French line foot artillery (2)

In December and January I painted up a load of Perry Miniatures gun crews.  I'd had these figures for a while (many being a kind present from NZ wargaming chum "Captain Chook" of the WD3 forum) and had delayed painting them for ages while I agonised over what paints to use for "French artillery green".  After an initial disappointing result with the "authentic" Foundry set, I eventually found a Vallejo combination that I'm reasonably happy with.  To recap: for the base coat I used "Yellow Green" mixed with plain black; then first highlight of neat "Yellow Green" and second highlight of "Yellow Green mixed equally with "Dark Yellow".  The metalwork should proabbly be a bit more "black", but in real life it doesn't look quite as bright silver as you see in the photos.  Artillery was the main thing missing from my French Napoleonic collection and I'm pleased to have painted all these up at last.  Whilst painting the guns themselves can be a bit exhausting (there's a lot of mixing of those Vallejo paints), I had forgotten how quick artillery crew are to paint and Napoleonic artillery always looks good en masse.   

The General de Brigade orbat for Waterloo that I am using requires two batteries for each infantry division: 1 battery of four 12-pounders, and another containing three 6-pounders and one howitzer.  The 12-pounders are a bit of a concern, as Perry Miniatures only make one foot artillery 12-pounder set (with 6 crew figures; I've painted this set and the basing has caused a couple of headaches - more on that later).  So I'll probably need to buy more of the 6-pounder and howitzer packs and move the crews around a bit.  However, building the smaller calibre batteries is not a problem as Perry Miniatures provide a large number of foot artillery packs with 6-pounder and howitzer models.  I have also used figures from the two "additional crew" sets (one of which contains infantry hired help) to create two further artillery bases.  Those of course require guns, so I'll need 2 of the limber packs to have the extra guns (actually I have one already painted, but can't quite work out how to attach the limber to the horses....).  One thing I made sure I got right, having made a mistake when I painted a Foundry foot artillery crew a couple of years ago, was to position the gunner with the portfire to the right of the guns - this positioning was the opposite to how British Napoleonic gun crews stood.  In the firing packs this seems a little odd, because the gunner is looking backwards, but it is accurate. 

I painted up 6 foot artillery crews in total, and will divide them into 2 posts' worth.  The figures shown in this post are largely "straight out of the box" packs, but with two of the figures from the Perry "additional crew" pack.  On one stand I positioned a gunner to be calling for ammo and the additional chap is running to bring some more shells.  Another base features an officer from the "additional crew" pack.  The next post will mostly feature the remaining "additional crew" figures and some assisting infantry.  I've also painted two vignettes of hired help/hangers on which I'll post about separately.  In addition, I painted 2 Perry horse artillery packs, and then the other week finished off another 2 foot artillery packs and the 4-horse limber - phew!  I won't be needing any more French Napoleonic artillery for a while... 

17 figures and 4 guns.  Painted December 2012.