Fusiliers-grenadiers of the Imperial Guard

After a couple of posts related to Star Wars, back to 1/72 and the Napoleonic era. This week-end, I have painted a company of Fusiliers-grenadiers, a middle guard unit attached to the regiments of Grenadiers à pied.

Much less known than the units of the old guard, the fusiliers-grenadiers formed a regiment created in december 1806, and disbanded in may 1814. The regiment consisted of two  four-companies battalions, for a total strength of about 1800 men.

I've painted a unit of 10 soldiers, 1 NCO (first figure from the left) and 1 officer wearing a surtout.
Those who follow this blog from the beginning may have recognized the unexpected guest, the goat-that-travels-through-time. So a little game: could you find the year, and the post in which this goat was spotted for the last time ?

 Meanwhile, the plastic soldiers keep on marching through the village.

Nothing new regarding the painting technique, which has already been explained a few years ago at Benno's. I could copy a link to the post with the explanation, but I've just checked, and I realized that:

1. The post is difficult to find since I answered a question (by Sceavus :)) in a thread regarding half orcs
2. The pictures used to explain are no longer visible since the host on which they were stored is no longer in activity.

So I think it might be a good idea if I put everything here. Here you are:

Concerning white: when I want to paint white clothes, I first don't use white, but I start to paint a light grey layer, with a Citadel paint called Deneb Stone (in their old denominations, I don't know the name in their current range).

An example, with a Fusilier grenadier (french middle guard by Hät):

Then I wash the area with Agrax Earthshade - not much on the light grey area, or the shading might be too strong - well it is a question of taste.

Then I begin to lighten. I paint a layer of pure Deneb Stone (carefully, because at this step you have to keep your shades as thin lines between the different elements: clothes, belt...). Then I mix Deneb Stone and white, and I add a new thin (diluted) layer on some areas only - those that receive the sunlight. It is possible de repeat this operation several times on always smaller areas - it depends on your time and on the quality you want to get.

In my example, the belts are painted in a whiter color than the clothes. In the picture below, you have the three steps illustrated on three different minis:

Concerning the flesh, I use a red ink to shade the face and the hands, but I am not very happy with the result because the contrast is not strong enough in my taste. I will go back to my previous technique, a simple wash of diluted of Citadel Dark Flesh (ancient range, it is a sort of brown red), then lightening as explained before. The only difference is that I lighten the flesh paint with Citadel Ushabti Bone (something like ivory), NOT white.

Here you are the result:

I hope you find this little explanation useful, and that you like the result :)

A few more Goblins

In the previous post introducing a Goblin drummer as the musician of the month, I wrote that I was also painting other Goblins from the same set. I could spend some time today to finish 3 of them, so that I could take pictures and show them as reinforcement for the lonely drummer.

Here they are:

To tell the truth, I was not very happy with the drummer. Remember, I wanted to paint a very pale skin for this underground dweller, but there was a lack of contrast in the result - the skin looked the same everywhere - too plain, too clean.

So for the next Goblins, I decided to add a layer of watery white, with only a little bit of red - and I painted that layer on the drummer too. I also used yellow and blue washes in some places on the skin to simulate skin disorders. And last but not least, I painted some dirt on their legs, arms and bellies.

Some close-ups to see the result:

I think that this one might represent a halfling, with another color scheme

These minis were an excuse to paint some rusty weapons - once again, I wanted to go a bit further than usual, and added some orange highlights to the rusty parts.

Maybe you would be interested in a size comparison with other minis ?

First picture: Goblins and Orcs, same manufacturer (Dark Alliance):

They are approximately the same size - the Goblins look much uglier, is it the figures or the painting? :D

Second picture: Goblins from two different manufacturers (Dark Alliance and Caesar):

The Caesar are much smaller. In my eye, they really look like Imps rather than Goblins. And the color scheme I chose in not that interesting, I should find another.

As a conclusion, I would like to list what I've learnt with these minis:
- a very pale skin with a lot of white is possible, but you need contrast and splatters of color in some places - it is a bit boring without
- the rust can be very orange
- I like monsters

That's all folks!

Playmobil color, Enamel... Does it remind you something ?

Hi everyone!

