AWI Highlanders (7)

Here are some more pictures of highlanders from the King's Mountain Miniatures range.  I've posted about the firing line figures.  These chaps are "charging".  There are 4 variants (I think) and one of the casualty figures in the last photos looks as if it could well be used in a charging or advancing unit.  So not as many different figures as for the firing line, which to me is where the strength of this range lies.  But highlanders did a lot of charging, so these figures are apposite.  I painted this commission batch of the 71st all in tartan trews.  The positions of the legs makes this quite difficult, and I realised this morning, when I finished them off, that some of the black hatching across the green checks didn't quite match up.  I'll just have to hope that Bill doesn't notice... 

It's good news that the King's Mountain range is going to be made generally available.  Last year, when they were first released, it looked as if Bill had cast a limited run after which they would no longer be for sale.  That seemed a great shame at the time, and I'm delighted that these figures will continue to be available.  Anyway, here are some photos of the charging figures:

 

 

AWI Highlanders (6)

I had meant to post these photos when I had the charging figures all painted up, but those have been delayed so here are some initial photos of fully completed King's Mountain AWI highlanders.  As I've mentioned before, I've been working on a large commission for KM owner Bill Nevins for the past 6 months.  In due course I'll post my response to "commission painting", but suffice to say here that it's been rewarding work.  These figures here are unvarnished and lacking some final touching up.  The purpose of these photos is to show the various firing line figures from the range, and the various ways in which they can be painted.  Here is not the place to go into detailed discussion of the likely colours of overalls or whether the 71st wore tartan trews in the south.  I'll do that when I get around to painting units for my own collection.

 

 

 

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....).

AWI highlanders (4)

I finished the tartan trews this evening so I'll just post about that and then leave all the finishing off for tomorrow.  I don't think painting tartan is actually that difficult.  Yes, you need a steady hand and a very fine brush, but otherwise it's just a question of keeping one's nerve.  It takes time, but I don't think technically it's as difficult as some people think.  I think highland socks/hose is way harder to do.  Anyway, this is my recipe for government sett, the standard AWI tartan.

As I mentioned before, the base coat I use is very old GW "Dark Angels Green".  The next stage is to place dark blue squares in a check formation from top to bottom of the trews.  It's very important that these form convincing lines down the trousers - bear in mind the shape of the leg and that it's not just a question of a perfect vertical.  On these two figures, one of the legs is bent forward, so the checks need to follow that incline to look natural.  The blue I've used is Foundry "Deep Blue 20C".  It looks quite bright in the photo, but actually against the dark green background it does look much darker - I lost track of the checks a bit when I put the green ones in.  I always find that placing the first blue check on the knee acts as an anchor and it's easier to form the vertical lines once that one is in place.  I also find that the effect is increased if you don't just apply full checks where there is space to do so but follow them through right to the edge of the trews - the final check at the belt might just be the smallest dab of paint, but it still suggests that the pattern is continuing. 

The next stage is placing a line of green checks in the spaces between the blue ones.  This is like a "X" - imagine the points of the x are the blue checks and in the middle goes the green one.  The shade of green is entirely dependent on what look you want your tartan to have.  If you are going for an ultra-realistic dark blue/dark green blend, then use a medium green.  I've chosen a green which on its own is pretty bright - Foundry "Bright Green 25C".  However, the brightness will be toned down substantially once the black lines are painted through it, so I use this colour in order to maintain a clear distinction between the blue and green check.  Anything darker, and I think it would all merge into a bluey-green mess (which as I say is probably more authentic and some people may prefer that look).

Once the green checks are in place, the final stage is the cross-hatching in black, linking up all the green checks both vertically and horizontally.  This is one reason why I don't think the bright geen I use is inappropriate - the black cross-hatching dulls this colour quite a bit.  Obviously, the black lines need to be as thin as possible, and this is when you discover whether the blue and green checks are aligned - if not, the cross-hatching will srat to look wavy rather than straight.  I confess I didn't quite get it right in these two figures, but luckily the mistakes are hidden around the back... 

It took me about half an hour to do these two pairs of trews.  I had already decided that I wanted to add a patch to one of the figures.  This is something shown in various Troiani pictures and I wanted to have a campaign dress look for my 71st - i.e. gaiter-trousers of varying colours and lots of patches. The patch itself was painted with Foundry "Deep Brown Leather 45"; the stitching is Foundry "Canvas 8A".  The end result is not quite as messy as it looks in the rather blurred photo on the right.

