Wednesday 8 July 2009

March of the Austrians (3)

Its been a month exactly since my last post; the blame for this can be fairly and squarely placed on the fine weather we have been having recently. It seems wrong to sit inside hunched over the painting desk when the sun is shining and there are barbecues to go to, so progress on the Austrians stalled slightly. Then the rain came back, I got back to work and have made lots of progress, in fact I have finished painting the little blighters! So.......

Step 7: Now all the white is done I can do all the fiddly bits. First up are the cuffs, collars and turnbacks. Turn backs are easy, cuffs are ok but those collars can be quite tricky. The trick as with all steps is to find the right angle of approach so you hit the area you want. These have been done in the regimental colours for Reuss-Greitz's regiment no 55 and Czatoryski's no 9 as below:


Step 8: Next up is the musket which I do with Mahogany Sand/Brown 846 and GW Mithril Silver.


Step 9: Then its the back pack with Flat Earth 983 and Neutral Grey 992 for the rolled up great coat which is just done by dotting the raised areas.


Step 10: The brass plate on the helmet is done with Gold 996. These details which can be quite tricky are made so much easier to paint thanks to the excellent way these guys are sculpted allowing you to just run your brush along the detail to pick it out.
Step 11: The crests on the helmet are done with Flat Yellow 953, followed by black to give a nice neat stripe. This is the final step for the basic infantry and for me makes them look really smart.

Step 12: Next up I do all the last little fiddly bits like the drums, Officer's mounts, blood and hair colours on the casualty figures which makes a nice change from the production line approach.
The horses are the only stage at which I do more than one layer. I've used GW Devlan Mud wash which seems to work well.
Well that's, that. Quite a hefty amount of painting and from now on I think I will only take on single regiments rather than brigades at a time. However now these are done I have all the regulars I need for a division, so I can enjoy doing more interesting bits and pieces like cavalry, artillery, skirmishers and commanders. As ever if you have any questions feel free to ask.
Happy painting,
T.

6 comments:

  1. Absolutely FANTASTIC painting sir. I am blown away at the simple but extremely effective style that you have painted these in.

    Keep up the great work! I'll be looking for your posts in my RSS feed, as I have just begun some Austrians myself. For the SYW of course.

    Dugal (www.syw6mm.com/minirev

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  2. Well done mate. They look fantastic. Do you find it takes a lot more concentration and "sight" to paint away from the edges in areas versus painting the entire block section like I do? Always curious about this. I tried your style a while ago and found I needed to get closer to the fig to see how close to the edge the brush was. My style is more painting from inside to out and overlapping where needed to get the speed up.

    Can't wait to see the white masses in action!

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  3. This is great blog - nice one.

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  4. Looking great:-) that army will look HUGE

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  5. Thanks for all the encouraging comments guys.

    David, you do have be accurate with your brush strokes and I imagine it does take a bit longer than bloke painting but I'm kind of treating these guys as if they were 15mm and want to exagerate all the detail on the sculpts. However I find that after a few strips you can get the speed up especially if you take an assembly line approach and do the same brush stroke over and over again.

    Will be doing French Skirmishers and Foot Artillery next.

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  6. Really nice :)

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