My ongoing Napoleonics Project, part 1

The figures depicted in the game were at least 28mm scale, but I did not go for that because 28mm is expensive, and I already have perhaps two thousand French infantry in 1/72 scale, so I went with those.

I decided on the old Airfix figures, because they don't get a lot of love on the internet. The HaT figures get more, and so do the Esci/Italeri ones. I went for that reason with Airfix. Then I went with the loading guy pose, because he doesn't get a lot of love either, though he gets more than the dead guy figure and the figure of the soldier carrying off his wounded comrade.  The shooting, marching, and attacking figures, or figures of soldiers cocking their muskets get more love.

I started with four figures, using what has been called the "speed painting method" but there is NOTHING speedy about this method, unless you are painting American Civil War figures or those of the World Wars... except for troops wearing camo smocks such as British or German airborne troops, or Waffen SS though, but plain, drab armies can be done fairly quickly and with more detail than simply blocking colors in.

Here is how it goes.

First, you would need to prime or paint the figures black.

The next step is hardest, drybrushing jolly hell out of the figures in white, until only creases in clothing, and shadows are left black. The paint has to be the right consistency, and sometimes you'll have to go over the figures two or three times until the highlighted areas are white, and not grey. 

Very hard on brushes.

Then black again for shakos and leggings... and red for collars and cuffs

The next step would be staining the paint. This time around I did not really stain the blue coats, but painted them in, with cheap craft store blue paint that only cost me a US dollar a bottle. I thought the blue was very attractive on these and looked so right on them.

The knapsacks were done in Games Workshop chestnut ink, I do not think it comes in that color anymore, but I like it because it looks like the color of calfskin on the examples I had seen, Grey paint for the blanket rolls. Brown for musket stocks.  Reikland flash shade, a current color in GWs inventory, for faces and hands.

Metal colors go in last, as abote. Boltgun metal or by the current name Leadbelcher, again, GW colors.  And then gold, but using Vallejo paint, for buttons, the scale coverings on shako straps, the horrid on the eyes shako plates that are so hard to get painted correctly.

Here is a closeup of two gentlemen in the middle of their "training"

As you can see, the drybrushing really made all the details stick out, sometimes a little too much so, the black creases in the trousers could have been softened a bit.  White piping on the cuffs, the piping on the collars was painted over blue.

And here they are finished except for pom poms, I wasn't sure which color to paint them, which company they would be in.

And then mounted on a base, four figures to a base, four figures to a company.

work on the bases comes last because for some reason I always consider that step a drag

The first step of the project was done.

The next step was to paint the remaining three companies at once.  I'll cover that in the next episode.

Au revoir!