Tomorrow I'll do the final highlighting on the black leather and haversacks, add the silver buttons, and generally tidy up.  I managed to finish the batch of ACW rebs I'd started on Wednesday - with another 8 figures to go, this will give me one finished unit and a couple of stands of another one.

AWI highlanders (3)

I've used various paints for flesh over the years.  Currently, I'm using the Foundry "expert flesh" set, which is 6 colours.  I only use 5 of those - I miss out the final highlight, 127F, as that really is too light I think.  As I mentioned in my first post, I use 127A as the base coat and then wash everything with Winsor &Newton Peat Brown ink.  This is quite a dark ink, and nothing like the "chestnut brown wash" which GW used to make and which I used a few years ago. 

This ink pools in the eye sockets and this replaces any need to use black paint as a background for the eyeballs (I haven't used the "black eyesocket" method since about 2003, when my then girlfriend asked what type of mascara my figures were using...).  I know many people don't paint eyes and/or think that to do so is completely out of scale.  That's a perfectly valid stance and the scale point is probably true.  But then think about the size of buttons - everyone usually paints them, but are they any larger than eyes?  Like many painters , I can see myself not bothering with painting eyes any more as I get older.  At the moment, however, I'm more than happy to give the eyes a go.  Personally, I think if done effectively painted eyes can add a lot of character to figures and help draw groups of figures together.  My own method is to paint a white oval slit and then add the smallest black pupils that I can.  I try to leave a bit of white between the bottom of the iris and the eyeball- that is because I think it looks a bit more realistic and also because it helps give that "1,000 yards stare" look.  The greater the space between the bottom of the iris and the eyeball the more the figure looks as if he's looking upwards - what I call the "where's that cannon ball going?" look.  There's no denying that I find painting the eyes the hardest part of every figure.  Sometimes I have to do them several times to get them right; and sometimes even after several attempts I give up and just put the "bad eye" figures in the back row.  I find that if it's getting too tricky an easier solution is to place the irises in the corners of the eyes, as if the figure is looking in another direction (perhaps the "what's happening on our flank?" look).  With firing-pose figures I always paint the right eye open and the left eye closed; that said I dimly recall reading somewhere that in the 18th century soldiers were trained to fire with both eyes open - perhaps a reader has further information on this.

It's difficult to describe how I highlight the face itself, and there's right or wrong way, really.  I use 127B to cover most of the face and then use progressively smaller amounts of 127C-E.  I paint "eyebrows" with the B and C highlights - I find this is a good way of giving expression to faces. Slant the eyebrows down and you have a look of determination; arch them and you have surprise or worry.  Upper lips are good for character too; incline one end a bit and you have a decent snarl.  On the right is a face that I'm quite proud of, where I think the eyebrows, upper lip and eyes combined to give a real sense of character to this Perry British dragoon.  Once I've finished with the Foundry 127 paints, I paint over any bits of the face that still have too much ink was he showing with Coat d'Arms "Dwarf Flesh", which is a darker flesh colour can tone down any of the highlights that look excessive. Black lining is something I've done since I first read about it in a White Dwarf heavy metal article in the late 1980s. It always requires a fair amount of tidying up and so is time-intensive, but at the moment it's part of my style. I have seen many figures painted without any black lining that look absolutely terrific (an example that comes to mind is Melbourne war gamer John Chadderton's Eureka French Revolutionary Wars figures), so one day I may well drop it.

I've now done some final post-black lining highlighting and painted in the button-hole lace. Clearly trying to paint the exact lace would be daft, but I think it's good to paint an approximation of the lace to make it more interesting than a simple white line. What I do is look hard at the regimental lace until it blurs into a general impression (try the website here for replicas of regimental lace). This process invariably produces either a white line with a coloured blob in it or a coloured line with a white blob. In the case of the regiments here, the lace for the 71st is red with a white blob and for the 76th is green with a white blob.  I looked again at pictures in Troiani, Mollo and the various Ospreys to see how the dicing on the bonnets works.  What I hadn't noticed before is that all those pictures show a bit of blue underneath the dicing band, so I added this in very carefully after I'd finished the dicing.

Next will be final highlighting and the tartan trews. This afternoon I took a bit of time out to finish off the 7 Bunker Hill Virginians I had on the workbench, so the next post on these highlanders might have to wait until tomorrow.

