This is the painting hussars part three and its just to bring you up to date with the finished models. When we left them the model was completely base coated, and block coated and I had mounted the figure on his horse, which I had previously painted.
We will go over painting horses at some future date, as it is still a mystery to me though I am improving.
So we have a nicely finished block painted Hussar ready to go on his horse and the first thing we need to do is use some quickshade on him. I used the dark tone, which is the black quick shade, and I don’t dip the figure as the instructions say instead I paint it. Painting the dip over the figure allows me a certain amount of control, and it means that you make sure that everything get covered nicely and don’t end up flicking quickshade down my garden, as the instructions suggest. It does make me feel in control; like I am painting it rather than just dipping it in a tin and forgetting it.
Once the figure has been painted with dip and let to dry I check it. Though I do look to check the quickshade is going in the right place, the one thing is that you don’t really know until its dry, where it will go. So you have to let it settle and go in all the creases.
Once they were dry (I let the it dry at least overnight and there is an argument to let it dry longer), and then it is time to matt the figure down. The initial appearance after quickshade is “oh no I have ruined my model”, you haven’t! Carry on with the process and the next stage of the process is to use the army painter matt spray to matt the figure again. Matt varnish can be very temperamental so do make sure to shake it very very well; a good five minutes or so. I have never had a problem over shaking, but I have ruined by under shaking, and then do a quick test spray on a piece of card. This is because if you are like me and have a number of spray cans on your shelf then its so easy to pick up the wrong can, and I have heard of so many people who have sprayed their beautiful models silver…
I spray from around 20cm away in pulses, not a blast, I’d rather go back and respray rather than have it fog and mist.
The one other thing I will do is take the matt white and go back over any white that had been too dirtied down such as the fur on pelise and tuft on front of the bearskins. Also on the sword paint the edges in a nice bright silver, which gives the sword a nice shiny edge.
He is then mounted on his horse, and based.
The basing technique I use is to first of all paint base in chocolate brown or Vallejo black brown, then cover in PVA and use Arcane Scenery Forest Scatter. This gives you earth colour to start with. Then I use Army Painter tufts, and I have a thing for the meadow tufts, and on some of the bases I have used some Highland ones too. And finally some static grass, and for this I used Expo
flowered field which is a nice bright green. The basing doesn’t take too long and gives a nice effect.
On a couple of the figures I decided to go back and paint the eyes. One of the beauties of quickshade is that it can bring our the features of the faces, unfortunately sometimes this makes them look rather zombie like, so I went back and painted the eyes. Which even at this scale is an art in itself, and you may notice on if my men has rather staring eyes…
They were taken to the table last week in Sharp practice, where they managed to flank very nicely. Unfortunately a French counter charge left them under the charge of the cannon that they were attempting to charge. So not the most glorious start to their career but I hope it will improve!
