Ready, The Buffs

One of the incomplete collections I found amongst my old chums boxes was a large number of Victrix British Peninsular infantry, a few painted, some part painted, some part assembled and some still on sprue. Quite a few in fact, about four boxes worth.

It looks like he was planning on at least a brigade of infantry and had made a start, six figures to be precise. I endeavoured to complete at least some of them and this is their story.

My chums painting style is a bit different to mine but I made a best effort to copy his.

Here is my effort on the left, matt varnished and his on the right, unvarnished and a little bit glossy.

Can you see much of a difference?

I started with figures freshly washed in soapy water and mounted on painting sticks.

A black undercoat follows.

Then a fairly hefty dry-brush of white.

This, as you can see, brings out a lot of detail but it is important to leave a bit of shadow.

The next set of stages is to block in, carefully, all the other colours, starting with red for the jacket and flesh tones for face and hands.

Keep these stages going until all the coloured areas are done. Then I used a black lining pen to highlight various shadows and delineate items like the white cross belts.

The last stage of my chums technique is a colour wash/varnish which I found in a sealed jar. Its composition is unknown to me but I expect that it is a combination of a clear acrylic varnish and a grey-ish colour.

After that coat is dry then it is a simple matt varnish exercise followed by standard basing. They now look like this.

Rather smart, don't you think? Certainly ready for battle.

On parade are His Majestys 3rd (East Kent) Regiment of Foot, "The Buffs".

Grenadiers on the right of the line.

Light Company on the left, singly based just in case they need to skirmish.

Just another three and a bit boxes to go.

And if you can't wait for me to get them into action on my tabletop I can't. It still looks like this.