AWI highlanders (2)

This morning I did most of the highlighting and a few details.  This afternoon will be mostly faces.  I highlight large items like coats, packs, trousers etc in standard 3-layer method, leaving smaller things like straps and facings to do after blacklining.  I mainly use Foundry paints, and sometimes the differences between the 3 colours in each palette are not sufficient and a further highlight is required - I do this mainly with blues and greys.  On the buff gaiter-trousers I've added a third final highlight using Coat d'Arms "Bone 112".  The red coats follow a recipe I've used since the very beginning of my AWI painting, almost 10 years ago now - base cot of GW "Red Gore", the "Blood Red" and finally "Blazing Orange".  I haven't been into a GW recently but I know that those colours will either have been deleted or be called something else like Nurgle Death Gore.  This creates quite a bright scarlet look, which won't be to everyone's taste.  However, as regular readers will know I do tend to paint figures in a brighter-than-life style to help them stand out on the table.

I always ensure that any unit has a good mix of hair colours.  I don't really like painting hair black, although I have to with my Carlist War stuff as I don't think there were many blond Spaniards in the 1830s.  As hair base colours I use more GW paints - "Bubonic Brown", "Scorched Brown" and "Bestial Brown."  These are respectively blond, dark brown and light brown and I highlight them with Foundry "Ochre 4C", "Spearshaft 13C" and GW "Vomit Brown".  Sometimes I use other browns just for variety.

Once I've made progress with the main colours I do the faces and when I do the pupils in the eyes I blackline the entire figure.  Then I finish the flesh and once that's over I feel like I'm at the tidying up and completion stage.   I've actually already done a bit of blacklining on the figures in then photo, on the muskets, in order to add the "Spearshaft C" highlight to the wood and the figures' hair (I don't bother with 2 highlights on muskets anymore; just the base "A" shade and then the "C" highlight.  Talking of muskets, as these are highlanders the slings remains black, as with belts etc.  I'll explain the grey haversacks later.

AWI highlanders (1)

Yesterday I took delivery of about 200 AWI highlanders.  These are the rather excellent figures sculpted by Alan Marsh (of Eureka "ragged Continentals" fame) for Bill Nevin of the US and his "King's Mountain Miniatures."  Bill wanted figures to represent the 71st Foot in the southern campaigns, and Mr Marsh sculpted various firing line and advancing figures, together with a couple of casualties and forthcoming command figures.  Why do I have so many of these figures sitting on the kitchen table?  First, I have a substantial number for myself.  Secondly, I have been sent figures for onwards transmission to a couple of UK customers.  Thirdly, in return for "lead" I have agreed to paint 50-odd figures for Bill's own collection.  Phew - I reckon that's most of my painting schedule for the next 4 months...!

Anyway, I have a few days off work at the moment and so I thought I'd post a series of daily posts on painting some sample/test figures from this new range.  These aren't Bill's figures that I'm painting, but my own - I'm just trying out some different looks so Bill can see what he might like.  My plans for my own figures are not yet fully formed.  I want 2 units of the 76th Foot (32 figures) for the "British Grenadier!" Petersburg 1782 scenario, which will probably be 1 advancing unit and 1 firing unit.  I then intend to re-do the 71st (I already have 2 battalions' worth here) for small-scale skirmish actions like Stono Ferry, for which I might look at "Sharpe Practice".  The figures are in the same dress as the Perry "later war" highlanders, but in different poses.

First thoughts are that these figures are very nice indeed. They have zero flash, so tidying up takes hardly any time (jut a bit of filing on the bases).  The casting is crisp and the details are well-defined.  I am used to Alan Marsh sculpts and his "trademarks" are in evidence here - small buttons, large eye-sockets, open mouths and thin bayonets.  The metal is very robust - barely bendable and I am amazed that in their journey from the US to London there appear to be no broken bayonets.  So excellent casting.  I haven't really looked into all the poses yet, but the firing line has both standing and kneeling figures; the advancing figures could also be described as "charging", I think.  In size terms, they seem perfectly compatible with Perry figures - on the left is a photo of my original 71st Foot using Perry figures with the new King's Mountain figures; it's not the best photo, I admit (I painted the 71st back in 2005).

