Sunday 4 December 2011

Painting British Infantry – Part 4 : Detailing and Finishing-up

We’re in the finishing straight now. I spent an hour yesterday and about another 90 minutes this morning finishing the figures off. They’re now done apart from varnishing and basing the company command group. Which is a relief as I want to use them in a game on this coming Tuesday, 6th December.



There was not much left to do to be honest. I painted the mid-colour of the uniforms Vallejo English Uniform, and the highlight of the uniforms Vallejo Khaki. The metal parts of the rifles, the shovel heads and mess tins were painted Vallejo Gunmetal.



I added some miscellaneous Vallejo browns for the hair where this was visible under the helmet. And I painted a pair of eyes on the Artillery Liaison officer, as well as finishing off his compass, field telephone and boxes of spares.


I like to paint a black edge around the wooden base of the figures. I think that finishes them off, and forms a break between the figure and the terrain. I know some people prefer to simply paint the bases brown, and I’ve tried that in the past although my preference is for the black. Either way, I like to use a different paint which is a hard wearing acrylic paint for the base edge. I like the excellent Louvre series of artists acrylics for this. They’re very reasonably priced, work well for terrain as well as base edges, and they’re very hard working even if not varnished afterwards. They also have a great “double-cream” consistency, and never seem to separate as some of the Vallejo and Plaka colours can sometimes do. I bought mine at Cornellison’s in London, but you can find them at quite a few artists’ suppliers on line. Well worth checking out for large projects or base edges.

Well, that’s just about it. I’ll post a quick photo of the finished command group over the next few days. Next up will hopefully be the introduction to a club project we’re running through December. I hope you’ll like this, not least as it should give me the chance to talk through pre-game campaigning and the cross-over with running RPG games.

Hope you can join me for that.

12 comments:

  1. Beautiful Sidney. Really nice figures and wonderful paintwork.

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  2. I can only second what Rodger has written...
    Cheers
    paul

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  3. Well that's it! A combination of your blog and Warhammer Historical book deals has finally tipped me over the edge into WWI. I'm so weak...
    Now early or late war I have to decide. I think uniform wise early war looks cooler, but late war has more options and.....tanks!
    As always really lovely work and indeed inspirational!

    Christopher

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  4. A wonderful end to this series. I tend to paint in darker colours than you do and now I see the need to light my minis up really a lot more than I curently do, to achieve good results like yours. Thanks again for the tutorial, Sidney.

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  5. Superb, a thoroughly enjoyable series of posts. Wonderfully inspirational.

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  6. Really nice painting on both the figures and bases. Best, Dean

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  7. Well painted figs and a great post! Inspires me to paint more WWI figs!

    Cory

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  8. Thanks again, everyone. The comments are really welcome:

    @Rodger, Paul, Michael, Dean, Cory and Ray – thank you all, Gentlemen. I’m really glad you enjoyed the posts. I was a little nervous before I started if anyone would be interested. As I mentioned before, it’s definitely not a “do it this way”, but really just a “this is how I did it”. Really chuffed you enjoyed reading the posts.

    @Christopher – Oooops! What have I done now:) ! Early War has a flavor all of its own, and the uniforms are very nice indeed. We bought some Early War figures at the start of this year for the club, but I’ve yet to paint them. Late War does have more options, and yes….tanks! You can possibly have a greater variety of skirmish and large skirmish games Late War, but I think either period is pretty rich with wargaming potential.

    @Anibal – Thanks Benito! Your figures look pretty excellent just as they are! Light or dark finishes are a lot about preference anyway.

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  9. Just enjoyed the 4 parts and it's an excellent series of posts. Again some nice insight in your work. Superb stuff!

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  10. Sydney, I love your painting style and technique however the signal flags are not correct - commonwealth signal flags are right = solid blue ; left = white bisected by a horizontal blue stripe. John

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    1. Thanks John! Duly noted, Sir! I've another command set to do and I shall make sure I paint the correct flags next time! Thanks very much again!

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