Wednesday 18 January 2012

3eme Ligne


The final battalion I needed for Bachelu's division in the French II Corps is the 3eme Ligne. In the "General de Brigade" orbat the battalion fields 30 figures and skirmishers. I have done what I always do for units of this strength: 5 companies of 6 figures and then the voltiguer company out on skirmish stands. All figures are the Perry plastic infantry save for most of the command stand, which are from the metal "Command in Greatcoats" pack (the drummer and officer I will save for the next battalion I paint). As I mentioned before, I sculpted some moustaches onto fusilier heads to provide more variety in the grenadier company. The Perry plastic box gives you lots of spare heads, but hardly any have moustaches. Rather than use the same old heads yet again I decided to convert some of the fusilier heads. It's interesting to see that once you add a moustache the character of the face changes completely - I suppose that may be one reason why people grow moustaches! I admit that I found this a bit of a challenge; the trickiest parts were ensuring equal growth on each side of the nose and retaining the nose itself. I'm not sure if I've executed these conversions particularly well, but at least I have some different faces in the grenadiers' ranks. I have a couple of other figures left over which look rather better.

I decided to give this unit a more uniform look by painting all the greatcoats and shako covers the same colours (respectively, Foundry palettes "Slate Grey 32" and "Palomino 56"). I also corrected a mistake I've made on all my other Napoleonic French infantry and did not add red edges to the coat turn-backs (which I gather was dropped around 1812/13). Otherwise, these were painted pretty much as all my previous French.

I'm working on some First Carlist War units at the moment (3 are "in the can" awaiting photographs) but the next Napoleonic work will be on brigade and divisional command stands and artillery. For the latter, I'm still undecided on what paints to use for French artillery woodwork. I wasn't satisfied with my earlier effort (using the specific Foundry triad), so if anyone has any tried and tested acrylic recipes I'd be most grateful to hear them.

36 figures. Painted November/December 2011. Flag from GMB.









18 comments:

Cory said...

Very nice!

Achilles said...

looking great! Judging from the frequency of your last updates it seems that your painting output has increased!
I hope I could match that!

Phyllion said...

Lovely stuff!

PhilH
http://infrequentwargamer.blogspot.com/ 

Rodger said...

Beautiful painting Giles!! Really like the faces on these chaps.

Sire Godefroy said...

Almost missed this one. Excellent painting again to create a characterful unit. Very well done! (Though it's no AWI, I presume… ;-) )

Cheers
SG

BigRedBat said...

Really lovely! Great character.

Simon

Christopher(aka Axebreaker) said...

WoW!! Absolutely fantastic Giles! Almost missed it and glad I didn't!

Christopher

Silver Whistle said...

Superb looking unit, your Napoleonic collection is certainly expanding.

Stacky said...

Excellent work, Giles. I agree that a moustache does change the character of ones face. I've recently shaved mine off after having one for 26 years and a number of friends initially didn't recognize me when first seeing me clean shaven.

legatus hedlius said...

Giles all your pictures have disappeared!

I paid for extra capacity on my blog I think it costs $5 per year. Probably worth it!

Giles said...

Yes, I've paid for it too - have done for 4 years, but Photobucket can't process the payment!

Giles

Willie Anderson said...

Really like the voltigers skirmishing Giles

AJ (Allan) Wright said...

Nice and dirty, just the way they should be on campaign. Well done as always Giles!

Anonymous said...

Giles they are stunning. I'm a huge fan of your painting style which I reckon would give Sasha Herme a run for his money! Glad to see you're right back into it!

Cheers,
Doc (skivving @ work!)

Phil said...

Really nice! Vive la France!

Galpy said...

these are fantastic what a wonderful paint job and basing

Anonymous said...

Giles,

Couldn't find your contact info on the blog, but wanted to get in touch with you for a commercial project. We're in need of some Revolutionary way minis. My contact into is jason at conscious-minds.com.

Thanks,
Jason

VolleyFireWargames said...

The Command stand withe the Ensign in a carabiniers style helmet does that come in the package ore is that a seperate figure looks good, when I was in Scotland last year saw some superb paint jobs