out, I’ll provide a full blog post with the modelling details.

Next up, and totally different, I’ve been playing with the new Diorama bases and Standing stones from the DeeZee range and I’m looking at using one or more of the Lucid Eye Neanderthals to make a small diorama as a display piece. Here is the test shot of the layout so far.

Lucid Eye Diorama

So that’s it for this week. They say that a change is as good as a rest so I’ll finish with a couple of pictures of the Hanoverian Brigade in all it’s glory! There are a total of 96 figures representing the 4th Hanoverian brigade at Waterloo, commanded by Colonel C. Best and comprising of the Verden Landwehr, Luneberg Landwehr, Munden Landwehr and Osterode Landwehr.

hanvoverian brigade close up - Command Figures

Hanoverian brigade close up – Command Figures

They were initially deployed left of centre at Waterloo under the command of Picton as part of the British 5th Division and presumably were in action or at the very least in close reserve as D’Erlons attack was made. As the day wore on, they were joined by the British 10th Brigade and placed under the command of Colonel Lambert as part of the 6th British Infantry Division – I think guarding the crossroads and the right from La Haye Saint towards Papelotte.

Hanoverian Brigade advances out of Little Bingham!

Rain Starts Play!

I have been doing quite a bit of painting this last week. Unfortunately, it was with a four inch brush and a can of Dulux Weather Shield. As you can see, I have been up a ladder, painting the exterior of the house, so the important job of adding to my Napoleonic Army was put on hold. Fortunately, that all changed on Sunday, when the weather turned and the rain came down all day. No doubt, many people were dismayed but not me! It gave me a break from the chores and a chance to get on with the last regiment of Hanoverian Landwehr, the Osterode Battalion.

Hanoverian Landwehr Osterode painting guide from Mont St Jean

As you can see form the pictures below, the first 12 troops are done which is half the regiment. I followed the colour scheme on Mont St Jean, which may be incorrect but as I said in my last post, the chance to paint a slightly different looking unit was too good to miss.

Hanoverian Osterode Landwehr

The colours that I used are shown in the picture below. I followed my usual procedure of block painting everything and then used Army Painter Dark Tone to provide the shading. Once the dark Tone had dried for 24 hours, I used the Army Painter Anti shine to matt the figures down. I then repainted some of the lighter colours to give a better highlight. So the red, Yellow, white, green and metallics were all touched up. This last stage is not really necessary but does help the brighter colours to show up on the wargames table.

Vallejo Model Colour

The basing scheme was my usual method of Vallejo Sandy Paste, over painted with Chocolate brown, highlighted with Iraqi Sand for the ground work. I’ve added the basic green scatter but will also add some tufts & flowers and static grass for a bit of interest once the whole battalion is complete. With another 6 troops and the officers and ensigns still to paint, it will be at least another week before the battalion is ready for the table. This will definitely be my last batch of Hanoverian troops for some time now!

I’ve got a number of small projects lined up once these are done, most of them small dioramas that wont really add to my Army but will add a bit of interest to my collection and provide a bit of ‘flavour’ on the occasional big set piece games. These projects include a spare wheel wagon, Napoleons Coach, a Prussian mule train, a Vivandiere, and a tribute to the Hartlepool monkey.

All I need to get these finished is a few more rainy days……

Napoleonic Field Forge completed!

Napoleonic Field Forge – Perry Miniatures

My Napoleonic Army continues to progress and the field forge completes another mini diorama that will eventually build into my Artillery Park. I have always been fascinated by the support units that ensure that an Army is able to fight. It is a shame that the rules systems that I have come across fail to take into account the logistics required to get an army into battle. I have just finished reading about Wellingtons Peninsular campaign and it seems to me that the battles were won because of Wellingtons attention to this area. The French seemed to have lost the campaign because of their decision to live off of the land rather than have a supply train in place. They were unable to continue to press any advantage gained because they ran out of provisions. This is best illustrated by the problems that Massena experienced when Invading Portugal. Held in check by Wellingtons defensive lines of the Torres Vedras before Lisbon, Massena saw his army dwindle away due to starvation and sickness.

I wouldn’t expect ‘club Night’ games to reflect this logistics problem in every game but there is certainly room for a scenario or two here! Just to give you an example of the logistics involved, a Brigade of Infantry required about 150 mules to carry supplies. A troop of Horse Artillery required some 205 mules to carry supplies. And these were only the Commissariat mules. In addition, every unit had it’s own beasts to carry camp kettles, reserve ammunition, pay chest, medical stores and tents. Whilst all of these beasts were left in the rear during the major battles, I suspect that there were times when they were present ‘in the thick of it’ or certainly close to the action.

