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.

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.

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.

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.

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.