Time for some Austrians, er, um, Zichenauers. . .

A generic Austrian mounted officer converses with his Hungarian counterpart while a stray Croat takes pot shots at the enemy from behind the relative safety of a broken down gun carriage.

Painting on, and the glossing of, this latest command vignette was concluded late this morning with scenic features added mid-afternoon.  This time, most of the painting was done with Citadel acrylics although the horses, hats, and footwear were done with thinned oils.  The scenic features, as usual, are a combination of Woodland Scenics over sand stained dark brown, which was gathered many years ago from my maternal grandmother's creek bed during a dry spell in the summer of 1984.  The boulder and a piece of rotting tree trunk come from my driveway just outside Stollen Central.  

This time, instead of black lining the reins and harnesses on the horses, I first used a watery dark brown paint, followed by a reddish brown highlight (?!) over top.  Dark brown lining gives a less stark effect than black, but still makes these particular details stand out against the lighter colored horses.  I later added a tiny bit of the same dark brown lining to the three white uniforms just to define things a bit more.  For anyone else loony enough to add old school lining to their figures, I'd suggest either a darker compliment of the same color or dark brown, both of which are a bit more subtle than black lining.  But, to each his, or her own of course.

Rats!  I just noticed that forgot to paint the Austrian's sword loop around his right wrist.  Don't you just hate when that happens?  Well, I suppose it's a fairly easy and rapid job to take care of it before continuing on with the next Austrian/Zichenauer staff vignette tonight or tomorrow. That particular base will feature some engineer officers mounted and on foot, overseeing some project or other.  But I'm getting ahead of myself.

The inspiration for the base of figures featured in today's post comes from a 15mm French Napoleonic staff vignette that was featured in the August '89 issue of Wargames Illustrated entitled 'Designing and Painting Napoleonic Armies' by an American named F. Patrick Burk.  Sadly, despite my repeated web searches over the last few years for clues as to his whereabouts and hobby activities now, Mr. Burk seems to have disappeared without a trace in the intervening almost quarter century.  Yikes!  Where has the time gone?

The mounted figures are by Minden Miniatures while the gun and the lone Croat are by RSM95.  Figures from these two ranges complement each other perfectly with regard to size and proportion and thus extend both ranges considerably where poses and/or battlefield activities are concerned.