ACW forces building, Bull Run 1861, Army of the Shenandoah:

 With some distractions I was still able to get in painting time and have tonight finished the 5th major formation (roughly a division size each one) for the Battle of Bull Run, 1861.

 

This time round it is the Army of the Shenandoah under J. E. Johnston.

the painting process
top -bare metal
mid -black base coat
bottom -'wet' brush of upper surfaces

missing in these images, again due to my camera being unable to focus properly on the surfaces of the models, is the 'ink' stage, where a layer of brown ink was put over everything

top -main color layer
mid -flesh tones and mid tones
bottom -final highlights and special 'red' parts

This time around I also did a series of photos of the horses, command, and artillery section in the different stages:

after 'wet-brush' and before inks, came the
horses under coatings

here the ink is still only on the horses
you can see the ink layer on the blue coated zouaves
in the front left of the image

wet artillery guns

everything assembled prior to the matte coating stage

final stage before flocking

this time I did a few more photos of the minis just on the bases

before the flocking stage

then with the new mobile 'label' system in place

finally a comparison shot with the flocking drying

There it is dear readers, a 20+ year process coming to the end of the first stage.

Tomorrow (Sunday) I will do some more photos of the whole of the Confederate forces, then possibly some 'in situ' photos with both Union and Confederates to show off the 'grey and blue' units in each force.

Watch for those photos in the coming week.

For now it is on to the buildings that I have from Sarissa along with some supply markers and some extra 'casualty' markers to give away to a great game friend who helped make this possible.