Signs of Life

 

The Prussians are back on the Painting Desk!

Well, to call 2013 a weird year is pretty big understatement.  This blog started off well, but soon fell off the tracks (for various reasons), and we completely missed any opportunity to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the 1813 campaign with our blog posts, painted miniatures, terrain, or any games.  Sad, but not a huge deal since we do wish to continue gaming for the foreseeable future, not just the Fall of last year.

This was a long term project from the get go, but we're certainly hoping to pick up the pace here a bit in 2014.  :-)  No promises of daily updates, but certainly hope to have at least a trickle of posts coming month to month.  For now Prussians are back on my painting desk, and although we all have other projects in the fire as well, there should be some new painted toys coming to welcomes you all back with.

Andrea Color

One investment I made last August for this project was to collect a number of the Andrea Color sets.  They all sit on the top row of my paint racks, still waiting for me to properly give them whirl on my Napoleonics.  Many of you out there in the gaming blogosphere have highly recommended these so I'm pretty excited to potentially revolutionize my paint collection.

First thing is to finish up my Prussian fusilier battalion including convert up the chap above (Belgian mounted infantry officer from Perry Miniatures #DB3) to be my mounted Battalion Commander.  After they're done I'd like to knock out a few interesting and unique projects to really help kick start my inspirational juices before I dive back into some more Line Infantry.  So watch this space. :-)

Immer Vorwärts!
Jason
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The Long March of the Frenchman- Line Infantry 2

Did we even get spring?

After a three month march we're a bit closer to the battlefield.  With my new job (big smile) I have slowed down a bit on the hobby time but this is ok - everything comes in stride. So now I present a couple hobby updates for the first of my french soldiers:  2nd Battalion,13th Line Regiment.

I found out early that my normal army painting style was not going to work. I had to line them up exactly the way they would be on their bases as order and organization were key to figuring out the colours.

Colours of the French line soldier:

As with all historical miniatures, there comes a bit of research. A big thanks once again to Jason for helping me pour over the internet and loaning some of his "Library of War" to find examples and documentation. :)

Normally I'm a big Vallejo man but I've recently started to using the colour range Games Workshop has to offer. I started with Kantor Blue base paint and added black to get the base coat going. Then I built up the layers with the Kantor Blue and lastly did some minor edge highlighting with the addition of GW Space Wolves grey.

The white pants and straps were simple.  I started with Vallejo Deck Tan and built up with white. Easy to do although lengthy because of quantity.

Shakos and Boots. For producing black I varied the models with different amounts of GW The Fang and/or shadow Grey added to black. I would sometimes do a final highlight with just Shadow Grey.

The Guns were simple with Vallejo Air steel. I found out painting with air brush paints are also really nice just to paint with a brush- especially the metal paints. For the browns- Vallejo flat earth highlighted with Vallejo Desert Yellow. I did one Badab Black Ink wash.

With the brown and yellow pants/shakos I played with a variety of colours including  Vallejo Flat Earth, Leather brown and Burnt Umber.  Most of them I added Vallejo Yellow Ochre or GW Ushabti Bone to build up the highlights. I usually did one wash which was either Gryphonne Sepia or Delvan Mud.

Lastly I should mention that when it came to the Blacks, Browns and Greys (Coats) I did not keep a standard with the colours as I wanted to give the appearance that every man is trying to take care of his business as best he can.

I ordered my flags from GMB Designs and I was very pleased with the turn around time and result. 

Lets get on to the bases! I used SuperT glue and it worked great for both Plastic and metal figures.

Now we need to to fill in the bases to make them natural with the little round raised areas of the miniatures. For this I used Apoxy Scuplt like Jason did here. My Apoxy Sculpt is black in colour.  

After the AS has dried it was time to add effects and the ballast. I decided to wait on adding fallen branches, rocks and/or enemy effects for the first go. I just kept the ground simple.  White Elmers (PVA) Glue works the best for ballast.

Last update for this post is the first layer of paint. The base I decided to use was flat black interior house paint. Since this has to be brushed on the house paint works really well for locking the ballast down and acts as a great primer for the next colours.

Ok, the next post should be the finished Battalion and so it should be up a lot sooner then 3 months. :)

Later,

E
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Basing Ballast & Paint

Our basing colour line up.

We have covered the Litko bases and so I thought I'd talk a bit about texture and paint. Jason and I have been kind of doing the same bases for years for our GW armies. As we've kind of been mimicking each others styles it was very easy for us to come up with a solution to match our preferences.

