First unit complete, the 88th foot

The 24 figures are all Perry, the flags are Victrix. In the end it took me 2 weeks but that's only because life got in the way. As I've said, its around 85% of the result for 50% of the effort.

The approach is very simple.

1) Undercoat in black
2) Block out all major colours, Medium or dark flesh, Vermilion for the red, white trousers, belts etc, black, grey and brown. All just basically blocked out.
3) Army Painter, strong tone brushed on, then left for at least 12 hours
4) Matt Varnish, I use Windsor and Newton Acrylic varnish
5) highlights, Vermilion for the red, White, brow, dark grey ( for the blacks ) etc
6) Another layer of Matt varnish
7) Brass and then Gun metal

And then onto the bases....

1) PVA glue dipped in Games Workshop basing sand, left to dry rock hard
2) Dry brush in Buff, then again lightly with Ivory
3) PVA areas for static grass, apply
4) PVA areas for stones, apply
5) PVA for tufts, add tufts....

And that is basically it........

I think I can comfortably do 2 battalions in 3 week fully based, so I expect my basic British force to be ready before Christmas... If I don't get side tracked.

Here comes the 88th........

The first boxes of Perry British arrived on Friday, got home at 3.30pm, made up 6 figures, undercoated, started painting 4.30pm.

Blocked out colours and some initial highlights by 6.00pm, applied Army Painter and left overnight. 1 1/2 hours spent on highlights ( yes I still do highlights ) and bobs your uncle. I would say 85% of the results for 50% of the time, that is compared to the figures in my earlier posts. So including basing, I think that's 3 battalions a month !

Some people don't like the brownish look, I used strong tone, but I think it gives the figures that used on campaign look.

So these 3 pictured are the first contingent of the 88th, I will finish them off then do the 45th ( basically the battalions I have Victrix flags for ).....

Now off to play golf while the Army Painter on the 2nd batch dries......

Will i get all 24 figures painted by Thursday ?

The new plan....

After some deliberation, I'm off back to do 1811 in 28mm.

First up will be the British, 5 Battalions based for Lasalle with some skirmish stands, commanders and artillery. Figures will be Perry mainly with some Victrix thrown in.... battalions will be either 24 or 16 figures on either 4 x 45mm bases or 4 x 30mm bases. Base width for playing Lasalle will remain at 40mm though as I can't fit in a table bigger than 6ft x 4ft.

Target completion date is the end of November. Very doable with my new painting technique using Army painter.

I will be painting 2 battalions from the 3rd Division, 2 from the 5th division then 1 from the light division. Just because I want to......

When I come to do the French, I may take a little artistic licence and use Perry Plastic French, not sure yet......

Some more Army Painter

This time a couple of Victrix French, teh one on the white bottle top was done with Army Painter, teh one on the yellow bottle top was done with washes....

These aren't painted quite as good as I would normally do, especially the faces which could be better.

Again, especially considering the time saving the Army Painter + Highlight works very well.

Experiments with Army Painter

I thought I would try a couple of figures with 2 improved painting techniques. Usually I have painted 28mm figures using the Dalimore technique with some success, but it takes me a long time. It takes me around 3 weeks per 24 figure battalion. I want to speed it up a little.

So I thought I would compare 2 different techniques, 1 using base coat + Washes + highlight, and the other base coat Army Painter Quick Shade strong tone + highlight.

Left - is a figure done with, base coats then washes, Pale Grey on the pants, brown on the jacket etc... Saves around 20% on the 3 layer technique...

Right - Base coats then Army Painter followed by some highlights. Saving around 40% on 3 layer painting.

I kind of like the Army Painter technique, looks quite natural. It took a few abortive efforts to get right but it needs to be brushed on and excess brushed off. I may put a couple of deeper shades in the folds in the jacket but the compromise I think is worth it.....

Incidentally the figures are offensive miniatures.

Bye Bye 15mm...

Well after painting a fair few ABs, I just don't enjoy them. Daft, but its dawned on me I enjoy the modelling side.

So, back to 28mm. But I need to improve my painting speed to avoid me becoming disheartened.

My first AB French for 15 years....

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.

Its been a while.....

Well, this is the first post of the year.

I have been busy but not in the way I would have liked. Just after Christmas I bought a guitar, another one of those things to do before you die things.... but most of my time has been spent around the house, we're having some work done and so I have been; boarding the loft, flattening the garden, building a shed and finally emptying the garage into the shed.

This was OK at first, my ABs didn't arrive until mid January. The size was a bit of a shock after a year of 28mm. Anyway back to it......

Figures for sale on ebay

The ebay pictures don't do them justice.

French pre 1812 reforms - Foundry Unit 1http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=290385271363

French pre 1812 reforms - Foundry Unit 2
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=290385271144&ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT

Front Rank French Light Infantry

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=290385270787&ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT

These are my last 3 to sell...

