Getting your whites right and other chores

The now-famous Andrea white paint set.

June is always a hectic month at BfK HQ but this year seems more frenzied than ever. On top of the usual family birthdays this week, I’ve been cracking on with the updates to the Calpe website, proof-reading Peter F’s painting guide for the Saxon musketeers and grenadiers, writing some more of my Wargames Illustrated article and trying to complete my paint trials in readiness for getting stuck into the job of painting up the first battalion.

The white palette trials seem as good a place to start as any. As you know, I’ve been introduced to the Andrea white paint set and I’ve now completed my experiments. It’s a dangerous temptation to have a set of six pre-mixed shades in front of you on the workbench (see photo above). After all, six colours means six layers, right? Well, I was able to resist that extreme option but I did initially go for using four out of the six colours on the trousers of a test figure. It was fun at the time but after a couple of days reflection I reached the conclusion that there wasn’t sufficient difference between each shade.

So that meant the poor test figure had to suffer the ignomy of having his trousers scrubbed clean with hot water and an old toothbrush! The second experiment was a more conventional three layer job. The base coat was the second shade colour from the set (i.e. the darkest of the six – leftmost in the photo above); the first highlight was the base colour from the set (third from the left in the photo above) and the second highlight was the third highlight colour (i.e. straight white – rightmost in the photo above). I opted for two thin layers of each colour as opposed to a single thicker layer.

Successful white trousers!

The test figure has spent most of the rest of this week being dragged round the house by me and viewed under various different light sources. And the conclusion is that I’m satisfied with the outcome. In fact, I’m more than satisfied with the whole experiment. At last I think I have three shades that work as a palette for white and all three of them come from paints that don’t go chalky. Oh yeah – look right for a photo of the results.

Reviewing Peter F’s painting guide has got me thinking about the blue palette I had previously settled on for the Saxon officers’ surtouts. Before, I’d be visualizing a sky blue as the target to aim for but Peter’s notes describe the colour as a grey-blue, the figures he is painting at the moment are definitely a grey-blue rather than a sky one and (this is the clincher) Peter Bunde’s plates for the Saxon infantry regiments also indicate a particular shade of grey-blue. A pity really, because I was pretty damned proud of the pair of officer’s trousers that I’d painted the other week. Still, all is not lost: two of the colours from my intended palette will still serve well and I’ve identified a suitable candidate for the third colour. Once I’ve re-painted the trousers of the officer in question, I’ll post details here.

A slight digression follows.

Peter F. intends to sell relevant Peter Bunde Brigade plates alongside his painting guide. If you haven’t seen these plates before, then I urge you to investigate them. Peter B. is German and therefore has easier access than many to primary research materials in German museums, archives and collections. Naturally, the fact that German is his first language also makes it easy for him to correctly interpret these sources. The result is that the Brigade plates are a stunning uniformology resource that mainly (but not exclusively) covers German states of the Napoleonic period. Each A4 plate covers one particular unit in extensive detail.

For example, the plate about the Saxon Prinz Friedrich August infantry regiment is on my desk at the moment. It illustrates the the flags carried by the two battalions; uniforms for musketeers, NCOs, sappers, musicians and officers; shako details; rank distinctions; the shabraque for mounted officers; the aforementioned grey-blue surtout; examples of campaign uniform and other details like cartridge cases and forage caps. The plate comes with a page of notes translated into English with a full list of the sources used by Peter B.

Digression over.

The last area of work this week has been the Wargames Illustrated article. I have to confess to a little procrastination on this front but I’ve got thing back on track and I’ve completed almost half of the article now. Most of what’s left is planned out and there’s only one section that I’m not particularly looking forward to because it calls for some research that feels a bit too much like exam revision for my taste. Still, I could get the thing finished next week with a solid final push. Dan’ll be pleased to hear that if he’s reading this.

PS: who spotted photos of von Peter and ADC Simon in this week’s Foundry e-mail newsletter!?

Andrea Miniatures white paint set

Andrea Miniatures white paint set

I decided to take up Harry the Elder’s suggestion to try Andrea Miniatures for my white palette. Specifically he suggested their set of six white paints. Originally, I had hoped to be able to buy them at Partizan last weekend but nobody was selling them (at least as far as I could see). So I did a bit of online research and ordered a set from Historex Agents.

I have to commend the customer service from Historex – an e-mail acknowledgement of receipt of my order was followed by another e-mail yesterday afternoon to tell me that the order had been dispatched. And the package arrived at my work address (much more convenient than delivery to my home address) this morning. Needless to say I spent the rest of the working day sniffing the paint bottles and itching to get home to try them.

The set comes in a neat little box and comprises six (did I say that already?) little 17ml dropper bottles (similar to the Vallejo ones) of paint. There’s a base colour (which I’d call a pale umber if I was confident I knew what umber looked like), two shadow colours that move towards grey and three highlight colours, the lightest of which is pure white. Five of these six colours, as far as I can tell, are not available as part of the Andrea range of paints sold individually (the exception being the pure white).

