Imperfect Painting - Picardie and Piedmont

This may be an unusual post, in that I am going to show some, shall we say, 'less than perfect' painting results. I may be drummed out of the blogging society for this, but I think I'm keeping with the spirit of my hobby. .I'm doing my best, making mistakes, hopefully learning lessons, enjoying it, and maybe getting better bit by bit.  If I only showed perfect results I'd have nothing to show here! So,  you have been warned - here are the latest 'learning opportunities'...      

 Picardie:

It took a while, but I finished painting my first  Seven Years War French Infantry - a couple of 'Portable Wargame' units of the Picardie regiment.  These are nice Garrison figures,  supplied by the excellent  Rob Young of The Eastern Garrison - thanks very much, Rob!  I liked them - rather more elegant and less 'chunky' than the vintage  Minifigs I have been painting up to now for the period. So here is a view of them - 'Button Counters' need not look too closely, as I have not  painted on any buttons...  

gentlemen from Picardie..

 However, 'belt counters' may well be clutching at their pearls, as I will admit  I have made a mistake with the crossbelts. Two factors : (a) colour, and  (b) arrangement. As to colour, I took a steer from the Kronoskaf website, which states that crossbelts were  natural leather (often whitened with pipe-clay)  - I decided my chaps would want to be smart, and use the white. But then all the examples I've seen in other illustrations ( such as a nice plate in an edition of Tradition picked up the Broadside show ) tend to show the natural leather look, so I may be out on a limb here. Yesterday I acquired the  Osprey Men-At-Arms no.302 Louis XV's Army (2) French Infantry, which states that 'from the later 1750s a growing number of regiments whitened their belts', which maybe gets me off the hook.  Where I have a bigger problem is the arrangement of belts - with a slight shortage of documentary sources initially, I rather rashly assumed they would have the classic 'two belts crossed over' , whereas I now see that in reality they more likely had a single shoulder belt for the cartridge box, with a waist belt for sword and bayonet scabbards. Oops.  I suppose I could try to re-paint the extra belt into the 'Grey-White' coat colour, but for the moment I am going to leave them, and assume a rather eccentric Colonel has provided non-regulation equipage - or 'liberated' crossbelts from fallen Prussians, perhaps? . Further units ( I have another two or three lots still to do )  will revert to the single belt. possibly in buff leather for good measure.    

Having said that, I was otherwise quite pleased with them;  I kept them in my very  simple and rather old-school  'house style' ('cos that's all I can do!);  I think I got the 'grey-white' about right, and it will distinguish them nicely from the pure white of my Austrians and Saxons. I hit upon the trick of using a fine-line black pen to outline those belts (thus highlighting my mistake, oops!) and to do the garters at the knee, and I will use that again, it worked pretty well. I even managed to get the flags more or less to my satisfaction - made from good old wine bottle-top foil, painted with acrylics, and which may be shaped a bit to give an impression of fluttering in the breeze - they are only temporarily attached for the camera.   Not too bad for a first go, and I hope the next batch will be better - onwards and upwards, etc.

 Piedmont

Now a complete change of tack - both  period and scale. A bit of a first for me: I have had a go at some 6mm figures.  Since acquiring Neil Thomas' fine book Wargaming 19th Century Europe I have been thinking about that period, and the wars of Italian unification or Risorgimento  (memories of history teacher Mr Davis intoning that word in his mellifluous Welsh tones, c.1976 - it must have stuck somehow) seemed an interesting and colourful setting (and balanced - no dour Prussians winning all the time!).   At  'Salute'  I picked up a nice book on the subject, Gabriele Esposito's Armies of the Italian Risorgimento, which has lots of inspiring contemporary illustrations of the uniforms of the time.  I also took a punt on buying some figures, having decided to give 6mm a try for this period, as a bit of an experiment. That nice Mr. Berry at Baccus was happy to oblige with a few packs of figures, so I now have some Piedmontese and Austrian infantry, and some artillery pieces.  As a first attempt, I tried  putting together a Piedmontese infantry unit ( a battalion?  Neil Thomas is deliberately vague ).  

For painting advice, Baccus has quite a useful page on their website,  the crucial point being 'paint the unit, not the figure' - don't get caught up trying to paint the detail that no-one will ever see at this scale! Armed with that, I plunged in - and I reckon the advice is good. 

