Painting Eureka 15mm/18mm Napoleonic French Infantry - My First 15mm

The first part of my new 15mm Napoleonics project is to paint up a battalion of 12 figures for 1815 French Line as I am most familiar with their uniforms.

This battalion is from Eureka and consists of 2 x Line Grenadiers, 2 x Voltigeurs and 8 x Fusiliers including an Officer and a Flag Bearer.

All paints used were from Vellejo and I use brushes 0 and 20/0 with pointy tips.

All figures were mounted on gold tees and painted with a dark oil wash which I use as a primer. This really highlights the detail for me to paint.

Use a medium brown to block paint all the flesh areas on the face, back of neck, hair and hands and the backpack and musket wood (I forgot those but did them later)

Use a darker blue to paint the jacket up to but not right on the raised areas which need to be white (ie the lapels in the centre and the cuffs and the straps). The idea is leave small lines between coloured areas which due to the oil primer appear as shadows.

Use white to carefully paint pants (stop before the jacket and leave a small unpainted line) and all the raised areas of the jacket in the centre, the straps, cuffs and musket strap. Paint them all as separate areas and carefully stop just before the edges of those areas. At this point paint ant straps you can see such as those for the sword and those on the blanket roll. I forgot these and doing it later is a lot harder to do. This took me a few coats as I use Vellajo and it seems to be quick tranparent and quick drying for me here in Queensland Australia.

Use black for the shako, boots, sword sheath and ammo pouch on the back

Use flesh to highlight the flesh areas applying paint to the nose, chin and cheeks and then outside of hand and try to get each finger separately leaving the darker colour in between the fingers if you can.

Use a medium grey for the blanket roll and gaiters on the boots

Apply a bright red which for this figure being a grenadier means the collars, shoulder nests, cuffs up to before the edge of the white, the shako top ring and the plume. I accidentally painted the turnbacks red when they should be white but this is corrected later.

At this point I can finish the figure by going back over the blue with the final blue I want but stopping short of but not at the cuffs. Just really the topsides and visual points of the arms only.

Use leather or wood wash for the backpack and musket stock.

Apply silver to musket and bayonet and ammo pouch badge and sword handle

Use white for straps on backpack

I used a khaki for the waterbottle but it turns out it should be a dull yellow.

Finally use gold or brass for shako badge and using a fine point brush see if you can add 2 buttons to each cuff and some buttons to either side of the white jacket centre.

Stay tuned for a following post getting them based and adding a flag and labels.