Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Austrian Infantry - Work in progress - Napoleonic Uniform

When setting up my forces for use on the magnetic bases, I have kept in mind being able to 'identify' units as distinct and separate from each other.

Austrian Napoleonic Uniforms as illustrated by L & F Funcken


This has meant that I use things such as the 'pose' of the miniature (whole battalions are either firing, kneeling or marching), or by using some particular coloring that matches with those of the nation-state historically.

troops at the blue coat stage


While many of the Austrian battalions had sky blue or variations of red 'facing colors' (what is the difference between lobster red and poppy red?) I will use the standard seven colors from the rainbow (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet) to make my troops different.  Also I shall be making two of the forces Hungarian, with the blue trousers, so that will permit me to 'mix it up' with the colors a bit.

Since most of the uniform is white, I like to undercoat a blue, as the first layer on top of the gray primer that is sprayed on the minis.  This permits me to work towards a bright white highlight and have plenty of definition in the layers of lighter blue below.

2 comments:

Archduke Piccolo said...

Interesting method - I've not seen that blue undercoating idea before.

So far as differencing is concerned, I find you can always do two shades of each 'rainbow' colour: a dark and a light. You could probably even do a 'mid'. But Black, brown and grey are also fine for facing colours, if perhaps less 'interesting' than some of the others.

Ross Mac rmacfa@gmail.com said...

The blue under white is an interesting idea. Should make it brighter.

The few white uniforms (vs light grey) I've done have tended more towards creamy than bright white so I use a yellow brown undercoat. I'll have to try this on something to see how I like it.