Well here they are, the first 32 man unit of French line infantry ready for Lasalle. Took me a bit of experimentation before I settled on a painting style I am happy with. They look OK to me and I even managed a little shading.
It takes some getting used to the smaller scale but I think I've got it sussed. Basically, at this scale, colours have to be slightly brighter than I would do in 28mm. To contrast between light and dark I only use 2 colours.
I have always used the foundry paint system but the 3 colours aren't really suitable for 18mm. So I use a base colour and a highlight, but they may be brighter than I would use for 28mm. The blue jackets for instance are French Blue highlight for the base colour and Bavarian Cornflower blue mid colour for the highlight. This formulae seems to work quite well. flesh areas are shade and highlight, with no mid shade.
Took me a while to get there but now I have.
Next I just need to distinguish between Conscript, Veteran and standard infantry units. I'm edging towards the following scheme
Veteran - Different colour trousers, some greatcoats
Standard - different coloured trousers
Conscript - all white trousers
So I suppose I've just painted some conscripts.
Back to the paint table.
They look great, I'm not useing lighter colors for my AB, I use a prety dark blue, infact so dark you can bearly see the black I use to shade the figures.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, did you try this techniqe
http://davout.blogspot.com/
It looks realy good with AB figs.
Here's a closer look at his style
http://davout.blogspot.com/2009/04/my-painting-style.html
I use the same techniqe, but not as refined as I'm a "conscript" with it