Crossbelts and Turnbacks. . .

. . . and whiskers on kittens. These are a few of my favorite things. At least at the moment! The turnbacks were originally painted British Rifle Green, but examining a variety of sources on uniforms of the Irish Wild Geese regiments showed that many had, in fact, white turnbacks.

So, white it was, which meant carefully retracing the coattails of the figures with a #1 round brush and paint from a 10-year-old bottle of Ral Partha white, purchased from a gaming shop on State Street in my old stomping ground of Madison, Wisconsin during fall 1998. Amazingly, the paint has done well in that time with the help of an occasional few drops of water added to the bottle.

Then, it was onto the shoulder belts and sword belts around the waists of the musketeers. Contrary to my initial intentions stated here, I decided to make these white, which was indeed striking on the single crash test dummy, who received this treatment. Once again, though, referral to my Funken and various websites indicated that many Irish regiments in service of France had natural buff or tan-colored belts and webbing.

So, out came a bottle of Armory tan, which didn’t give quite the effect I was after on two test figures. Moving to another decade-old bottle of Ral Partha color, this time “Leather”, solved this little challenge nicely. If you look carefully, you might also be able to see that the brown musket stocks have been colored too.

So, you see before you the 1st (Colonel O’Malley’s) Most Honorable Grenzer Battalion in its current state. Unlike the rest of the unit, the Colonel, Adjutant, and senior NCO received white sword belts as a mark of their higher status. Next up, it’s on to the yellow hat lace for the men with gold for the officers and senior NCO, followed by musket straps, and maybe the two drums carried by the musicians.

And now, it’s time for me to open my umbrella and fly off above the rooftops of the city back to The Grand Duchy of Stollen, where I will dance madly in a mountain meadow above the estate and village, dressed in my cherished dirndl. The hills are indeed alive!

Comments

Stryker said…

Ah Stokes,

When that ole' dog bites
and the nasty bee stings
I take a look at your blog and see how those wild geese are coming on,

"Wild geese that fly with the moon on their wings,
These are a few of my favourite things"

Ian

4:44 AM

Bluebear Jeff said…

Stokes,

These brave lads are looking better every time I see them.

Good work indeed.

-- Jeff

6:30 AM

Der Alte Fritz said…

I love my Partha paints and still use them. I dread the day when they all run out.

3:43 PM

Fitz-Badger said…

LOL

Coming along nicely.

8:12 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

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...

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 ...

The Grand Duchy of Stollen

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