28mm Victrix Napoleonic Austrians

 As a famously slow painter I thought I could use washes and contrast style painting techniques to do one of the most hated tasks in wargaming: painting Napoleonic Austrians. To date I've been sticking to 1812 Russian campaign and the Peninsula so never had to worry about taking on Austrians in any quantity. But, the Silver Bayonet rules inspired me to provide some backing soldiers to the cool miniatures from North Star. I could have gone with Foundry, or even Perry but I was able to get Victrix models locally. I also don't want anything to go to waste so figured I'd just do the box and never do Austrians again. (I bought a box of Perry Musketeers for Prussians to back their Silver Bayonet characters too but that's a tale for another day.) 

In any event here is the result:

My first instinct was to do the whole box as one regiment. But Austrian regiments didn't carry two colors meaning I'd have an extra flag dude. In the event I wanted to use them for Sharpe Practice or Black Powder, or some other skirmish game, it made more sense to split them up.

I had leeway on facings then - to distinguish this unit from the orange one below I chose purple here, marking this unit as No. 50 Stain. As far as I can tell the two were never brigaded together. If they were French, British or Russians I'd have paid closer attention. These are a one off exercise I'll never revisit so it is what it is.

The flags in the box didn't denote any particular regiment except this one flag for the No. 59 Jordis regiment. One less decision to make concerning facing colors - orange it is!

What follows is the step by step. This was a year long project from assembly to completion. I tend to flit from one thing to another as my interests direct me as followers of this blog will know. I enjoy assembling plastic models - tons of fun! Last January, I split the models into two identical units then put it all away for six months.

In July I got serious. I think this is Citadel Wraithbone spray as the undercoat then did a white? over the top as a zenithal. I should be able to do a quick stain and be done with the uniforms right?

Let's start in on the command. So far so good.

How about some Contrast Gore Grunta Fur for the horse? Lovely. Contrast Black Templar for the mane and tail.

Then suddenly - a five month break. In November I take a more dedicated approach.

Black stockings

For final highlight, I'll drybrush an off-white over the Strong Tome and done! Let's test.

Looks great - on to the rank and file.

Shade them buckles! I did rifle straps too here iirc.

Packs - more Gore Grunta Fur. Rolled overcoats: Basilicanum Gray. Miracle products: speed paints.

Boots and shakos - Black Templar again

Shako details

Hot Tip: I wanted to protect the yellow shako badges from the Black Templar. A mis-stroke and I will have to redo it as the black will cover the yellow VERY easily. With ordinary black paint I put in some black borders between the yellow and the rest of the shako - then I wouldn't have to be so precise with the contrast. Unseen here is I also did the underpart of the visor so black wouldn't get onto the face, which needs to remain very pale for the Contrast to work.

Skin and hair

The yellow bits - Contrast Iyanden Yellow. This is a good shot of what was pretty close to the finished un-dyed linen cloth for the uniforms I had envisioned. My intention here was to just hit some of those top edges with a brighter white. This plan gets derailed badly but still comes out in the end. Into December:

Muskets and other details

I organize and paint by pose so I know exactly what is where. Henry Ford would be proud.

I saved the facings colors for late into the process.

I dreaded this part but it came out fine.

At some point I realized the Contrast wasn't looking great on the facing colors so I mixed up some lighter purple and highlighted them back up.

Contrast paints alone weren't cutting it for a white horse so I relied on more traditional highlighting here.

What do I call these  - these are all figures whose pose is numbered to 4 or less. During some session I went in to highlight the cloth and grabbed the wrong color from my wet pallet and did the 20-odd figures here in a color far too light. This is Vallejo Game Color Off-white. By the time I realized my error it was too late to redo all these. Thus I chose to basically do ALL of them in the VGC Off-white - covering up most of my un-dyed linen thing I had going. Now they look far more like Austrians that everybody sees. Plus this took a lot longer to do since the highlight was too bright for the Strong Tone to blend well so I covered up mush of the subtlety I had already established with the darker colors. 2022 gave way to 2023.

Was really hoping for an olive green but on two occasions bought "Sap Green" which, by the label, appeared to be closer to olive. This is not what I had intended but turns out it didn't matter much as the basing material covered it all very solidly.

Geek Gaming has a US distributor now putting this innovative in easy reach. I was curious about this - a one step basing solution with a mix of corks, flocks, grasses, foams

It's an interesting thing the light stuff floats to the top, and underneath this green layer is a heavy dark brown. The under layer is really dense and dipping a figure in is tough as it has a wet sand feel to it. it has a weight to it too - hard to describe.

You can see where the dark under layer part is dominating some of the corners especially. In the end I don't love it. I think I will sift off the cork bits - the brown "stones" kinda float on the grass. I thinned out some of the piles of it but enough got left behind that looks like no terrain I can recall seeing in nature. I'm fine with everything else though.

Flags glued - I did go in and fix the edges.

Fun project - didn't go quite as quickly as I had intended but they came out fine in the end. I intend to do the Silver Bayonet Austrians to go along with these somewhere close to next. As always, thanks for looking - questions, comments and followers are welcome and encouraged! I'm doing more and more on Facebook so follow my page there too! https://www.facebook.com/One-of-My-Men-Became-Restless-100659928063858