Now six layers of colour is overkill on a 28mm figure, even for me! So I lined them up on the table and tried to narrow it down to four while I made a cup of tea. The second shadow and the third highlight (i.e. the white) were obvious bookend choices and I settled on the first shadow and the second highlight to go in between them. Then it was down to painting, albeit just a tiny area of a Saxon coat. So these are very much first impressions and I’ll be able to provide more accurate comments once I’ve used the paints more extensively.

Firstly, I often have to give a new bottle of Vallejo paint a stern shake to reintegrate the pigment with the carrier. With these Andrea paints, there was little or no evidence of separation but I did give them a quick shake just in case. The consistency (and smell and taste) is very similar to Vallejo acrylics. Having said that, some Vallejos go chalky once you get them out on the palette, dilute them to painting consistency and begin brushwork. This is a problem that I often experience with Vallejo white so I was keen to assess reports I’d heard of the smoothness of the Andrea white. And, yes, it’s very good. Moreover, all four shades that I tried demonstrated consistency of consistency, if you see what I mean. That sort of thing is important to me because it means I can confidently predict how the paint will thin down and behave when I work with it.

Coverage seems to be good, though I did over-thin a couple of the colours tonight so I’ll have to check that more thoroughly in a lengthier painting session at the weekend. Drying time feels about the same as the Vallejos and all four shades dried nice and matt (one of the things I dislike about the Foundry paints is that they dry with a sheen and feel plasticky – almost like working with Dulux Vinyl Silk rather than a matt acrylic).

Overall, then, a very promising initial outing and, fingers crossed, I appear to have solved my white palette problem. Given that I made successful adjustments to my light blue and green palettes earlier this week, it’s about to be all systems go for painting my first Saxon battalion. And I know one figure scupltor / painter who’ll be smiling at the fact that this Andrea white paint set has more than a hint of umber to it.

I’ll post some photos of applied paint in due course but, in the meantime, it’s worth noting that Andrea do several other six-paint sets for black, flesh, red and blue.

Palette experiments

Yellow, white and green palettes

I’m still trying to sort out the colour palettes that I’m going to use the paint my Calpe Saxon musketeers. The “problem” colours are yellow, white and green. Especially white. There’s an awful lot of white on those Saxons! And the yellow and the green are the facing colours of the regiments in the division I’m planning.

So what I decided to do was get out some black paper and daub a few layers of paint to see how they’d look as palettes. I chose black paper because I work from a black undercoat.

The palette that probably needed least thought was yellow. Previously, I’ve used a four-colour palette but I wanted to change to a darker basecoat for greater contrast on some of the larger areas of the figures (i.e. the lapels) and I was sure that would be Flat Earth (V983). I also knew I wanted to keep the two yellows that I previously used as the second and third highlights: Flat Yellow (V953) and Lemon Yellow (V952). What I needed to experiment with was what paint should be the first highlight. I took a look at two colours I knew well: Ochre Brown (V856) and Yellow Ochre (V913) but neither seemed quite right with the new darker basecoat. So I decided to try out Gold Brown (V877) and that’s what you can see here.

White has been giving me trouble for a long time now – ever since I decided that I needed a penultimaute highlight of a pale grey between Light Grey (V990) and White (V951) itself. I had hoped that the Foundry Arctic Grey (F33B) would be the solution and it is indeed just the right shade. The trouble is that the coverage doesn’t seem to be very good and the paint has a plasticky feel that I just don’t seem to get on with. So I’ve been trying out various alternatives without, it has to be said, much success. So this experiment was by way of being a final throw of the dice. I kept Neutral Grey (V992) basecoat, Light Grey (V990) first highlight and White (V951) third highlight. The experiment was to try Silver Grey (V883) as the second highlight. If this didn’t work out, I was on the verge of contemplating mixing up a bottle full of 50% Light Grey and 50% White.

The green situation was slightly different. For this, a three-colour palette was the plan and the basecoat of Black Green (V980) and first highlight of Flat Green (V968) were retained from my old green palette but I wanted to see the effect of dispensing with the second highlight of Intermediate Green (V891) and going straight to Light Green (V942) instead.

So what’s the conclusion? Well ,you can form your own views based on the picture above and nothing can be certain until paint is applied to actual 3D figures rather than 2D paper. But, for what it’s worth, here’s my take:

• Yellow: success! I think the Gold Brown is in to stay as a good intermediary between the Flat Earth and the yellows.
• White: promising. I was worried that the Silver Grey wouldn’t be different enough to the shades either side of it but that doesn’t appear to be the case. Still, I’ll remain cautious because I’ve had so many false dawns with my white palette over the years.
• Green: hard to tell. Sometimes I think it looks just right, other times I think the Light Green is too pastel-like. I think it’ll probably work if I use it sparingly on the very highest highlights.

The study continues

And blanket roll

Surtout/boot tops

Front view

Left to right shots showing progress with my study. I’ve posted the leftmost one before but it’s included again as a reference point. Centre one shows trivial work on the leather tops of the boots but is mainly about the light blue surtout. This is Prussian Blue (V965) basecoat, then Medium Blue (V963), Deep Sky Blue (V844) and finally a touch of Sky Blue (V961).

The rightmost shot is simply the addition of painting the grey blanket roll. Mostly metalwork and hands left to complete this first study.