To supplement my painting regime I will take on 2 professional painters to paint for me a unit or 2 each month. I had found 2 painters but one removed himself when I stressed I wanted a result similar to my painting style so the units fit together well. Another I will be sending a single French Line Infantry figure to tomorrow to see how his style suits.
To fill the 2nd position I have decided to negotiate a regular set of figures from an eBay seller I purchased from when I began collecting a few weeks ago. I purchased a number of French Line, French Light, English Line and Prussian Line and Landwehr infantry along with some Artillery and most of the time I was able to win them for less than $2 a figure which is the benchmark I use for those sales. The painting quality is not quite there and the figure quality is not quite there but with a little touch up I think they can quickly and cheaply fill my ranks.
Below is a pic of the sale I won on eBay:
These figures come already based and ready to go so I had to sit them in water for a few days and with a knife scrape all the basing material off and cut the figure from the stand.
Some stands of cavalry wading in the water for a few days
I then rearranged them from 1 unit of 24 into 2 units of 12 although I needed to add in a 2nd flag bearer to make it work from my own collection.
These were then based to my new 15mm Empire V basing on mounting card and magnet and then painted and flocked. See my basing tutorial here.
Close up on the painting and figure quality
Once that was settled I then went about upgrading the paint jobs by applying a darker blue - I prefer Vallejo's Dark Prussian Blue for French troops, yellow to Voltigeur plumes, a medium blue to the flag pole and company colours to the pom poms. I could go further but I fear I would end up repainting the entire figure and thus lose the benefit of these purchases.
eBay Line Grenadiers on the left and my Eureka Grenadiers on the right. Note the darker blue on mine.
eBay Voltigeurs after my blue on the left and before my blue on the right.
The two eBay units on the left and the 2 Eureka units I painted on the right. The mounted Brigade Commander on the far right is all based but not painted as yet.
Now on to the flags.
4 comments:
Great work. I have to agree with you on your decision on buying prepainted figures of ebay. As much as one gets a sense of satisfaction of a job well done, life is too short to paint multiple armies worth of minis & never get to see them on the gaming table.
Well done also, for "correcting" the blue on the ebay French uniforms. It seems to be a "thing" that I have noticed over the last few years that Napoleonic French troops are painted with a rather light shade of blue. The arguments for such a paint scheme goes from "they are small figures so the small amount of light reflected to our eye makes the blue look darker" to "how do we know what colour blue the uniforms were in the field. No one knows so....".
For me the light blue of the ebay French should be reserved for Bavarian troops.
Watching your progress with interest.
Grant.
Thanks Grant
Great comments. I'm committed to updating things here more often so happy to have you watching.
If you need any inspiration, I too base AB figures the same way for Empire V and have been steadily trying to work through them for a few years now - but my original inspiration came from following your 6mm endeavours, many happy hours reading your posts! I very much feel your pain about getting painting done.
http://massedminiaturemarvels.blogspot.co.uk
Regards,
Tim
Wow thanks mate. Sometimes you wonder if anyone reads it. Most views are from search engine robots but its nice to hear you read it.
Keep tuned for more regular posts and some actual progress this time around hehe.
Post a Comment