Sunday, 27 January 2013

French line horse artillery (1)

I've spent a large part of the past couple of months painting Perry 1815 French artillery.  Whilst I finish basing those figures (a total of 9 guns and crews), here is something I painted earlier last year.  This is the Foundry French horse artillery set, still sculpted by the Perries (or at least one of them), but with the figures slightly smaller and chunkier than their later ones.  The set represents a crew "running up" a howitzer.  I really like the dymanic poses of the crew, and I'm a bit surprised that Alan Perry hasn't replicated this "pose" in his Perry Miniatures 1815 French range.  I'll post a few thoughts on French horse artillery generally when I post pics of the 2 Perry sets that I have just finished.  I base artillery on 70mm x 60mm bases (as per the "General de Brigade" rules), with 1 gun and 4 crew.  The Foundry sets give you 6 crew figures so I usually detach one or two and place them on pennies (see the foot artillery set here) so they can float around as required.  With this set, 5 of the 6 crew figures had to be in contact with the gun itself, so they all went on the base.  I appreciate that aesthetically it can be more pleasing to have deeper or wider bases for artillery pieces, and I plan on doing so for 12-pounders and above.  However, most of my crews will be 4 figures and those fit comfortably on a 70 x 60 base.  There will be ammunition caissons and supernumeries behind the guns to add some depth to the artillery park.

For the last (or rather first) French artillery set I painted I used the Foundry "authentic French artillery green" palette and I thought it didn't work at all.  I experimented with some Vallejo colours when I painted some Carlist War artillery, and I've continued with those colours.  I've started repainted the earlier foot artillery set with those colours, including the equipment carried by the gunners which I had painted as "natural wood".  I'm still badly behind on posting about things I painted last year - lots more 1815 French to come over the next couple of weeks.    

6 figures and 1 gun.  Painted October 2012. 

 


 

10 comments:

LittleArmies said...

Giles,
Older figures or not - they look great. I love the little details you've painted in to these figures. They just look super!

Malc

Silver Whistle said...

Wonderful painting on these Giles, as always. Another nine guns to come, you have been busy. Looking forward to seeing more.
Pat.

Rodger said...

Fantastic work Giles! I really like the face detail!

Bill5549 said...

Really nice figures. I have the same set of animated crew. I am replacing the old Hinchliffe 4pdr guns which I used with them with Elite 6pdrs.

Dalauppror said...

Stunning work Giles !!!

Best regards Michael

legatus hedlius said...

Really nice! I must do another artillery piece but I don't think I have none painted in total across all the periods I do!

Michael Awdry said...

Lovely job Giles, the characters of the artillerymen really come to the fore.

Christopher(aka Axebreaker) said...

What a wonderful artillery piece Giles!

Christopher

David said...

Wonderful stuff, Giles!

Anonymous said...

Looking lovely... Must get me one of those eventually!