Blacksmith close up

I digress, back to my field forge. It is from Perry Miniatures, although I have added a spare artillery man & officers horse to fill out the base. As usual, I have used Vallejo paints to complete the figures. I could find very few references for details of the clothing , So I painted the figures as Foot artillery in shirt sleeve order! The leather aprons were my first attempt at painting raw leather and I used the Vallejo Orange brown as the highlight and wash over the actual leather brown paint. I then just stippled some black on the aprons to represent the burns that would be there from working. I think that it has worked quite well.

Detail on Blacksmith aprons

For the base and ground work, I used Vallejo Sandy Paste. I actually have a pot of the desert coloured paste that was left over from another project, so I am working my way through this, being too mean to buy either the plain or brown that is available. I am a great fan of this product. It is ideal for blending your figures into the base and has sufficient texture when dry to enable a quick dry brush to bring up the detail.

Field Forge Ground work detail

Once the paste was dry & painted, I used a green scatter to represent the grass as well as some static grass dotted around to add some different texture & colour. I then added a few Grass tufts ( I like the ones from Noch) and flowers and the basing was complete.

The field Forge takes it’s place in Little Bingham!

So although my Field Forge is unlikely to change the course of any battle that I fight, it will make either a nice objective or simply add to the scenery. It was of course a pleasant distraction from painting the rank and file….Talking of which, next up are my final battalion of Hanoverian Landwehr, the Osterode Battalion, More on those next week.

Work in progress – More Hanoverians! And my new favourite basing material…

Summer madness….

The weather has somewhat curtailed my painting over the last week. It’s a bit hot to be sat in my garage painting when other activities beckon. You know the sort of thing, burning meat on the barbecue, sampling the odd cold beer and the occasional gardening task which can be put off no longer. I have made some small progress on the Napoleonic field forge. The forge is finished, the crew are at the final stage of highlighting and the two other figures need about an hours work on them. What will really make the difference is the basing, which as you can see is nowhere near finished.

Just to add to my agonies over my lack of progress on painting, the Perry’s have only gone and released their new British Light Dragoons boxed set! Well, I expect to receive it into the shop tomorrow, so watch facebook for confirmation. I’ve been drooling over these ever since they announced the release at Salute.

With fourteen figures plus loads of extras, I cant wait to get my hands on a set! Those Hanoverians that are sat on the work bench might just get pushed down the painting line! Of course, my mind then goes into overdrive. If I bought three boxes, I could do the whole 4th British Cavalry Brigade at Waterloo. It comprised of the 11th Light Dragoons (Light Buff plastron & facings); 12th Light Dragoons ( Pale yellow plastron & facings) and the 16th Light Dragoons (Scarlet plastron & Facings). Even better, if I keep to 12 models per regiment, I will have 6 spare, so I could get some of the Perry Metal Dragoons and have an extra regiment, say from the KGL. Of course then there is all of the spare Tarleton heads that I’ll have. Just thinking about the conversion possibilities is giving me a head ache! Tarletons were worn by horse artillery and rocket troops and of course the Out riders on limbers etc, so a quick search in my spares box and I bet I could soon find the bits that I would need to build a few of these…

And there lies the madness! In the time that it takes to sink a cold beer, I have convinced myself that I can have 48 Cavalry figures painted and based in the next couple of weeks and meanwhile the other project of completing the Infantry brigade has been put to one side. Whats the betting that just before I finish the Light Cavalry Brigade another new release will set me off on the next project! I guess it is what makes the hobby interesting and gives us all something to talk about whilst we are gaming!

But I’m still going to get those Dragoons!!!

Prussian Artillery Ready For Battle

The New Prussian Artillery at drill in Little Bingham!

After all the excitement of the previous weeks Waterloo spectacular, my painting output has slowed down again. However, I have finished my Prussian Artillery Battery, so I wont be quite so out gunned in the next battle. I’ve changed my basing size for these. I’ve used 60mm by 90mm for each gun. It allowed me to get the full crew onto the bases and to be fair, it was a way of using up some spare 60mm x 45mm Renedra bases that I had – I just glued two of them together. To strengthen this arrangement, I glued them onto a piece of 40/000 thou plasticard. It means that the bases are a bit thicker than normal but they now look better along side the troops, who are normally in movement trays.

The other slight innovation for me was to use the Vallejo paste for the ground work. In the past, I have used this but then painted over it and then added sand for texture. With hindsight , this was totally unnecessary! The Vallejo paste has more than enough texture when it has dried, so all that was needed was to paint it – Chocolate Brown, then highlight and dry brush with Earth brown and then Iraqi sand added in to highlight further. It was actually very quick to do and will be my basing method of choice for the future.