The its AB miniatures all the way

Cheers

Simon

New rulesets and a change of scale....

There has been a spate of rulesets release recently and I particularly like Lasalle and Black Powder. But here lies the problem, I don't have enough space to play either. My maximum table size is 6ft x 4ft and this is going to be too small for 28mm games ( I don't want to play skirmish ). On top of that I am running out of storage space !

So I have decided that I will go down a scale to 18mm. I've painted a few to test and I can paint them pretty well and paint a 32 figure unit 1/2 the time that I can paint a 24 man 28mm one.

So AB or CGM it will be probably AB.

So the whole French collection are on Ebay. With the Brits going on this afternoon.

Size Comparison

I thought this may be useful, lots of people seem to ask for size comparisons on TMP. So here we are. LEFT to Right - Victrix, Foundry, Offensive, Front Rank.

The pictures don't do the Offensive figure justice.

Front Rank French 8lb Guns & crew

I got some more Front Rank, this time some French guns. the guns are excellent. I painted them using the Foundry French artillery paints ( apart from the barrel ) and they were very easy to paint using the 3 layer method.

The figures came as a pack of 2 guns, but the crew are a mixture of loading and firing.

Front Rank French light Infantry

I decided to paint some Front Rank figures to get a good comparison. They are very well cast, crisp and clean with plenty of detail.

I have a couple of minor complaints on the figures. Firstly they shako plate is a little less detailed than most and looks a little blob like. Secondly I would like a little more variation in each pose. The variation in pose is just personal preference though. Minor quibbles.

I used the standard foundry 3 layer paint system although I have started doing it a little difference with large colour areas. I miss the shade, paint the mid colour then the highlight and then go back and shade at the end. It just seems to speed things up a bit.

My reservations about pose weren't as much of a problem as I thought, though I think they look quite good.

Another thing about Front Rank ( which I was aware of ) is that they are big. you can't mix them with foundry it just looks wrong in the same unit. That said they are fine next to each other in separate units.

No posts for a while...but I'm back..

Well after setting up the blog its all been a bit bare. I firstly had jury service then just as I got back got bloody swine flu. Great.

Anyhow, I have been painting and now have some updates.

Foundry French

The mainstay of my French army is made up from Foundry French. I tend to wait until the 20% off sales to stock up. I like the subtle variation in the campaign uniform figures and I mix in some greatcoat figures as well to give them that campaign look.

I still need to texture the bases.

Offensive Miniatures French...

My French army is under way, my first battalion is a line battalion from Offensive miniatures. I bought a battalion pack of 36 figures. There are 3 variants for the march attack fusiliers. The figures are a pretty good match for Foundry, the officer even has a largish head....

I like these figures, the detail is very crisp and they are easy to paint. Later I will post some comparison shots.

Rules, Rules and more rules

One of the decisions I've always been stuck by is which rules to use. I must have played them all nearly. What I always liek in rules -

1) No figure removal
2) Masse look, I just don't think troops based in single file look right in 28mm
3) Flexible basing
4) Simple system that can play ok with 5 -6 units a side or 20 untis a side
5) I like battlions, with lines columns and squares but soemtimes I may like to play the odd brigade game.

Well recently it seems to be boom times for Napoleonic rules, with the publication of Napoleon, Blackpowder and soon Lassalle ( which I am really looking forward to ) and Republic to Empire.

The British Army so far...

So far I have 3 British Battalion representing a brigade in the 3rd Division 1811. All Victrix apart from Picton himself who is from Front Rank. Victrix figures give a very good on mass feel.

Each battalion is 24 figures ( or 23 if they have a mounted officer ) on 4 bases of 3x2 measuring 50mm frontage x 40 mm depth. I tried giving each figure 20x20 but it looked too spaced out. I then tried 45mm x 40mm but some figures struggled for space so this seemed to be the perfect compromise.

They are all painted using Foundry paints. The flags are from flags for the lads.

The Collection begins

After seeing the adverts for the victrix figures I decided to dabble and ordered a few boxes. I decided that I would construct 16 figure battalions. This has now expanded to 24 figures as I like the mass look. It takes me around 2 weeks to paint the 24 figures.

So this picture is of the first 16 figures painted using the 3 layer method and is intended to represent the 88th. I'm pretty impressed and I have settled nicely into using the 3 layer system. The only colour I struggle with is red. i use the foundry paint system and I am happy with all the colours apart from the fact the red doesn't cover very well.

2009 A new beginning

So after many years of not painting (apart form the odd commission) and an even bigger gap between playing I started again.

January 2009 I received a large order of French and British peninsula figures. I began to paint. I started a plan, I would build a French and British armies for 1811 in 28mm.

The armies would be built for General De Brigade. My first attempt in 5 years of painting. A french battalion. I was quite pleased. However, I didn't really like the Elite figures, the French were OK but the British I really didn't like. So I sold them and started again.