The Christmas Brigades - Undercoat

The painting begins with sticking the figures, five to a strip, to some strips of wood with little blobs of Blu-Tack (is it called Blu-Tack in America?).

I only had 10 strips of wood to hand which was enough for 2 Regiments. That's probably OK as my ACW Brigades are made up of 2 regiments so breaking up the 200 figures into 4 batches makes each batch a handy size for painting.

I used a standard acrylic white paint coating the entire figure carefully and making sure all the undercuts and nooks and cranny are covered evenly. There is virtually no white on the finished figures apart from the drummers so a single coat will do. I would do two coats if there were any large areas of white.

 

The painting style I use requires any flesh areas to be painted next. This covers the head and neck as well as the hands and should be quite liberal as the jacket colour will be a darker colour so will overpaint any flesh colour. I always try to paint light colours first before darker colours.

 

 

The next main colour to be applied will be the trousers which for my Union troops will be sky blue followed by a darker blue for the jacket. Again this is painting light before dark.

 

One of my Union Regiments will be Berdans Sharpshooters so they will have dark green trousers and jackets. My next post should show them.