So here's a rather dull photo of 5 figures which now have all the base colours blocked in, over a black undercoat.  The exact colours are: flesh - Foundry "Expert Flesh 127A" with a wash of Winsor & Newton "Peat Brown" ink; coats - GW "Red Gore" (no doubt called something else now); muskets - Foundry "Spearshaft 13A" and "Gun Metal 104B"; bonnet - Foundry "Deep Blue 20A"; gaiter-trousers - Foundry "Peaty Brown 61A", "Buff Leather 7A" and GW "Dark Angels Green" (for tartan trews); haversack - Foundry "Stone 57B"; canteen strap - Foundry "Canvas 8A"; facings - Foundry "Arctic Grey 33A" for the 71st and "French Dragoon Green 70A" for the 76th.   The next stage will be to do most of the highlights on the equipment and clothing.  I'll do that today.  I don't usually block out the entire figure - my normal method is to highlight as soon as each base coat has dried.  I used to paint the flesh first, but now leave it until the end of the process.

The paint I'm using as the base coat for the tartan trews must be one of the oldest in my collection of paints - an original Citadel plastic pot from, and I'm guessing, about 15 years ago?  It's still going strong, along with several others of similar vintage.  The photo here shows the two successor paint pots from GW - the one in the middle was the worst, as everything tended to dry up after a couple of months.  The pot on the right was much better, but then they changed that and brought in the current smaller sized pot.  As well as the highlanders, I'm working on a couple of other things at the moment.  The wip shot below shows Virginians for 1861 Bull Run, the first figures for a Dixon Stonewall Jackson vignette and a French colonel for a 1815 General Bachelu command stand.  I'm working on those alongside the new highlanders.

Baluchis (1)

I'm sure that many wargamers sometimes get the urge to set aside their current projects for a time and paint something completely different. This happened to me a couple of weeks ago. I was up in the loft and started looking in the sets of drawers that house my "non-core" leadpile (i.e. all those figures that don't directly fit into the projects I have been working on over the past 2 years). I came across 3 packs of Foundry Baluchis and decided to paint them up over the next couple of weeks. At the back of my mind was the idea that I could use them as mercenaries or volunteers for the Sudan (although these figures are substantially larger and chunkier than those in the Perry Sudan range). I already have 2 packs painted up so eventually I will have a decent sized skirmish force.


I avidly collected the Darkest Africa figures that Mark Copplestone made for Foundry when they first came out, some 10 years ago. This was Foundry's golden age, when every month they released lovely sculpts from the hobby's best sculptors. You could sign up to a standing order system for their new ranges, whereby each month you'd receive a long box with between 6 and 8 packs at a 10% discount. I quickly signed up for the Caesarean Romans, Macedonians and Darkest Africa ranges (back in those days I wasn't the least bit interested in the AWI range, which was being released at the same time!). Of course Foundry then imploded, its sculptors left to start their own businesses and the rest is history. I managed to paint a good few packs of Darkest Africa figures but didn't base any of them. I began doing so a couple of years ago and one of my aims this year is to finish basing the remainder. In the meantime, several of the later packs have not been painted at all and I intend to paint a couple of them every now and then as a change of paint from horse and musket.


These figures form one old pack - nowadays the figures are split over a couple of packs, as Foundry meanly reduced the number of figures in their packs from 8 to 6 a few years ago (which was a disaster for the AWI range as it meant that the British command packs only had 1 standard bearer - useless!). The skin is painted with one of the newish Foundry flesh palettes - "Near Eastern Flesh 123". Painting people from Asia is always tricky; some are almost caucasian in colour whilst others can be quite dark. This palette seems to me to be a good compromise and I've also been using it for my First Crusade arabs. I'm currently painting a second pack of Baluchis so they should appear on the blog next week some time. The main building is a tomb from Hovels, bought ready painted and based at Salute. The walls and other bits are by Paul Darnell of Touching History.


8 figures. Painted May 2010.

Indian chiefs (2)

These are the Conquest Miniatures "personality" figures of Tecumseh (1768-1813) and his brother Tenskwatawa (1775-1836). As historical persons these two are out of period, but the sculpts themselves seem perfectly suitable for the AWI and I intend to use them as generic chief/leader figures (hence the round bases rather than 25mm squares). I bought these figures in the UK from North Star Miniatures. Conquest's figures are a good match for Perry Miniatures indians but are a fair bit slimmer, as the photo on the right shows.

