French Line Lancer - a change of scale

It's been a productive Easter break - mainly with the weather being bad I have been able to focus on clearing off the table with a number of items coming to completion.

I showed you the 18mm AB trumpeters last time , well they have now be joined by their mates. I have been really impressed with the quality of the casting - really makes the painters job easier.

Basically exactly the same colour mix for the greens as the Chasseurs - Vallejo Military Green , and Flat Green. The horses were done in oils bar the trumpeter and the officers. I undercoated the bays in Humbrol 62 Leather and painted on the furniture in black Vallejo - I highlighted some of the flanks with a little Dark Flesh or Ochre , just to give a little variation as well. After 24 hours they were given an oil rub using Burnt Umber , Burnt Sienna , and mixing some black in on some. I did use my more expensive better quality oils for this as the pigment is finer and given the actual size of the figure it was needed to give a fine finish.

For the basing I used Minatur moss tufts due to size required - these were fairly dark so i gave them a light drybrush of a yellow ochre just to lighten them slightly while they were still attached to sticky sheet.

Time for a bit of something not green based i think.

Vistula Lancer - completed

After a final push over this week these lads are now completed. There was more work to castings overall getting the unit composed and the conversion work sorted than the final paint jobs.No figure is just an original casting & no two are the same. 2 squadrons modelled at the charge and two ready to support.  Each has wire reins added and soldered into hands. Each officer was remodelled from the original casting,with replaced pin swords. There was major work on 3 of the 4 trumpeters. Each trooper has the lance soldered in to the hand with arms re-positioned, the straps from the lance added around the arms as well. Overall a fully unique unit , which I am very happy with. Flag and pennants from GMB.(Yes i know they lost the colours in Spain - but ya need a nice flag!). Lances made from 0.8mm piano wire.Horses were a mix of Elite, Connoisseur and Bicorne to provide variation. Based up for Grand Manner 20mm per figure frontage , 45mm depth.

The full unit

There have been some interesting modelling challenges , all over come and skills enhanced with the soldering iron. I will be adding the Lancers of Berg next year i feel.

Vistula Legion Lancers - getting there

It has been a very busy week in the real world! I have completed the officers to go with the trumpeters for the Vistula Lancers and part based them (ready for colours to be applied),  also the first of the men with pointy sticks.So for your delictation.

 

Holding steady.

 Sound the charge!

 
 Hacking their way through

Flying czapka! and crashing trumpter.
"Who's idea was this charge?"

First of the lancers

I have had some different requests come in for the brushes so there may a short delay on finishing these lads while i sort out painting an Anglo Saxon warband! - that's different!

Out with the soldering iron and the oil paints.

Well having located a bunch of old "Connoisseur" Russian Uhlan castings in the depth of the cupboard. I thought I would bring them to life.I always really liked the original Peter Gilder light horses as they have a a good sense of movement, and they paint up nicely too.

Having consulted my reference material I settled on Lithuanian Uhlans purely for the aesthetic reason of the white czapka. I always think it is important that units look good together rather than just individually and try and make them tell a story. As these are lancers I wanted to give a a reasonable impression of movement with pennants flying. The lances were created from "Piano/Music Wire" (also known as spring steel wire .I used 1/32" or 0.813mm which is 20 AWG available from Mugi in Barnsley in 36" strips for 59p)

This is very hard stuff and will easily ruin your cutters , so it was cut to lengths using a mini drill with a carborundum disc. These lances were then soldered into the hand positions of the figures to give the front squadron with lances down , 2nd dropping them down and 3 and 4 upright at a range of different angles. In addition as Peter Gilder never seemed to get round to niceties of things like standard bearers and trumpeters these had to be created too. A trumpet was fashioned from brass wire and the cone formed from solder and it was added to officer figure to replace a sword.

Unit flag and pennants were ordered from Grahame Black at GMB. Makes life so much easier than back a few years when these had to be fashioned by hand too.

Painting commenced. 4 White horses created and 28 others in differing brown shades. To paint an oil horse you start out painting it yellow... yes YELLOW. I used Humbrol 74 to undercoat, allow at least a couple of days to fully dry. Then paint in the horse furniture with black. Once dried it is out with the oils "Burnt Umber" and a big brush and work it all over. After doing that to all of them, take a piece of sponge and some tissue wipe off all the excess paint and it leaves a thin covering over the horse and naturally more in the creases etc. Leave this to dry somewhere warm , and forget about them for a least a week. Once dried , add socks , blazes , mane and tail highlights and any metallic horse furniture.

Meanwhile waiting for the oil to dry  it was on with riders. An undercoat of Humbrol 67 worked in by brush, this allows all the crevices to have a dark colour in them but not black which shows up far too glaringly under a gloss varnish.These were pretty simple mainly being dark blue and crimson. I did add extra detail on the czapka for effect.

Some teased out sisal string was added to the basing to give a grass effect. Overall as the first cavalry unit completed for many a year I was very happy with them. These took just over two weeks from start to finish , about 30 hours altogether.