Thursday 17 July 2014

Two shades of Grey

When you’re a slow painter and you're trying to stay focused on finishing a single unit of figures what’s the best thing NOT to do? Possibly deciding to revisit some figures that you’ve already completely finished, varnished, based (and even used in battle) and re-painting something!

When I originally painted my Prussian Jagers I used a dark grey for the blanket roll and a mid-grey for their trousers (possibly dazzled by the array of paints in my Foundry collection) but I was never entirely happy with this as the overall effect, when combined with the green jackets, was a figure that looked too dark. So having recently consulted the Hinton Hunt painting instructions (on the Hinton Hunter) for the line infantry I saw that Marcus Hinton described the colour of the greatcoat as ‘medium light grey’. Well, as you know that’s good enough for me!

PN.28 Jager, firing - the one on the left is the revised version.

One of the great things about the Foundry range of paints is that if I change my mind again about the colour I believe there are another 48 shades to try.

7 comments:

Conrad Kinch said...

Coming along swimmingly.

Matt said...

Have to agree-the repaint looks the better shade of the two.

the Archduke said...

You know how any reference to painting instructions has me rifling through my 1960s collection. Not because Austrians have to be irritating but because I am a true nerd. Both the instructions for line infantry and jagers call uncompromisingly for "grey". Did Marcus have a change of heart? Or should I stick to shades of white?

Stryker said...

Archduke - you're right that the instructions vary from grey to light mid grey but this is also the color given for the trousers. As a fellow nerd the important bit is that nowhere is the greatcoat given as 'dark grey'! Did I just say that was important? Must get out more...

lewisgunner said...

I love it, one of the truly old school traits is debate over whether some unit had salmon pink or orange piping.

However, as time went on people came to realise that the clothing orders may never have been carried out before being superceded or were honoured only partially. or in different coloured cloth.
Prussia had huge difficulty in supplying its armies, being a poor state that suddenly had to expand its military from the small army allowed after Jena to the much larger army of 1813. A lot of the equipment was supplied by Britain, a lot was captured French stock from garrisons, a lot will have been hurriedly made up from what was available in Prussian territory at the time. So you you would not be wrong with blue greatcoats or blue grey or brown grey, or light grey or possibly even black.
Speaking of Prussian colours, aren't the coats that we all paint as Prussian blue, meant to be black? I know that this is true, because its in a film and Napoleon says it and I think he would not get it wrong!
Certainly the Prussians had very dark coats. This enables you to spray paint units matt black, paint the face and hands pink and the musket brown, tough grey on trousers and greatcoat and field them as Prussian fusiliers with virtually zero work!
Roy

Stryker said...

Roy - don't even get me started on the subject of Prussian blue, that's for another post!

the Archduke said...

I thought it was Christopher Plummer who thought they were black. Napoleon said they were on the moon...........I reckon Roy's just sore because you thrashed his nice cavalry.