We start with the ballast. Some people have given me "great" ideas on how to save money with large quantities of cheap stuff. The only thing I found cheap was the quality of the end product. I stick to what I know is best- Woodland Scenics Ballast.

Basically our mix is one part Medium and one part Fine. Applied with white PVA (school) glue and left to dry. It's simple and always comes out right. This gives enough texture for good drybrushing.

Normally the next step would be primer but as we have to attach our little soldiers on the bases before the ballast we have to use the brush. Again, the Vallejo colours we chose are based off our old styles combined. We start with a German Cam. Black Brown. This one was discussed the most as we thought about mixing a warmer brown (like Burnt Umber shown above) with it or just dry brushing the warmer brown as the next step. Either way German Cam. Black Brown is our base.

A little trick I picked up is that for large projects you can go to a hardware store and they'll match a paint sample into interior house paint. This is good for game boards, terrain AND laying down the first layer when a brush has to be used. It's thick water based paint and it's perfect for sealing in the ballast.

The next layer is English Uniform. This is a thickly dry brushed on as it acts like a second base. Next is the Red Leather. This is applied lightly in patches as it will help the cool paints for the uniforms and really ties in the earthy feel for dirt. The next colour is the either Olive Green or Yellow Green. This is also applied lightly in patches and not always the same ones as the red. This will help the warmer colours of the uniforms. The last dry brush is Stone grey. This is applied very lightly as it's not too far from white. This helps give the texture a little strength at the end.

Basing drybrush steps.

Of course not every one of our bases will be the same with the amount of grass, flowers, shrub and other scenic gestures applied.

Time for a static grass mixture...   :)
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Prussian Fusiliers - WIP +1

Just a quick down and dirty WIP post.  Eric and I have been discussing our basing color scheme etc. this week.  Although the entire battalion isn't finished yet, I decided to try things out tonight between loads of laundry.  Unfortunately against my better judgement I also decided to spray the stand with Dullcote and it came out shiny.  Eric will get more into basing stuff and things in the near future, but this at least gives us all a bit of a sneak peek at how things will look.  :o)

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Prussian Fusiliers - WIP

Digital pictures...  Friend or Foe?  :-/

Well, I figured it was about time to give this blog a little eye candy.  :o)  These are my very first ever painted 28mm Napoleonics.  Their names are Fritz, Jurgen, Karl, and... Just kidding (about the names anyway)  ;-)

These guys are basically my first stand of figs completed for the Fusilier Battalion of my Prussian Leib Infantry Regiment including a NCO.  The models are from Perry Miniatures which I will be using to fill out the bulk of my Prussian army.  As these were my "prototype" models as well as my introduction to "real scale" 28mm miniatures, there was a bit of tweaking and tinkering that hopefully is out of the way so that the painting process picks up the pace a bit.  Painting all the gear is what really took the longest, plus the fact that 99% of the reference pics out there only show the front didn't help either.

I always prime in black regardless, and I usually paint using a hybrid black lining technique as I like my minis clean and well defined.  The black primer certainly helps with this, and I always find a number of white specks peeking out when I prime with white which makes it much more troublesome for me anyway.  Coverage usually isn't a problem, but I do have the old GW Foundation Paints sitting around to mix in with a red, yellow, or white base coat if needed.

I'm trying to force myself to become more dependent on using the Army Painter washes to speed things up and then come back and hit the highlights.  Highlights are a little trickier than the "Heroic" scale minis that I've painted in the past.  You want to give the figs a little "pop" so they don't look flat on the table top, but there's not a lot of room for layers on these minis, and then there are all those other "battalions" of figs staring at you from the workbench waiting to be done.  Regardless, I need to remind myself that the visual effect of the unit as a whole is paramount, not necessarily the individual minis.

These figs haven't been Dullcoted yet either, so I need to see how badly that makes my highlights/shading disappear.  I'm used to coming back and touching up metals, but maybe the final highlight layer or two might have to wait until after the spray.

The main paints I used are pictured above.  Many of the others are old out of production GW paints that I still have around.  No reason to move on until they're used up I guess.  If you have any questions on the paints I used feel free to ask in the comments below.  Although I'm sure I will continue to tweak things as I go along.

The next step is to hammer out the basing colors (and static grass mix) for the project.  These will be the same that we will use for building our terrain boards.  Look for that post in the near future as well as one explaining our planned Order of Battle(s) that we will be using to base each of our forces on.  Although still "under construction," you can get a sneak peek of our OOBs by checking out the page tabs just under the blog title.

Anyway, let me know what you think of this first batch.  :-)
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