Plans for the French Hussars

I will shortly start on two units of french hussars (1st and 4th) so I can complete Pajol's cavalry corps. I'll try and get the 4th to look like the dashing figures on the front of the General de Brigade rules book. It's from a painting by Edourad Detaille and obviously inspired Mr Andrew Barton since the 'superior officer' of hussars has exactly the same pose! His saddlecloth and breeches look black rather than dark blue.

Here is also a picture from Andre Jouineau's book 2 of Hussars. We see that the blue normally associated with the 1st hussars is a lot darker than usually depicted.

Prussian Artillery - new and old

Completed basing the prussians last night and took some photos today after the PVA dried. They  are based on two different sizes of MDF, the AB artillery which I finished some months ago are on smaller sized 30x50 bases but looked a bit cramped so I moved to 40x50.

The only thing I've done differently this time is to paint the edge of the bases the same colour as the main colour of the soil and rocks. Looks bettter I think and I can't really figure out what got into to me to paint the edges green on all the hundreds of other bases completed in the past!.

So we have two Warmodelling horse artillery guns, the quality of the crew castings are not so fine but the cannons are quite good. Then we have four AB guns quality excellent. Finally we have six Old Glory artillery peices, guns not so good (a bit small) but the crew are fine.

Whats next?

Took a few photo's of my next units. First in line will be some Prussian artillery, mainly Old Glory with two Warmodelling cannons. After that will be two units of French hussars (1st and 4th), these are AB's and I have colour coded the milk bottle tops so not to mix them up, as I have sorted the poses for each unit. After these are completed I will commence two units of British AB peninsular infantry. These can all be seen primed black and waiting for a few licks of vallejo! Incidently, I'm now using GW Chaos black primer, this has a slight sheen to it and you can easily make out the smallest of detatils - I found the vallejo black primer made it a bit harder to see the details as it was matte.

AB French Line Foot Artillery

Just completed these guys in record time, the blue coats were easy to paint as where the crossbelts. You may notice a French line horse battery lurking among the foot. The first picture is a shot of the back of my head (thanks to my daughter Sarah) and you can just see me clutching a lollipop stick of figures. The batteries are mainly 6lb's but two are howitzers and two are 12lb(the 12lbs are seen in the last two photos).

Westphalian Landwehr Cavalry

Just completed these guys - they were a bunch of Warmodelling leftovers and are a mixture of Uhlans and Landwehr and as a result they do not have any command to go with them.

Prussian Line Infantry Unit

Just completed a line infantry unit - these are Old Glory figures and quite nice ones I think. They dont have a flag as yet, I'm going to order some from Fightin15s. My printer just isn't up to the job of printing the fine details and consequently looks a mess. Speaking of Fightin15s, the prices have been increased yet again so it is now £6.00 for 8 foot or 4 horse. The grass is of two types, the shorter grass was originally for my 10mm figures, I may at a later date trim the grass as it looks too regular in shape.

Three more French Command bases

Completed some more bases, as you can see Marshal Grouchy is back with his new ADC who is an officer of the 1st Hussars. I've given this officer a darker blue than the 1st are usually thought to have had. This is because the author of my French hussar book believes this to be the case (and he is French after all!).

The other two are Divisional Generals and I've given their ADC's the appropriate plume colour. I'm not too sure about the gold braid on the ammunition box belt but ah well.

Prussian Reserve Infantry

These guys have been sitting on my desk for ages. I got the kids to paint the greyjackest and the off-white trousers. I know these regiments were mainly all in grey but I wanted a more interesting combination and satisfy myself that these used landwehr issue trousers! They will also double up as Landwehr since I'm short of these troops also.

The figures are from Fantassin (warmodelling), I like all the poses apart from the guy with one leg in the air. The sculpts are not too bad but I think the figures were cast in a hurry. The different poses in a unit make for a ragged ill-disciplined look which I like.

Based as usual on 40x30 MDF, with 8 figures to stand and 4 stands in a 'unit', stuck on with 'no-more-nails', painted and grassed.

AB French command stands

After I finished my last batch of 10mm figures I just totally lost the urge to paint. I didn't stop posting on blogs etc and looking at things Napoleonic, I just didn't lift a brush for over two months. I made a mistake going to 10mm, at the end of the day you just can't beat nicely proportioned and sculpted 18mm figures.

Anyway,before I got the urge to try 10mm I had finished two command stands. One you may recognise from previous posts as it had Marshal Grouchy on it. However, I felt three figures was a bit much for one stand so I removed him. He will get his own ADC later.