Happy New Year!

Happy New Year to my followers and visitors. I hope you’ve had a relaxing few days and got all the toys you wished for.

I managed to get a fair bit done this year:

– King’s Royal Rifle Corps
– Black Watch
– Mahdist Krupp battery
– Red rub
– Black rub
– 9th Bengal Cavalry
– cavalry brigade command
– Drummer Jones
– a large hill in three sections

With these I am drawing my Sudan project to a close for the moment. In future I’ll add mounted infantry to the cavalry brigade, an Indian infantry detachment, and then on to some Egyptians. Then there is the armed train project …

So … what’s next? Obviously I must get some gaming in now I have a pretty substantial collection, and post photos of the action. My new project takes me back to the fifteenth century and the dynastic struggle between cousins known today as the Wars of the Roses. Watch this space.

Brigadier-General Stewart, the 19th Hussars and 9th Bengal Cavalry.

19th Hussars

Just a brief post to note the completion of the 19th Hussars, who have turned out alright, I think.

I have an infantry unit of 24 figures started, probably 1bn The Berkshire Regiment – The Princess Charlotte of Wales’s (Royal Berkshire Regiment) after Tofrek, which served in the second Sukin campaign. I feel inclined to have a crack at modelling a screw gun mounted for transit on a handful of camels, too.

My Empire army is shaping up to be a melding of first and second Suakin campaign units. The 19th Hussars served in both campaigns, and with the Gordon relief column.

Two troops and squadron HQ mounted on spirited Syrian Grey ponies.

19th Hussars: coming along nicely

Although I approached painting the 19th Hussars’ Syrian grey ponies with some doubt, I have rather enjoyed seeing them emerge from the base coat in a fairly convincing way.

My main worry had been how to approach a dappled effect. The mottled finish I have achieved seems to be a more realistic way of simulating the various kinds of coat at this scale.

Now I am looking forward to getting the riders mounted and the whole unit based.

Eight ponies are pretty much finished, with another four needing their tack painting, leaving three to do. The troopers are keen to get mounted, of course.

19th Hussars’ Syrian Greys

I’ve been looking forward to this as much as I’ve been looking forward to the 42nd’s kilts … not so much. Actually, I really enjoy painting horses, but I could see that the various grey coats of the 19th Hussars’ ponies were going to be a challenge.

I looked at a few online tutorials, including videos, showing a number of approaches to the dappled grey, but none seemed really satisfactory to me, especially at this scale. I looked at a lot of photos of grey horses, discovering along the way that the appearance is determined by the age of the animal – some horses which turn out to be greys are even born black. Basically, the younger the animal the less white it will have in its coat, many becoming all white at ten years or older.

I have assumed that the 19th’s mounts would be younger horses, so no pure white mounts, but perhaps diminishing amounts of black and grey. I also considered the level of detail that would resolve at the table top view, where, for figures at this scale, one would be viewing a real scene from some distance. (This decision is evident in my Naval Brigade figures, where multiple white lines on their collars ‘resolve’ into a single line.)

Below are some of the reference images I collected, and my first attempts, which are not too shabby. As you will see, I have adopted a dry-brush technique to achieve the mottled appearance.

The sequence I have adopted is as follows:
– base colour white, off white, or light grey
– apply solid darker grey areas
– dry brush darker grey into base colour
– dry brush base colour into darker greys
– dark and light detail with fine brush if required.

Top to bottom: greys of various ages, and my first five at this scale.