The 36 Minden Austrian dragoons are really coming together now and quickly too.
Fewer colors are more fun to apply to figures than a nice shade of bright red or scarlet! It really makes 'em come alive. Incidentally, red is my favorite color. Let's skip what that might suggest about me psychologically speaking though and talk about this particular step in a bit more detail.
Yesterday, during a couple of breaks from the computer and finalizing online courses for the fall, I sat down and applied dots, dabs, and dashes of Citadel Evil Sun Scarlet to the previously defined cuffs, turnbacks, and facings. All managed quickly and this time without any mistakes to fix. The painting gods were smiling on me I guess. I went for subtlety, uncharacteristically, and made sure to leave some of the darker red showing, already applied to these areas some days ago, to suggest shadow/shading.
I must come clean here and admit to observing carefully over the years how other painters and wargamers around Bloglandia acheive this. For instance, Jim 'Der Alte Fritz' Purky is adept at highlighting his figures in a similar way. Practice is essential when it comes to improving as a figure painter, but equally important is the inspiration to try and adapt new approaches that you can pick up here and there from other dab hands.
In any case, somewhat less coffee than usual yesterday, the related steady nerves, surprisingly good results, and the related will to keep going given how lovely the scarlet looked once applied meant that everything involved with this particular step was managed in fairly short order. I'd say two 50+ minute sessions tops, one in the afternoon, and another mid-evening. There was even time following the second such session to apply a white highlight to three of the shoulder belts at the rear left, just to see how they'll look when all done.
Not too shabby if you'll pardon my saying so. Looking ahead, it's shoulder belt highlights this evening, and possibly dark gray highlights to boot toes, heels, and upper edges if things go well. Allons, allons mes enfants!
-- Stokes
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