 

From the Risorgimento book I found this plate (above, centre) showing a Piedmontese Line Infantryman, post-1849, and that looked a nice simple and pleasing colour scheme.  Immediately a slight problem arose, in that the picture shows a man in single-breasted tunic, but if you squint hard and look closely, the Baccus figures are in longer coats, probably greatcoats! No pic of those in the book,  so I made an assumption that the  long coats would be basically the same blue colour - fingers crossed. Following the Baccus 'cheat sheet', I found I could fairly whizz along with painting, especially as I was only doing 8 strips of figures - a total of just 32 men.  Having done a basic job, and given them equally, er,  basic  bases, I have a unit. A bit rough around the edges ( and a lesson learned about sticking them to the base before trying to paint the green on - I won't do that in future, and will probably end up re-basing these! ),  but I reckon they will do fine.  I reckon I could knock out serviceable ( for me) units at a satisfyingly high rate..

HOWEVER of course, when I came to photograph them, I ran into the problem with modern cameras - they are far too good! Took this on my phone: 

 and they look terrible, don't they? Click on the pic to look closely - overlapping paint everywhere, green base colour all over the place..  BUT also note, if you click on the pic to look at them closely, you are seeing them as about 25mm tall - 4 times their actual size!  No-one will EVER see them like that in reality, short of picking them up and putting them under a magnifier - and if you do that, you will  NOT be invited back...  I think a more realistic view is something like this  ( and no clicking!) 

Looking at them like that, I am not  unhappy for a first and rather hasty attempt- I'll re-do the bases, though. And I do hope to get a bit better at painting them too, with practise. Following a hint from Neil Thomas' book, I have kept the figures on two of the bases in their strips, representing a 'reserve' part of the unit in closer order, while the other two bases have the strips chopped up and spaced out a bit, to represent skirmish order. Here the unit is in 'Line' formation as per Neil's rules, with in effect a skirmish line out front and a formed-up reserve behind, ready for the glorious bayonet charge.. 

As I said these are Baccus 6mm, largely because they were what I could buy on impulse at Salute. - but I admit I actually rather like the look of  the range of 'semi-flat'  MDF 6mm figures from Commission Figurines - you can see them in use on recent blogs such as Wargames with Toy Soldiers 1685-1845 by Steve J,  and   My Wargaming Habit by Richard,  of Postie's Rejects fame.  Commission do a Napoleonic range and an ACW range, and I think both could come in quite handy for the Risorgimento, - British shakos for Austrians, for example, and ACW Kepis for Garibaldi's redshirts? the figures have a rather stylised look and minimal detail, which I think will make 'paint conversions' very possible. 

 It so happens I picked up some of their ACW figures at a show in  pre-Covid times, and here are some - posed in front of the Baccus Piedmontese, we have a base of kepi-wearing Union and one of slouch-hatted Johnny Rebs :

Commission Figurines ACW in front of Baccus Piedmontese 

 

Sadly it looks like one of the Reb's musket has turned into a shotgun with the barrel 'broken', but  think I might be on to something here! I think the two different makes of figure don't look too different in size, so should go together on the table without problems.  Given the 'mission creep' factor ( hmm.. when will the D-Day Dodgers actually get a game? And those Picardie chaps? ), any such project needs to be quick and cheap, and I think 6mm with Neil Thomas rules may just fit the bill. Much to think about, then.. 

*** UPDATE :***

After a little thought,  I decided to re-do the Piedmontese infantry basing as shown in this picture: 

 

I simply reduced the number of figures on the 'skirmish' bases to 4 instead of 8, so they look a bit more of a loose formation. They are not 'stuck down' yet, but I am happier with them - and there is a small bonus in that with 24 figures per unit rather than 32, I should get four  units out of my pack of 96 Baccus figures, rather than only three. So, more efficient too!

And while I'm here, many thanks to Jon at Palouse Wargaming Journal for mentioning this post in his latest!   

*** update ends.. ***    

As I said, not a parade of Picardie and Piedmont perfection, but I hope this has been interesting. Next week, maybe even some gaming - he said, yet again..  Also a return visit to Duxford is planned, to include the 'Land Warfare' hall - should be lots of wargaming interest there! I will give a full report, I hope.  Meanwhile, keep well, everyone.