Repainting the repaint

You have to feel a bit sorry for this little guy. When I first got my hands on him he was masquerading as a bugler in a batch of Nassau Grenadiers wearing a rather tatty green uniform. Having correctly identified him as FN86 French Light Infantry Voltigeur Bugler he was set aside to await reinforcements. Eventually (with help from Clive) I received enough Clayton castings to make up a full unit of 18 figures.

So when a couple of days ago his turn in the painting queue came around he was thrust into jar of bleach (Sainsbury’s own brand) to strip away the old paint and then prepared to receive his new uniform. Now as you know I had a bit of a problem finding the correct uniform information for my Voltigeurs until Rafa kindly emailed some great illustrations. These enabled me to correctly paint my first few figures – or so I thought.

Although the information I had gave me the low down on the rank and file figures and even the Officer, I didn’t have anything on the bugler - so I just made it up, quite Old School I thought. Everything was hunky-dory until, just as the paint was drying (but luckily before the varnish had been applied) I had an email from Trevor attaching a copy of the original painting instruction sheet issued by Hinton Hunt. This was really great except that, yep – I had painted him all wrong because of course he should have been in reverse colours being a musician!

Anyway, he’s had a green coat, a blue coat and now a red coat but at least he was spared the indignity of a second dunk in the bleach.

On a separate note – check out the new blog by Ron Marshall for some Hinton Hunt eye candy.