Friday, June 18, 2010

Victrix Highlanders - WIP + 7

Knocked out a few more steps today: 1) Finished all the white belts and lacing. 2) Applied Vallejo Cadmium Red as a base coat for the jackets. 3) painted the bonnet plumes - red for the center companies, red over white for the grenadiers, and red over green for the lights. The plume coloring is a bit unique to the 42nd; most other center companies were white over red, and grenadiers and lights were solid red and green, respectively. I didn't go through the effort to make the lacing end in "bastion" shape, nor left the center of the lacing open.
These are the flank companies - grenadiers in the two first rows, and lights in the last two. Cockades will be red for grenadiers and green-edged red for lights (I might just leave them red). As I mentioned before, the box I got from Maelstrom Games was flawed in that many of the right arms were for center companies - having only the tuft and not the birdcage wings. Steve at Victrix is sending me a replacement box, but since I  had already started on these, I just painted the tufts to look like wings.
Next, the jackets will be highlighted with red, and maybe red & yellow (or white). Silver buttons and blue facings will follow. After these, the muskets, haversacks, greatcoat rolls and canteens should pretty much finish the paint work. So far, I really like this painting technique - using the black undercoat as much as possible for black lining. It works well for the multitude of belts and lacing on Napoleonics. It is also convenient that British backpacks are black.

5 comments:

  1. great looking! Are you going to go brighter on the red, or leave them as they are? How do you like the Victrix Plastics? I found the bayonets and swords a bit brittle on the French Imp. Guard I did.

    Cheers...

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  2. One last thing but I was wondering if you mind linking to my blog as I have done here? I could use some(A lot) of critique on my paiting. The only one that seems leave many comments is my mate from NZ Galpy.

    Cheers...

    http://miniature-junkie.blogspot.com/

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  3. Razor:

    I'm going to give the jackets some highlighting. Yes, the bayonets do seem a bit weaker than Perry; what I did was use a tip from another blogger (forgot who) - who said to drop some Superglue at the bayonet joint. It seems to work. It's a little stronger for sure.

    I will surely peruse your blog and make comments for you use. Warm regards, Dean

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  4. Dean, thanks for the tip, I just got some Victrix Highlanders, Brit arty and French infantry on order. I did not know that the Victrix French Infantry came with the pieces to make a sapper model but discovered this today. I have 8-9 boxes of Perry French Infantry can't remember which, anyway they do not give you the figs to make the sapper! I wish I had discovered this before hand. Anyway great work! yes please check out my blog, right now it is mainly 15mm but I do have 28mm ECW and Napoleonics stuff that will show up more and more as I finish painting up the current batch of 15's.

    Cheers...

    Cheers...

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  5. I love the way they are coming along Dean. They are going to look great! Your tip about the superglue on the Victrix bayonets is a good one. You can use Revell Contacta Pro as well - its a bit more viscous than super (so goes on a bit thicker) and not quite as brittle when it sets. The skinny bits on Victrix stuff are a bit 'fragile' - just as well there are plenty of spares in the box - and the hard plastic they use is a few grades softer than Perrys. The softer stuff is of course, great for conversion work!

    Cheers,
    Doc

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