Painting Great Northern War Saxons

OK so as threatened this is a post talking you through my process for painting. I wont call it a tutorial, that suggests I know more than someone else, this is just my approach and I hope one or two people can pick something from it.




For this exercise I have followed the painting of a small number of Saxons, casualties, Standard bearers and my new heavy cavalry, this will allow me to share how I do both figures and horses.


These particular figures are mostly Warfare with a couple of Ebor standard bearers.

 For the figures I always prime in black and I use a tin of Halfords Matt Black car spray which gives a nice finish to paint onto.

 The horses are primed white as this suits my purposes with the horse much better, again its Halfordsthis time white primer.

Back to the figures and the first job I always do is anything that needs to be black, this is an advantage of priming in black, a quick dry brush of dark grey and your black boots and hat are complete. Particularly handy when painting the Black Guard for El Cid!

 Next I am adding base colour coats or block painting as others call it. The Saxons are in red so a nice dark base coat, the cavalry need a dark buff for their waistcoat trousers and bets, the foot need a pale grey for their cuffs and breeches which will be white later on.

 I personally like to use colour party paints (though not exclusively), they have a good range with decent coverage and best of all are only three miles from my house. http://www.colourparty.co.uk/
Colours used here are MA22 ECW Buff, MA40 Crimson, MA5 Panzer Grey, MA20 mid grey , MA10 Negro Brown.

 Whilst that is drying I have then started to base coat the horses. I have painted an acrylic base coat on the horses. I am painting a bas coat at least 2 shades lighter than the colour I want to achieve, we will add a much darker oil to this later then wipe it off.

 With base coats on its time to start the face. The European flesh is the only Foundry paint I use and I have the three shade set and use all three. I try to keep a narrow dark outline around the eyes, nose and mouth as the two below.

 I am then going to add the mid flesh shade, attempting to leave another narrow line of the darker flesh and also leave the bottom lip dark flesh.

 Finally adding the light flesh highlight only to end of nose, cheekbones and chin point.

I have then added a lighter buff to the ECW Buff and lightened the Scarlet to add a shade to the coats. The foot troops have had white added to cuffs breeches and stockings, leaving decent gaps so that the mid grey folds give a contrast.

 Whilst that si drying into the Kitchen to get the oils out. I always start with the greys and get darker, I tend to mix the colours any old how and throw colours in until I am happy, above a simple grey two shades darker than the white base coat.

 

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 Slap the colour on fairly liberally, its going to be wiped off in about 5 minutes.

 Then taking a rag, I prefer T shirt type material (currently using old underpants no jokes please, I have washed them) gently wipe the material over the model using a clean piece of cloth this will wipe off the majority of the paint, staining lightly the exposed, raised parts and leaving a darker area in the crevices.

 Your going to need to leave them for a couple of days to fdry now, I place mine on the window sill near the radiator to speed the dryng process up.

 So back to the figures, I have now added a third layer of ivory to the belts but only on the raised points across shoulder etc, I have painted the musket and pistols a chestnut brown and added the metal work and hat lace, the figures are finished.

 

 

With the horses dry I am now painting the saddlery and the mains and tails black. along with the saddle cloth

I have added a pale grey border and also used the pale grey on some of the horses hocks and foreheads. Not 100% what this units saddlecloths should be but as Beausts have black facings and the only other Cavalry with black facings (Golts dragoons) had black piped white saddle cloths its a decent bet.

Finally I add white to the piping and hocks/foreheads and adark grey shading to the saddle cloth. Chestnut to the wood of the pistols, bronze pistol buts and steel bits to the reins and the horses are complete.

 I Areldite the riders to the horses and we are ready for Varnish.

Firstly a layer of Gloss, this adds toughness and protects them from wargamers fat fingers.

 Then a good layer of matt. I really like this figures in comfort quick dry matt, I don't like flat matts but satin is too shiny, this gives a slightly egg shell tint to the matt and I like that a lot.

An then we are done. Finished figures are here.

So there we are, hopefully that's enough detail without being too detailed and sending you all to sleep. I will do a follow up post on the basing (I may even base some myself rather than sending to the basing department) and I still have those Polish Cossacks to share with you.


Thanks for reading.