Von Polenz Cuirassiers, ca. 1733: The Devil is in the Details. . .

A gray, intermittently rainy Saturday here in the Grand Duchy. The perfect excuse to get myself into the painting chair for a couple of sessions devoted to various and sundry small, even minute details on these 14 Eureka Saxon cuirassier castings.

These included 13 mustaches (Vallejo 'German Camo Black-Brown'), valise straps (Vallejo 'black'), and highlights on all of the leather cartridge, sword belts, and gauntlets (Vallejo 'Flat Earth'). I also busied myself with some additional touching up/highlighting to the visible turnbacks in the facing color (Army Painter 'Fur Brown').

Again, probably a bit light for the 'coffee brown' facing color of the regiment during the early 1730s, but we want it to show up on the table. Wargamers' artistic license as mentioned in an earlier post.

But what about the trumpeter? Here, I also applied Vallejo 'Flat Red' as a highlight to his coat collar, turnbacks, and waistcoat plus carefully painted his bugle. The shoulder wings and lace were left for another time since, as you probably know yourselves, these require fresh eyes, steady hands, and plenty of breath-holding. After two painting sessions, my focus and concentration flagged. But a good day's work.

There were a number of other touch-ups and small details attended to, but I won't bore you with those. Suffice to say, the 14 cuirassiers and their mounts finally feel like they are coming together.

Not so fast.

There is the nagging issue of the cuffs/buttons, which on these Eureka Saxon castings are apparently wrong. According to the illustration below that I've used as a painting guide for these figures, Saxon cuirassiers in the early 1730s had much larger cuffs with a different button configuration. Austrian cuirassier miniatures, or possibly French would have provided a closer match, but of course I was not thinking that clearly when I purchased these ahead of my 50th birthday back in early October 2016.

Ah, well. It's that ol' wargamers' license again. I console myself with the notion that there are perfect units and finished units. These will be the latter of course. And after just nine years!

Still, it won't be long now. Just a few edges here and there to clean up, possibly some places to retouch, and then it's onto the carbines and pallasch baskets. Blah, blah, blah. But it's nice to feel that old painting enthusiasm seep back into my veins, I must admit.

-- Stokes

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A Little More Brushwork. . .

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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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