I’ve just finished this Prussian artillery battery. The gunner with the cannon ball is a vintage casting that I stripped to repaint whilst all the other figures are Clayton ones that had not been painted before. These particular Clayton castings are superb and almost completely indistinguishable from original figures. The only telltale sign is the single rectangular casting-plug that was under the base of the figures – vintage castings have two separate plug marks. My favourite figure from this batch has to be the Officer with his map and telescope. Perhaps he is checking out the target to make sure he is not engaged in a blue on blue strike as at Waterloo where Prussian “friendly fire” decimated Mercer’s RHA battery.The gun is a Newline Designs model and the crew are as follows:
PN30 Officer with spyglass
PN31 Gunner with porte-fire
PN32 Gunner with rammer
PN33 Gunner holding cannon ball
I’ve enjoyed painting this little group as I tend to flag a bit when painting larger units. This one is another “nostalgia” unit as I had a couple of Prussian gun batteries in my old Hinton Hunt army. Back then I had the HH painting instructions for the gunners but nothing for the guns so I just painted them brown. I assumed they’d be natural wood so it’s been good to put that little error right although my guess is that on campaign they probably did end up a mixture of bare wood and mud.
3 comments:
Hi Stryker
Your guns are painted with the correct colors, but maybe the blue is too bright (?).
I found some time ago the following page with very useful informations about the Napoleonic guns colors for nearly all nations:
http://soldats.empire.free.fr/conseils/coulart.htm
Regards
Rafa
Its very likely that lots of Napoleonic guns were indeed brown or rather natural wood. After battles large amounts of artillery materiel would have been destroyed and was rapidly replaced. Gun barrels lasted longer than the woodwork so lots were pretty certainly made up and not painted because there was not enough right colour paint around. Austrian guns at the marvellous army museum in Vienna are as often natural wood or stained brown as in the correct yellow ochre.
I have a battery of Prussian artillery that uses British guns and limbers because large amounts of such kit was supplied by Britain from 1813. Prussia was a very poor and before 1815, a small state,
Rafa is corect that your blue is maybe a bit bright. I'd go for a wash of light blue gray and a bit of dry brushing if you want to get them to his high standards!:-))
Roy
Thanks for the info chaps. I used my rather vague "I think I saw one that colour somewhere" method of rigorous research when deciding on the shade of blue. No excuse really in this age of internet super-highways except perhaps that this is of course a retro project!
Ian
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