Painting by numbers (again)

This is a re-posting of a post I wrote back in 2007 that I ended up deleting from the blog a few weeks ago due to a little technical hiccup. I thought it was topical in light of the recent saga of my Voltigeurs and the addition to Clive’s Hinton Hunter of some other examples of Hinton Hunt Figures painting instruction sheets. Anyway this was my original post:

When I started painting model soldiers I didn’t have much in the way of uniform reference books. There were no Ospreys or Blandfords and virtually all my information came from the pictures on Airfix soldier boxes. This was fine if you wanted to paint Union or Confederate forces or perhaps the Sheriff of Nottingham’s men but not a lot of use for Napoleonics (Airfix didn’t release their Waterloo figures until the 1970’s).

One great advantage to buying Hinton Hunt figures was that you could also buy a painting instruction sheet for each figure type (5p). This was just a typed sheet with no illustrations but it was invaluable if you wanted your figures to look anything like authentic. The image on the left shows instructions for painting a highlander from the 42nd Black Watch regiment BN32-36 (click on the picture for a closer look).

My parents bought me my first Blandford uniform book in 1971 entitled “Military Uniforms of the World”. I loved this book and still have it but it didn’t cover each period in enough depth to be really useful. Quite good though if you wanted to paint up an Austrian Feld-Jager rifleman from the Second Schleswig War!

In retrospect my comment alluding to the Schleswig War as being somewhat obscure just shows up my ignorance of military history. I assumed that nobody would ever wargame that particular encounter but just take a look at the splendid figures on Matt’s Waterloo to Mons blog (whilst there hop over to Matt’s other blog In the Grand Manner to see his Napoleonic Hinchcliffe project taking shape).