Monday, September 25, 2006
WSS Project: Bavarian Infantry in Progress
(Click on picture to view larger image in a new window)- Carefully draw the lozenge pattern on both sides of the flag, then even more carefully paint the blue lozenges over a white field. (I could make the lozenges oversized to make drawing and painting them less tedious.)
- Make a color decal of the pattern and apply that instead of painting, or,
- Make a decal of just the lines of the pattern and then paint in the blue lozenges.
At this point, I'm leaning toward the first option listed as it might be the fastest. I do have decal paper in both clear and white, so I could use the clear sheet printed with blue lozenges and apply it over a white painted field, or I could go with the white sheet printed blue (not sure there's much of a difference one way or the other, really.) I've never used the decal paper in this manner so it might be an interesting experiment; I guess I'll have to ponder this for a while.
I did keep track of how long it took to paint the figures to the point you see in the picture and I was quite surprised that it took much longer than I originally thought. I thought the average time for the other infantry units was about 3 hours or a bit less, but my records for the Bavarians show that it took 4 hours and 15 minutes (and I was very careful to record my times.) As I said earlier, I still have the command strip to finish, but that's just the standard bearer, drummer and officer; the two musketeers on either end of the command strip are painted to the same point of completion as the rest of the soldiers. Once I settle on how I'm going to do the flag, I suspect I'll need the better part of an hour to finish those three figures as they each need different kinds of uniforms and those don't lend themselves to much of an assembly line process.
After the painting is all done, I'll finish the bases of the figures with my usual sand and paint method and I'll show some of that process, too.
Stay tuned for more...
Best Regards,
Stokes Schwartz
-- Jeff
http://saxe-bearstein.blogspot.com/
Yes, the Bavarians are a nice change from the red coats I've been painting lately.
I think I may have made the blue a bit too dark, but we'll see how things look once I've got them based. That's one of the problems with color names; when I see something like "coats: sky blue", I ask myself, "how blue is the sky?"
Oh, one other thing. I've gone back and painted the shoulder straps, etc. with a buff color as some of the color illustrations I've found online at the Nec Impar...whatzitsname? site seem to indicate that. In any case, the lighter color contrasts nicely with the blue instead of disappearing like the black color I used initially.
Another nice thing about the Bavarians of this period is that it's entirely possible to model ALL of the units in the Elector's army without taking a lifetime in painting and a fortune in cash to do so. Still, I've got one French unit already, so I suppose I'm bound to do several more so I have at least a brigade of them, but the Bavarians will probably get more attention overall. (Besides, the neat blue uniforms contrast nicely with the redcoats!
N.B.: "Redcoat" is not used as a perjorative in this case even though I'm a Yank decended from at least one line in my pedigree that did fight for independence. Funny how that "taxation with representation" thing worked out... we might have been better off leaving well enough alone! ;-)
Patrick
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