Prussian artillery from above showing basing.

To finish off the bases, I added some green scatter and my usual assortment of grass tufts and flowers. The yellow flowers match the bases on the rest of my Prussians and add a bit of color to what is otherwise quite a dark paint scheme. Incidentally, I think that the pictures are a bit on the blue side! In real life, the figures look a bit darker to me. Oh! I haven’t mentioned that they are from the Perry Metal range. One last point about basing. I actually finished painting the figures and then fixed them to the bases. When I painted the ground work on the base, I also carried the colour up onto the guns & the figures to give the impression of mud.

‘utching up the guns according to Peter Harris….

So another project is complete, the next is on the work bench! I’ve decided that now there is less pressure on me to turn out battalions, I will alternate between painting units and painting special projects. I already have a painting plan in place but the first project is a little diorama of a field forge. It’s from Perry Miniatures, although the Artillery man & horse are out of my ‘spares’ box. Here is a rough layout of how it will look, I’ve started to paint the forge and the tree is already fixed in place with Vallejo desert sand paste.

Field forge work in progress.

Whilst I am painting this diorama, work still continues on the troops! My next (and final) battalion of Hanoverians are being prepared. These will be the Osterode Hanoverian Landwehr battalion, with green facings & shoulder tufts. Once these are done, I will have a representation of the full Hanoverian 4th Brigade which in turn, with the 10th British brigade ( already finished), will complete the 6th British Infantry Division!

Osterode Landwehr Battalion advance to the work bench….

Prussian Artillery 11 June 2015

Prussian Artillery – Work in Progress

With the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo fast approaching. I’m desperately trying to finish another unit for our ‘Grand Battle’ planned for this Saturday. It’s not going to happen though! I’ve fallen into the trap of trying to do too much and not actually finishing anything that I’ve started.

The ‘Grand Battle’ planned for this Saturday will be our annual tribute to Waterloo. We don’t actually re-fight the battle as such. It’s more a case of that we put as many troops as we can muster on a battlefield that has some similarities to Waterloo. After spending an hour or so admiring the scene and having a chin wag over a cup of tea, we then roll some dice and play a huge game of Black powder. It takes all day, and the result is largely immaterial, but it is great fun and the random results of the dice throwing usually causes some merriment and some good talking points. You can see last years battle report here http://arcanesceneryandmodels.co.uk/battle-report-waterloo-2014/

with the need to field more artillery, I thought that I would crack on with my next Prussian unit, a battery of three guns, 6pdrs to be precise, made by the Perry’s. The first task was to do some research as to what colours to paint the guns and the Uniforms of the crew. My usual quick source, the superb Mont St Jean web site gave me this picture to use.

I always use this website as a starting point. That and of course, and the Manufactures’ own painted examples. You can be fairly confident that they have done their research when producing the models and the pro painters will be following their own research. I also consult my collection of Osprey books and various other references that I have and then finish off with a trawl through the internet – google images is a good source! By the time I have done all of this, I have a picture in my mind as to how I want the figures to look. The are always discrepancies and contradictions in the material. For example, I have found pictures showing the short sword scabbard in both brown and black. And the blanket covers & straps in both dark grey and leather. At the end of my research, I just make a decision as to what I think will look the best for me, no doubt to the horror of some purists!

So onto painting! The guns were painted in Vallejo Prussian Blue, with the ironwork in black and the gun barrels in brass. The crew in Vallejo Dark Prussian blue jackets, Neutral Grey trousers, Black Grey gaiters, red turn backs & facings, Black collars, cuffs & boots, much as the picture above. The first gun and crew are now almost finished, the the other two not far behind but they are not going to be ready for Saturday!

Prussian Artillery – nearly complete!

Prussian Artillery Battery – still much to do!

I could possibly rush them, but in reality I know that I have at least three more ‘sessions’ to go before they are ready for the battlefield. Even the first gun will need a final highlight & tidy up, and then there’s the basing. Rather than cut corners, I’ll wait – they will be ready for next year! What really caused the problem was that I was diverted and panicked into trying to finish another project that has been sat around on the bench – Papelotte Farm! Talk about biting off more than you can chew! I started to paint this as well and again, it is nowhere near finished….

Papelotte Farm – Under construction!

It will end up on the table – even in this state it will be OK but it’s not quite what I had in mind. And just to show how I have engineered my own failure, whilst preparing the Prussians I decided that it would be a good idea to get this Field forge ready for painting…

Never mind, at least the Cavalry are now finished and ready for battle!