Today's post is meant to be a sort of time travel, and a naive exhibition too. If I am always happy to repaint my old minis in today's standard, I also appreciate to bring memories back from the past, and to see these minis as they were. Before I finished to repaint all of them (I don't really worry, I am so slow, and I have so many of them), I took time today to take pictures of these old dear toys.

When I was a child, I first played with the minis out of the box, without any paint at all. But one Christmas, my brother received a fabulous gift that would change everything: a box of Playmobil Colors. Do you remember them ? The men, the horses, their equipment, everything was white, and you were meant to add the color with a set of dedicated pencils. An example below:

I don't remember how long it took before I realized that these pencils could be used on other plastic minis... but as soon as it came to my mind, I started to color every mini I had. In those days, my 1/72 soldiers were Airfix and Atlantic.

Let me show you my gallery:

Atlantic Greek civilians

Atlantic court of Pharaoh

Airfix Tarzan figures

Airfix Sheriff of Nottingham's men

But it was impossible to represent armors without metallic colors, so I was encouraged to use model paints, and I discovered the Humbrol Enamel paints. I am sure you remember :) How I hated the smell of the White Spirit...

And other minis got painted too:

Atlantic gladiators

Atlantic Romans - the less accurate set ever... The blue one was my first zombie experiment :)

Years later, I began to use acrylic paints, but without shades and lights.

Airfix Robin Hood's men

Many years passed before I tried other techniques, and you can see the actual style on this blog.
A few pictures to compare the different steps:

Atlantic Egyptians: Playmobil color / Humbrol / acrylic

Airfix: Acrylic without shades / with shades

Airfix archers in today's standard.

I hope you like them all, even the old ones. Do you have a similar experience ?

Thank you for reading this far.

Almoravid warriors

Hi everyone.

Last year, I took some time to add a few Almoravid warriors to my (very) small band. The first ones have been painted years ago, poorly photographed and displayed on Hät website - they were issued from a test shot grape.
Several years have passed before they received reinforcement, and now, it is interested to show the differences between them: different painting style, and different camera :)
In the first batch of painting, I used only matt paints, dark brown underlining, highlights with at least 3 or 4 layers, no washes.. that was really nice, but was a very long technique: I spent at least 3 or 4 hours on each mini.
In the second batch, I have given up underlining, I now use a lot of inks (mainly dark brown, but also others, such as sepia), and usually 2 layers of highlights (more on central figures) - about 1 hour and a half per mini.

Let's begin with a family picture.

Fierce warriors coming from western North Africa

I chose the colors partly after the documentation found here and there, and partly after the clothes people were wearing as I noticed during my travels in Morocco: mainly blue, brown, ochre, grey, off-white.

The Almoravid army relied a lot on light cavalry, but I only painted infantry so far. The first to be displayed below are light skirmishers, probably coming from the Senegal river area (hence the very dark skin):

Their shields are covered with wild animal skins. You will notice that the base colors are different: that is how you will make a difference between the guys from the first and the second batches: the base of the latter is darker.

Here you are other units of light infantry: archers, slingers, javelinmen. Comparing old and modern figures, you will notice that the contrast is higher, which is fine since they are gaming minis.

Then the heavy infantry:

The last two have richer clothes than their counterparts. They come from the Andalusian set, and will be played as Andalusians too.

Beyond their historical purpose, it may be interesting to notice that the figures can easily be used in Fantasy as Haradrims, in the Lord of the Rings universe. If I find time one of these days, I may try to paint one of these guys with a red / purple / black color scheme :)

Oh, I almost forgot the camera change. You will see below one of the old photos, taken with a pocket camera. Now I use a Reflex: the difference is obvious!

I hope you found this post interesting, see you soon.

To paint a troll

I you follow the blog, you could see that I had started to paint a troll by Dark Alliance. It is a very big figure compared to the human sized 1/72 minis - you can see a good comparison on 1/72 Multiverse.

This is what I could achieve:

The troll fighting three greatswords  (Redbox landsknechts)

And this is how I did it:

After the basic colors (see the first step here: What's on my desk ?), I used several washes to add contrast to the mini (which is meant to be a tabletop quality mini, nothing more).

A green wash for the loin cloth

Dark brown wash everywhere

Black wash added for the armor, red wash for the teeth

When the mini is dry, I add some rust on the armor (brown wash locally applied), then I paint highlights everywhere (only drybrush for the flesh, the scales and the armor).

There you are:

I hope you like it.