Reinforcements have arrived!

As the shop where I have bought several sets of HaT 8095 French infantry is about to close, I decided to buy the sets that will be enough to finish my Pre-Bardin-uniform project.

Three new boxes of figures. Having 154 figures left to be painted, I suppose that the officers and Elites in these boxes will be enough - this means if I don't find much more new units. The last one that I have discovered were King's guards of the Kingdom of Naples. X-D

FIGZ 2016 - come to Arnhem! ;-)

It's FIGZ time again! On 5th of June, miniature enthusiasts - not only from Benno's figures forum - will come together in Arnhem (Netherlands) to show their miniatures, play wargames and spend money for useful equipment and new stuff.

Plus there will be Dutch food. Plus there will be a painting contest. Plus there will be workshops on how to build trees and buildings in scale 1/72.

You will find more infos on www.figz.nl. I will certainly be there. How about you?

Brunswickers ready for groundworks

Today I'm going to start some groundworks again, because my display of Brunswickers must be ready for FIGZ.

I bought some Brunswickers from Schilling figures back at the ISSC show in Heiden last year in order to paint the different uniform patterns of Brunswick troops at the battles of the 100 days campaign. There were guards, line and light infantrymen present at Waterloo and although (except from the light avantgarde infantry) they all wore black uniform, there were little differences between the battalions, such as collar colours and differently coloured stripes on trouser sides.

So finally, I ended up with 9 figures. Putting them into a frame looked somehow odd, especially because I had to make a different factsheet for explaining the difference between these figures. Therefore, I had to go and by some broader wood. And now, I'm ready to finalize this project.

The figures themselve are nicely modelled, although the bajonets look a bit short. They are mounted on very small bases - you have to glue them onto a crown cap or something similar for painting because if you only use tweezers, the figures will snap off time after time.
The reason why I bought them in the first place was that I liked to paint black. There's in fact not much to do about it - paint them dark grey, add dark black shades, highlight folds in mid grey. So much for the theory, because there's much highlighting to be done, folds have to be accentuated carefully and then there are those Hussar-style laces on the uniform breasts that take you some time to be done accurately.

Nevertheless, I like the results. Although I wouldn't like to paint a hundred of these chaps, the ones I painted were fun to paint. 

...one month later...

Yesterday I finished the Kingdom of Holland line infantry for my long-run Pre-Bardin uniform project. That's one month after showing you the first pics.

What do you say? I'm really happy with those chaps, I like these colours.
Btw - the pre-Bardin half-breast uniform was officially worn only in a short period during 1806. After that, the closed breast variant was worn which is to be seen on so many planches showing the Dutch troops of that time. Nevertheless, uniforms were not changed 'en bloc' and that means that even the half-breast type was partially worn for some time in parallel to the other dress.

This was, in fact, usual practice in pre-industrialization era armies. Replacement of uniforms usually took quite a long time before it was completely finished. By the way- here's the officer and the drummer for my Kingdom of Holland troop setup.

In parallel, I finished a little single figure vignette for the forthcoming FIGZ in Arnhem next month.
FIGZ is only four weeks ahead - so if you have some time left on June 5th and like to see some really good 1/72 stuff plus lots of wargaming, come and visit FIGZ - entry is free!

Dutch, next step

Okay. I'm more and more fed up with the appartment I'm living in when it comes up to photos.
I have no spot in here where I can make proper photos under normal daylight conditions.
I'm not satisfied at all - and I suppose that sooner or later I'll have to build a proper photobox.
In the following case, the contrasts on the white uniforms look harder on the picture then in reality. :-(

What I'm currently working on is the next part of early Kingdom of Holland infantry.

The first three of eight regimental figures are completed, I also have the belonging command and voltigeur figures also under construction. These figures are basically headswaps - voltigeur heads on fusilier bodies, plume cut off, pompom glued onto the right side and shako plate cut off. Which allows me to put the fusilier heads with re-glued plumes onto the voltigeur bodies - as a by-product, I can produce Italian light infantry voltigeurs and grenadiers. Win-win!

Casualties

Right. Sometimes, you just need some casualties to pimp up your diorama. War is bloody business. And far too few manufacturers give us the figures for a real grim setup of a battlefield.

So if you're looking for a good range of wounded/dead French infantrymen, you should probably have a look for Schilling figures again. Unfortunately, these figures are uniformed in the Bardin uniform with closed breast and therefore only useable for after-1812 scenarios, but as this includes Waterloo as well as the battles of 1813 and 1814, they are still very useful.

Figures come with separate muskets and backpacks - except from this figure which has the backpack still mounted.

These are still not finished, photographed under bad light. Therefore, they don't look that great but I guess it's enough to give you an impression of how they look

I don't have a clue for which exact purpose I'm going to use them. But in fact they already looked so nice un-painted that I just wasn't able to withstand to buy them. ;-)

French vs. French

When I made up the concept for my Pre-Bardin uniform project, I originally had in mind to depict the uniforms of all the armies which fought in the same uniform as Napoleons French army did. As I went through my research, this concept of painting all possible varieties of that uniform type diversified a lot. For example, I wasn't aware about how many different units with different uniform colours even the Italian army had.

I wasn't aware about how much different varieties of the same uniform were in duty even within the French army itself. And this is why I have to paint at least several different French regiments in order to display that even within an army with common regulations, there was a certain range of variation.

My newest unit is the line infantry regiment no. 30:

What all French line regiments had in common, was the general design of the uniform and the basic colouring. Some regiments directly adopted the shako for grenadiers, some not. Some had the shako rim coloured in the colour of their branch, some not. Etcetera, etcetera...

For direct comparizon, here's the 63rd regiment once again:

The main difference throughout all the regiments is the colour of the musicians/drummer uniforms. This may have - if I'm not wrong - have to do with the former distinctive regimental colours worn in reverse order. Whoever has more information about the logic in behind of the drummers' uniform colours, please let me know!