Blackened Manes, Tails, and Lower Legs. . .

The first squadron of 14 plus the two-figure regimental staff of a colonel and another trumpeter (riding a grey). Funny how, as Wellington Man mentions in his most recent blog post this morning, cavalry units look pretty awful until you begin addressing the horses in earnest. It is at that point that everything begins coming together. Getting there is always a struggle however where cavalry is concerned.

Spent a couple of pleasant hours early yesterday afternoon applying thinned (with Liquin Original) Winsor & Newton alkyd oil 'Ivory Black' carefully to the manes, tails, and lower legs of 13 bays and one grey horse. It was during this activity that I began to think, "These might not look so bad after all."

Still lots to do before this first squadron and small regimental staff of two are finished, and I am a bit behind schedule here (the end of July is looming), but the brushwork on the figures seems to be falling into place. Today, I'll start with the manes and tales on the two chestnuts in the squadron (a nice dark brown I think), and then it will be time to apply the white markings to muzzles and fetlocks before I finish by painting and/or cleaning up the actual hooves. If there is time, I'll go back and apply a bit of thinned Ivory Black to the muzzles of the bays.

I find that a fairly thin (but not runny) glaze of black over tails, manes, lower legs, and muzzles on bays, which are already brown underneath, allows a bit of that same brown to show through, and yields a not unpleasant result. A very understated form of highlighting and shading if you will without everything looking just pure, dead, dull, black hole in deep space black if that makes any sense.

A trained artist with a thorough grasp of color theory and painting technique could probably explain that better, but ol' Mom (along with Stepdad) is busy this weekend purchasing another house, and she has never been one for all of this social media nonsense as much as she is into the latest versions of her iPhone and iPad. Parents, eh? I'll have to raise the question at another time, I fear, to get her considered opinion on the matter.

-- Stokes

The lone grey, in particular, is shaping up somewhat nicely.

Comments

Ross Mac rmacfa@gmail.com said…

Inch by inch, row by row...

2:54 PM

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

And We're Off!!!

Arrrgh! Gotta go back into camera settings on my iPhone to bring all of the frame into focus. Blast! Painting is underway on the 60 or so Minden Austrians, which are slated to become my version of the Anhalt-Zerbst Regiment of AWI renown. More or less indistinguishable from Austrians of the era really, right down to the red facings and turnbacks, but the eventual flags (already in my files) will set them apart. I went ahead and based-coated all of them over a couple of days lthe last week of August, using a mix of light gray and white acrylic gesso, before next applying my usual basic alkyd oil flesh tone to the faces and hands. In a day or two, I'll hit that with Army Painter Flesh Wash to tone things down a bit and bring some definition to the faces and hands. As usual, the plan is to focus on about 20 figures at a time, splitting the regiment roughly into thirds along with the color party and regimental staff. Depending on ...

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...

The Grand Duchy of Stollen

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