The Christmas Brigades - On Parade

I'll let the next few pictures speak for themselves. They show the transition from the finishing touches to the gloss varnish stage.

Now the shiny bits

These will be dry by next year or tomorrow morning so I will have a go at getting them based.

Happy New Year Everyone

The Christmas Brigades - Nearly Done

Slow progress as I'm a bit under the weather.

Note how the green base radically improves the appearance of the figures.

Just the finishing touches to do before the gloss varnish stage.

I will need to cut some bases soon from sheet plastic and also get some unit bases made up.

The Christmas Brigades - Next Steps

Today I got going with the blue coats of the regular Union infantry.

Undramatic as you can see. The bits to be careful with are the neckline, the bottom edge where it meets the trousers and around the hands on the end of the sleeves. Overpainting the backpack is not a problem.

Here's the whole lot so far.

Now comes the smaller areas of colour, brown on the hair, black on the boots, the bottom rim of the kepi, the backpack, the cartridge pouch and the cross straps and finally dark blue on the kepi.

The Sharpshooters get a similar treatment although mostly in brown.

Past halfway with this Regiment then.

And the Sharpshooters too!

Hopefully I can do the finishing touches tomorrow and get to the all important gloss varnish stage.

The Christmas Brigades - Base Coats

Once the undercoat is dry I continue with the next step and that is to cover the main large areas of colour. In this case my regular Union Regiments get Sky Blue trousers.

This can be applied fairly quickly with a large-ish brush as it goes nowhere near the face or hands and it doesn't matter if it overflows a bit onto the boots or the jacket. They will be overpainted later in a darker colour.

 

This is where I start adding any fine detail (as far as fine detail and the 'toy' soldier style goes) and in this case it is a thin dark blue stripe down the trouser leg. My understanding is that regular infantry get a dark blue stripe, cavalry get yellow, artillery get red and militia get white.

This unit is destined to be Berdans Sharpshooters so they get both trousers and jacket in dark green with no trouser stripe. Again this only has to be tidy around the neckline and around the hands on the rifled musket. It won't matter if the backpack gets covered, it will be overpainted later.

A family crisis has interrupted this painting session so the blue coats will have to wait until next time.

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.

 

The Christmas Brigades

I started to sort out my Christmas present which was in the form of 8 Regiments of Spencer Smith 30mm ACW troops.

Here they are straight from the packing and grouped into their respective brigades.

The four nearer regiments are all in kepi and will be painted as Union whereas the further four regiments will be Confederate, three in slouch hats and one in kepi.

An hour and half later after some filing of the bases they can now stand up prior to being mounted on painting sticks.

On closing the ranks up I spotted a differingly posed figure who was immediately ejected from the parade ground. His replacement has been requested.

Now for the painting.

Merry Christmas Everyone

Festive Greetings to all Wargamers everywhere.

Hope there is some 'Lead, Plastic or Resin' under everyones tree.

Merry Christmas Everyone