Down to work

Saxon officer work-in-progress.

The trials and tribulations of my various palette experiments are complete so there are no remaining excuses for not starting on the job to paint up my first Calpe Saxon battalion. I’m beginning with the 1st battalion of the Prinz Friedrich August regiment – that means green facings and yellow metal buttons.

I’m going to ease into things by working on just a couple of figures at a time to begin with and then scale up to doing a company at a time (i.e. eight figures). I’ve aleady posted a photo of the white trousers on one musketeer, so I thought I’d show you something a little more colourful this time. The second figure I’m working on is an officer. There are several interesting uniform features of note with this chap.

Firstly, the colour of the metal buttons (white or yellow) was used as a distinction between the Prinz Friedrich August regiment and the other regiment with green facings (the Prinz Clemens regiment). But buttons weren’t the only metal parts of the uniform that followed this convention. The officers’ epaulettes and the tulip-shaped plume holder on the shako were also in the regimental button colour. Note that the chinscales on the shako were always brass, regardless of regiment. Yellow metalwork on the figure pictured is painted with Vallejo Flat Earth, Brass and Gold.

Secondly, the shako cover. The Saxons had their own distinctive shako covers (more about these another time) but when supplies were short (as they often were on 1813) the Saxons used French ones. These were the linen-coloured ones with the earflaps that could be tied up. The officer I’m painting at the moment has this latter style and though the upward fold of the earflaps is hidden behind the chinscales, Peter F. has sculpted the ties behind the plume holder. I’ve painted the shako cover using a palette of Vallejos: Flat Earth, Ochre Brown, Yellow Ochre, Buff and Ivory.

Thirdly, the coat. Officers had the choice between wearing the distinctively Saxon blue-grey surtout of the normal white uniform jacket with lapels, cuff and collar in the regimental facing colour. The surtout was more practical but also made officers easier for the enemy to spot. The officer I’m painting is in the white jacket. For the green facings I’ve used Vallejo Black Green, Deep Green (I love this colour) and Intermediate Green.

Lastly, the trousers. There are plenty of options here. Sometimes officers wore white breeches but they also worn overalls in grey or the same grey-blue as the surtout. These overalls often had a stripe down the outside in the regimental facing colour. The figure I’m painting has the stripe sculpted on which makes it nice and easy to paint. I opted for colourful blue-grey overalls using Vallejo Prussian Blue and Blue Grey with a final highlight of Sky Blue. The picture here makes the effect look a much brighter blue than it is in real life.

There’s not too much left to do to complete this figure: hands, sword and some work on the turnbacks (with their fiddly buttons and piping).

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!?

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.