"Whaddya mean I shouldn't paint gaiter buttons?"Confucius give sage advice! I think I'll have to post a copy of this over my painting table. That picture of Austrian Grenadiers (reenactors, of course) shows that a "four-colour" rule may be the way to go; touch in the main colours over a black undercoat.
5 comments:
The drybrush technique is your friend! Especially for Austrians.
Prime black and then dry brush with white until they are a shade of grey or white that you think is suitable, this will automatically give your figures all the shading they need at this scale. Then dab on the faces and facings etc. then do muskets and cartridge boxes and fix up any shakos that got colours on them and viola! Done. You'll be able to churn units out in no time at all and they will look good. Check out Peter Barry's painting tutorial on the Baccus site.
Thanks for the tip dewolfe, and for referring me to Pete Berry's tutorial- duly bookmarked!
I may play around with a number of techniques, but the one you describe sounds simplest and will give just the amount of "instant gratification" I am looking for!
Another thing I am considering is avoiding using "pure" whites and blacks, and using a very, very light grey and a deep charcoal respectively for a "scale colour" effect.
On the other hand, bold may indeed be beautiful in this scale- I'll just have to play around and see what suits me best.
If you prime black and dry brush lightly with white it'll look grey depending on how many times you go over it. For my ACW Confederates I simply passed over the figures twice with a light dry brush of white and they look grey, for my Austrians I go over them with four quick dry brushes and they look like they are a real light grey, almost white. The black undercoat really darkens any colours you use on 6mm figures so to get bright collars and cuffs when using red or yellow you need to put it on quite thick or it will look maroon for red and brown for yellow.
That's good to know, dewolfe-thanks!
My first order to Baccus went out yesterday, and I can't wait to get them so that I can start putting "theory to practice".
Robert, I would advise you to try on a few sample before going the dry brush route.
A simpler technique I have been thinking of is to prime white, dark wash (very dark brown) heavily and highlight white, or try to play around a technique of this type.
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