Tecumseh was chief of the Shawnee tribe and is of course famous for his role in Tecumseh's War and the War of 1812. Tenskwatawa, also known as "the Prophet" was a religious leader who believed in a return to the indians old ways and lifestyles. Their tribe lived in Ohio, Kentucky and Western Virginia and fought on various sides during the 18th century. Red Jacket was a Shawnee chief - he advocated support for the British in the AWI. Increasing pressure on the indians' homelands in Ohio led to the various tribes forming confederations to offer better resistance to white settlers. The Shawnee took part in Little Turtle's War (1785 to 1795). After initial successes, the confederacy was defeated by forces under "Mad" Anthony Wayne at the Battle of Fallen Timbers. As a result, large parts of the Ohio territory were ceded to the US.

The Treaty of Fort Wayne in 1809 saw further territory turned over to white settlers. Tecumseh, by this point the chief of the Shawnee, immediately advocated opposition to the treaty and encouraged resistance. Discussions with the governor of Indiana came to nothing and fighting broke out in 1811. An indian force under Tenskwatawa was defeated at the Battle of Tippicanoe in November. Tecumseh rallied his confederation and joined in the British attack on Detroit the following year. Tecumseh and his force remained on operations with the British in Canada under the chief was killed at the Battle of the Thames on 5 October 1813. The indian confederacy dissolved in the wake of Tecumseh's death. Tenskwatawa survived the Battle of the Thames and took many of the Shawnee to a new home on the site of present day Kansas City. He apparently had 20 children by 3 wives.

These figures were painted with another of the new Foundry flesh palettes, "Native American Flesh 120". I have never before bothered to paint native Americans any differently to "white" Americans, but I think this palette works reasonably well. Again, perhaps another highlight or two would be handy on large areas of flesh, but the paints give a nice darker hue to the overall look and I'm tempted to use these paints in the future on more indians.

2 figures. Painted February 2010.

Foundry flesh experiments (1)

I posted this on Thursday, but Blogger managed to delete it....Anyway, I've reached another basing bottleneck and in order to maintain momentum I thought I'd post on some other stuff that I've been painting. Specifically, I have been experimenting recently with the new Foundry flesh palettes. I am an obsessive buyer of paints (in the same way that some people are obsessive buyers of rules) and when I saw Foundry advertise sets for various flesh tones I didn't hesitate to buy the complete set. That was also because recently I've found myself painting stuff that falls outside the core remit of this blog and which lends itself to these new paints. Most of the sets concern a particular ethnic flesh tone: "near eastern flesh"; "oriental flesh", "south american flesh" and so on.

So I'm going to post a few observations on my experiments with these paints in the hope that people might find them useful. I've set myself some rules: I'm allowed my usual dark brown ink wash on the faces and hands, but otherwise I have to use the paints "as is", straight from the pot without any mixing or blending. I've tried 3 palettes so far, with more to come shortly.

First up are some Perry Miniatures First Crusade "Azabaijani swordsmen", painted using the "Expert Flesh 127" palette. I confess that I can't find these troops in any of the First Crusade army lists I've been looking at, but I suppose they are essentially Turkish light infantry from the southern Caspian Sea area. The "Expert" palette is a double set of 6 paints, rather than the more usual 3 paints. Foundry helpfully label the dark "A" paint "Dark" and the lighter "E" paint "Light" in case you can't work out which end to start with... The "A" shade is darker (or rather, more orange) than the original "Flesh 5" palette. However, "Flesh 5A" is clearly "Expert Flesh 127B"; "Flesh 5B" is "Expert Flesh 127C" and "Flesh 5C" is "Expert Flesh 127E", so the original colours are incorporated into the set.

I found this set easy to use. The tones blend pretty well "out of the pot" and I was delighted to find that the consistency of the paints was thicker than other recent Foundry offerings - I have not been impressed with some recent Foundry purchases which show a reduction in the amount of pigment and a general watery-ness. Personally, I think that the entire palette is probably best used on larger areas of flesh and would be excessive on faces and hands (i.e. the standard flesh areas for 18th century figures). On bare torsos and the like, however, the ease of use of these 6 colours means that painting is quite straightforward, if a little "by numbers". The "F" colour is very light and you'd probably want to blend it in to the previous colour. I'm sure that the results will seem a little excessive for some, but I'm reasonably pleased with the outcome.

Lots of stuff is being based at the moment, for te AI and FCW. Here's some Lee's Legion infantry: