A game of musical figures

At some point in the next day or two I’m going to remove the link to The Assault Group and replace it with one to Alban Miniatures. Why? Well, rest assured, it’s not because I’ve had a tiff with the boys at TAG. Nope, rather it’s because TAG has just sold its Richard Ansell-sculpted range of Napoleonic 1809 Austrians and Saxons to Alban, so they won’t any longer have anything of relevance to BfK in their product range.

To be honest, this change ownership doesn’t come as much of a surprise to me. Progress on new releases for the range has been painfully slow and the fact that Ansell also scuplts Napoleonic figures for Alban makes this a natural move. I wish all concerned a fruitful future.

Perry French Imperial Guard horse artillery greens

Perry French line horse artillery greens

Meanwhile, one range that seems to keep growing faster than a weed in a compost heap is the Perry Napoleonic range. The latest additions are set to be French horse artillery of both the line and Imperial Guard varieties. I do have a soft-spot for artillery, especially if the crews offer a good range of poses and all those little extras like caissions are covered. I’ve included a couple of shots of the greens for your enjoyment.

Of course, I’ll be resisting this particular temptation because Calpe Saxon artillery is on my horizon.

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.

Up to the line

Front view

Rear view

Here’s an update on the study for Saxon paint schemes. Moving on from the head, I’ve been trying some greys and whites on the trousers and been applying the yellows for the piping on the surtout. There’s still some work to do on the rear of the trousers but I mostly wanted to talk about piping tonight.

Talking to others recently, I’ve come to realise that some people are scared of painting piping for one reason or another and I thought that if I shared my approach, it might do a little good. So my first piece of advice is to have a go (yep – and that means you, young Simon). If the figure sculptor has gone to the trouble to put it on a figure, it’s almost rude not to try to paint it! It doesn’t matter if it doesn’t come out well to start with – with practice and patience, you’ll only improve. So here are my top tips:

Don’t paint piping last, paint it first. If you leave it until the last thing, you’ll be worrying about doing neat lines that don’t spoil work you’ve already done. It’s actually much easier to paint up to a line than to paint the line itself. So, while you’re still at the black undecoat stage, paint in your piping. Don’t worry if it’s a bit wobbly or not fine enough at first – you can paint back with black to tidy up. That’s exactly what I did with the yellow turnbacks shown here.

Don’t go straight to the final colour. Most piping is in a light colour like red, yellow or white. To get that opaque enough on black in one layer will mean you have to use thick paint which is very difficult to work with and leaves an unsightly finish. If, on the other hand, you thin your paint to make it workable, it won’t be opaque enough in a single layer. So you know where I’m going here: take a layered approach like you would with any other part of the figure. The Flat Earth and Ochre Brown I used here provide both a good base for the yellows and provide the opportunity for a bit of shading to make the piping more interesting.

You’ll still need a steady hand. So, position yourself so that you can rest your painting hand against something solid like the edge of the table. Also, don’t hold your breath while you apply the paint – instead, breath out gently as you make each stroke. Try to paint is smooth steady strokes rather than jerky jabs.

Be careful what you drink. I never drink tea, coffee or cola before and during painting because the caffeine actually makes my hands shake slightly.

If you’ve got some piping tips of your own, feel free to post them as comments here. In the meantime, I expect I’ll move on to the light blue of the surtout next.

Brief bedtime note

My head swap / conversion of a Perry French plastic officer got me motivated to move on with the next stage of my experimental study for the Saxons. I’ve stated painting the little chap as a Saxon musketeer officer after finally making some colour decisions.

Most other armies of the period have plenty of blue, red and green in their uniforms but not many boast the opportunity for yellow (especially in combination with light blue). So I’ve decided to paint this study as an officer of one of the two 1813 Saxon infantry units that had yellow as their regimental colour – i.e. the Prinz Maximillian and von Rechten regiments. This means I’ll be doing a light blue surtout with yellow collar and cuffs plus yellow piping on the turnbacks.

But, as usual, I’ve started with the head. Now that I’ve had a chance to put paint to plastic, I’m convinced that the faces (and heads in general) on the Perry plastics are better than on their metals. This one’s got a nice expressive face with the mouth open as if shouting a command that lent itself to easy paintwork. Plus the bonus of an unsual covered shako that has what looks like a nasty sabre slash in it. The pom-pom is the exact same size as on the the Calpe Saxons and gave me a good chance to practice how I’m going to paint these correctly with the bottom half white and the top half in the regimental colour.

For the yellow I went for a Flat Earth (V983) basecoat followed by Ochre Brown (V856), then Flat Yellow (V953) and lastly Lemon Yellow (V952). A slight change from my previous yellow palette to give me greater contrast from basecoat to final highlight. White is a colour where I’m hoping to find a new, less harsh palette. This time I’m experimenting with a Light Grey (V990) basecoat and working through Sky Grey (V989) and White Grey (V993) to White (V951). It seems to have worked well but that’s possibly a bit presumptive when we’re talking about a total area the size of half a pom-pom! The real test of this palette will come when I get to the trousers.

Anyway, head, cuffs and collars all done – next stop the piping on the turnbacks with some painting technique observations for Von Peter Jnr. And I’ll try to take a half-decent photo or two to illustrate what I’m doing in this study.