Session Five: The Sap Green

The green facings, turnbacks, lapels, and waistcoats have been completed in one afternoond. Whew!

A marathon painting session this cold, snowy Sunday afternoon (sadly, not yet enough on the ground for cross-country skiing), so four hours plus spent in the painting saddle carefully applying thinned Winsor & Newton Griffin Alkyd Sap Green. As usual, a healthy dollop of Liquin Original mixed with a fairly small amount of the Sap Green. As I gain experience using oils for the bulk of my painting, I find that less color and more Liquin -- No precise measurements, you know. It's all done by sight and the seat of my pants. -- seem to yield better results, making the color easier and faster to apply and helping the pigment to settle in recessed areas while running somewhat thinner of raised parts of the figures at the same time.

Today, I used a #2 round synthetic Grumbacher 'Goldenedge' brush and went rather slowly to minimize errors that might need later touching up. Everything went reasonably well, and besides cleaning up a few edges along some of the white shoulder belts with some later sepia brown lining, there are very few areas that will require retouching after the green has dried during the next 18-24 hours.

Still lots to do, of course, before we can call 'em done, but the back of this particular mini-project has been broken, and it's simply smaller thing now like muskets, barrels, and bayonets, musket slings, wigs/hair, mustaches, the drummer's drum and shoulder wings, etc. Maybe another two-four painting sessions before I can apply the usual two coats of acrylic gloss finish to these figures, set them aside, and move onto the next company-sized batch of 20 figures in this monster composite regiment of RSM95 infantry.

Meanwhile, back in real life, the new college semester begins on January 21st for yours truly, so let's see how far along I can get with these before then. You know, it'll be the same old song and dance as far as available free time goes once I am about five or six weeks into the term. As the saying goes, I'd better get [painting] while the gettin's good!

-- Stokes

Another one of the several references, a grenadier of the Kurmainz (aka Wildenstein) Regiment, that I am using to inform my painting of the current batch of figures.

Comments

Old School ACW said…

Stokes,

That's looking very, very nice. Excellent work as usual!

Greg

7:36 PM

marinergrim said…

Always interesting to see your work Stokes. Never got on with oils myself but I appreciate the work that you do to promote their use.

9:41 AM

Big Andy said…

Never been able to master assembly line painting myself- but the end results definitely justify the means !

10:31 AM

A Little More Brushwork. . .

A little more brushwork on the first batch of (my version of) the Anhalt-Zerbst Regiment yesterday (Saturday). Taking a different tack this time and addressing many of the details first before the white coats and other larger areas of uniform. The eagle-eyed among you will notice that I've painted the (dark) red stocks of the enlisted men. Always a difficult and frustrating item to paint, it made sense to paint from the inside out as it were and get that particular detail out of the way first rather than try to paint it in later after much other painting has been accomplished. Trying to reduce the need for later retouching of other items on the figures you understand. Hopefully, I will be able to get back to these later today after a second trip back to the Apple Store for help with a couple of new iPad issues and, following the return home, some revision of Google Slides for tomorrow's meetings with my students. -- Stokes P.S. And according t...

Basic Reds Done at Last. . .

S till quite a way to go with the current batch of 20 human figures and a horse (of course), but they're actually starting to look like something after all of the red distinctions. Quite a bit of painting in hour-long sessions the last week as and when time has allowed. Mostly applying the basic dark red to facing areas and turnbacks followed by the inevitable touch-ups to clean up wobbly edges and those misplaced, minute splotches of Citadel Khorne Red. They're looking like so many Austrian infantry regiments of the era at this point, but the eventual flags will turn them magically into the Anhalt-Zerbst Regiment, more or less, of the AWI period. But I'm getting a bit ahead of myself. One frustrating point (ahem) of sad discovery. I've started trying to use those Winsor & Newton 'Series Seven' brushes (#1 rounds) purchased last spring, and the blasted things simply will not keep a point. Very frustrating since I have heard over the y...

It's Early Days Yet. . .

M aking some early progress with Batch A of the Anhalt-Zerbst Regiment over the last several days/evenings. Nothing terribly exciting just yet, but the basic black, brown, and flesh areas are done as are the green bases, and gray undercoat. The latter two areas needed some careful retouching early in the week. Next up, the neck stocks. I might just do these in red for the enlisted men although some of my source material suggest they were black, but I always look for an excuse to shake things up a bit. Any errant splotches of red (or black) can be covered with another application of light gray before I move onto the next step. "Giddy up!" as one Cosmo Kramer might have said. -- Stokes

The Grand Duchy of Stollen

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