These days I'm not in the mood to paint regiments (you can say I've never been), or even soldiers of only one era or conflict. What I want to do is to paint some very old figures - to catch childhood memories maybe, or to see what the veteran figures look like with a proper paintjob, I mean: not with Playmobil colors :)
Among the most loved figures I still own are Washington's soldiers by Airfix, the first Airfix set I've seen, and received as a gift, when I was 10. They've seen more than one battle in my parent's garden, and received color using the famous Playmobil pens, but I never tried to paint them, and now it's time...
Unfortunately, I don't have a lot of documentation about the American War of Independence, so I have to look for pictures on the web. The pictures I mostly use are those of reenactors, because I usually try to represent the men with the dress they actually wore rather than regulation dress. In this case, I found a very nice painting by Don Troiani representing a Private of the 9th Massachusetts Regiment in 1782. As far as I know, Don Troiani's painting are regarded as accurate by the painting community, good thing. And again, I was interested in the color scheme: white and blue, not that original, but with buff trousers, which allows to add some sort of yellow in the color scheme.
First, the test shot figure (direct from the 70s):
And then the reference painting:
What do you think of it ? Is it close enough ?
If find the mini rather convincing so I am going to paint some more. The question I ask you this time, fellow painters, is this: do the soldiers of this regiment all wear the same uniform in 1782 (after the 1779 regulation), or are there still many differences between the men - the variations that we could find in a French Napoleonic regiment during the Peninsula war, for instance, or even more variations ?
Thank you for reading this post, all comments and opinions welcome !
Among the most loved figures I still own are Washington's soldiers by Airfix, the first Airfix set I've seen, and received as a gift, when I was 10. They've seen more than one battle in my parent's garden, and received color using the famous Playmobil pens, but I never tried to paint them, and now it's time...
Unfortunately, I don't have a lot of documentation about the American War of Independence, so I have to look for pictures on the web. The pictures I mostly use are those of reenactors, because I usually try to represent the men with the dress they actually wore rather than regulation dress. In this case, I found a very nice painting by Don Troiani representing a Private of the 9th Massachusetts Regiment in 1782. As far as I know, Don Troiani's painting are regarded as accurate by the painting community, good thing. And again, I was interested in the color scheme: white and blue, not that original, but with buff trousers, which allows to add some sort of yellow in the color scheme.
First, the test shot figure (direct from the 70s):
And then the reference painting:
What do you think of it ? Is it close enough ?
If find the mini rather convincing so I am going to paint some more. The question I ask you this time, fellow painters, is this: do the soldiers of this regiment all wear the same uniform in 1782 (after the 1779 regulation), or are there still many differences between the men - the variations that we could find in a French Napoleonic regiment during the Peninsula war, for instance, or even more variations ?
Thank you for reading this post, all comments and opinions welcome !
