Tuesday 4 December 2012

AWI highlanders (5)

I tried waiting for the sun to come out to take some decent pics of the finished figures (or try to) but it wasn't happening so here are some artificially lit photos.  Anyway, here are the 5 highlanders with everything finished.  I find that when I do the basing I usually find some paint that's rubbed off and needs touching off - with these figures I suspect it will be the highlighting on the feathers.

The black leatherwork, cartridge case and feathers were highlighted very discretely with Foundry "Charcoal Black 34B and C".  Buttons and other pewter/silverwork/buttons were painted with Foundry "Gun Metal 104C".  Finally, various bits were touched up and some blacklining redone.  I said that I'd mention the grey haversacks.  I've never really found a satisfactory palette for this item of kit.  Troiani paints it in a variety of browns and beiges, Mollo has almost pure white and Embleton in his Ospreys has a sort of dirty grey colour.  I've not managed to nail "natural canvas" but when I first started painting AWI British infantry I went for the Embleton dirty grey.  Following Embleton paintings does carry some risk - I find he dulls his colours quite a lot, especially in his later Ospreys, and his lighting can be a bit iffy so God knows what colour his grey haversacks are supposed to represent.  The colours I've used here are Foundry "Stone 57B and C", and then a further highlight of C mixed with white.  In this photo the colour does look quite light, so maybe it's ok.  I'm actually experimenting with different haversack recipes at the moment with my Bunker Hill rebs.

Now I just need to think about how I'm going to base the 71st figures.  Once I've done a bit of reading and studying I might post my thoughts on the smaller scale actions that the 71st fought in.  On the painting table at the moment are the remaining 8 figures of the ACW Bunker Hill packs I bought at Salute and some Eureka French civilian types.  Once those are out of the way I need to paint more AWI highlanders and some French 1815 artillery that have been in the queue for ages.  This week I'm hoping to post about the remaining First Carlist War units I've painted over the past couple of months.  I have some catching up to do with posts, which is good as work is going to be bad and it's Hugo's third birthday in mid-December (so he's old enough how to have multiple weekend parties with different groups of people....).

3 comments:

Silver Whistle said...

Superb painting on these Giles. I take it that when you paint the rest of these it will be a mixture of trews and overalls?
Giles, for your info, I live just 10 miles down the road from you at Ongar.
Cheers,
Pat.

David said...

Fine work, Giles!

Anonymous said...

Fantastic work. I stumbled upon this while researching a post. I painted a great deal while younger (mostly Warhammer 40k). Great to see some of those fantastic work like this applied to a historical context.