Prussian Cavalry ready for battle!

Prussian Landwehr Cavalry 28th May 2015

Prussian Landwehr Cavalry – Nearly finished!

It’s been a slow week or so for painting but at last, my Prussian Landwehr Cavalry unit is nearly ready to leave the work bench. As you can see, the command group is just about finished, with just the bases to highlight and detail. I’ll finish these off with a quick dry brush with an Iraqi Sand and Chocolate brown mix, and then a final highlight with pure Iraqi Sand. Once that is dry, I’ll add the Static grass ( I prefer the flowered field mix) and then my usual mix of grass tufts & flowers. I find that a bit of colour on the base will tend to lift the figures, particularly when they have a dark uniform. It will also unify the army if the basing is similar.

Prussian Landwehr Command Group

I’m quite pleased with the way that the horses have worked out – see my last blog post for details of the paint ‘recipes’ used. I’ll have a last look over the figures as I base them to decide whether to add any further highlights. It’s always difficult to know when a unit is really finished. There’s always a compromise between producing my best possible finish or moving on to the next unit. Do I spend another session adding a few more highlights to the uniforms and a bit more ink to add shadows to some of the equipment or do I just get them on the table?

Regardless of the above question, the final job will be to add the lances and pennants and the flag for the unit. I have these ready to go, you can just make out the first two Lances added to the figures in the background and it will be another evening session, to finish that job – so these boys are about two evenings away from the war games table…

Close up of the Trumpeter

Actually, there is one other job to do before they are ‘table ready’ and that is to make the movement trays. I could use a ready cut MDF tray but will probably make my own as I have a different style that I prefer to use rather than a normal tray. It’s a straight forward job and I think I’ll show how I do this in another blog post.

So my Prussian brigade now consists of 2 Battalions of Regular Infantry, 2 Battalions of Landwehr Infantry, a Command base and a Regiment of Landwehr Cavalry, all in Silesian colours, making a total of 110 men and 14 horses painted. Next up, some Artillery – now can I get them finished for the 13th June, the date of our next big battle…..

Painting Horses – Prussian Landwehr Cavalry

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!

Pikemen, Prussians and Pterodactyls

It’s been one of those weeks when life has got in the way of my hobby! So I haven’t been able to spend as much time as I would like to have done with my various painting projects. The result is that nothing is actually been finished although things have moved on. One of the benefits of having a dedicated hobby area means that if I have just a spare five minutes, I can do a little bit here and there – add some static grass to a base, undercoat a figure even slap some paint on!

Perry Pikemen

So the six Pike men for my Wars of The Roses army are very close to being finished, just a bit of extra detail needed for the bases – a few tufts & flowers! the plan is to have at least one unit of 12 pike men for my army, probably two, but as the next Lion Rampant Day is not until September there is no rush to complete the unit. I have a box of the plastic Perry Mercenaries and the plan is to make two blocks of Pikes, a small unit of mercenary Crossbow men and the remainder as hand gunners.

I also started on my Prussian Landwehr Cavalry. There will be 12 in the unit and they are all prepared & undercoated and I am painting the horse in batches of threes. Here the first batch nearly complete. The difficulty I have had with this unit has been trying to find details of the uniform. The figures are from foundry and whilst they are very nice, they seem to have different head gear to my Mont St Jean Reference:

CavLandwehrSilesie01

Just to add to my confusion the detail on the sheepskin saddle cloth is showing as a Yellow trim ( makes sense if they are Silesian) but other pictures and references give the colour as Red regardless. In fact the reference material for Landwehr Cavalry is thin and as usual contradictory. I think that I will have to overcome any ‘button counting’ tendencies and go for what I think looks best – in this case yellow trim to match the yellow facings! So here is the progress so far:

2015-04-16 09.34.30

As you can see, still plenty to do!

Pterodactyls

Finally, the Pterodactyls are nearly completed! This is all part of my project to get one of each of the DeeZee codes done. The pterodactyls are certainly straight forward to paint but detailing them is a challenge that is beyond my eyesight & patience these days! I just gave them a spray on top with dark green & a spray underneath with light green. Then a quick couple of dry brushes to try & bring out the detail, followed by a brown wash. They are mounted on a 25mm MDF base using thin wire. The final stage is to detail the bases and I may have a go at painting the eyes……They are only 15mm or so wingspan so no one is ever going to look that closely but as a group of 10 they look quite impressive and will add chacter to a model.

1 … 14 15 16 17 18 19

Category Archives: Whats on the work bench?