Monday 25 August 2008

Civilians (8)




This is the Perry pack of civilians, which I bought from Dave Thomas at the Woolwich show a couple of week ago. With "one-off" packs like these, I find it very tempting to follow the colours used by the painters on the Perry Miniatures website, and I did so for the chap carrying the barrel, althugh I don't think I managed to highlight the black suit as subtley as Maestro Woodward did. I have seen people say that the best way to highlight black is to add purple, or flesh tones or something like that; this figure uses the Foundry "Charcoal Black" palette and this paint triad doesn't quite work for larger areas of colour. For the old gentleman and his wife/daughter, I looked at a catalogue of paintings by Thomas Gainsborough for inspiration. The man's outfit of light brown coat and yellow waistcoat is taken from a 1777 portrait of Carl Friedrich Abel, a German composer who lived in London and who provided music lessons to the royal family (for which see here). The woman's turquoise and gold dress comes from a 1778/79 painting of Anne, Lady Rodney, wife of the eldest son of the famous admiral (for which see here).


6 figures. Painted August 2008.


1 comment:

Anonymous said...

"The woman's turquoise and gold dress comes from a 1778/79 painting of Anne, Lady Rodney, wife of the eldest son of the famous admiral"

You sick, sick puppy!!!! LOL

ps. excellent work Giles! the turqoise dress is particularly magnificent!!!