More vexillology

Hello again.

Opportunities to actually finish things seem a little thin on the ground nowadays, a view not helped by my desire to paint my own flags. I could print off some examples from one of the various websites covering such things. I could purchase examples from one of the various purveyors of such things. I could just use fewer flags!

But, what greater focal point is there than a big flag or three to finish off a unit? Back in WRG 6th days, it always seemed to be the armies that could have personal army and/ or sacred standards that I came back to when trying to find out what army I wanted to collect and when trying to develop that "killer list" to try and enhance my dodgy generalship. Ancients was never really my thing, so I needed all the help I could get!

I like flags, banners and standards, which is probably why my butterfly tendencies seem most at home in those centuries when such things feature strongly and prominently. My English and Scottish medieval, my Swiss and Burgundian armies, my Thirty Years' War collection, my fledgling Williamite and Jacobite forces all feature prominent and numerous vexilla. So it is only right and proper that my French & Indian Wars units have the same treatment. Even my 10mm Crimean War Russians have flags! It might also explain why, despite the best of intentions, I still cannot bring myself to paint my any of the Second World War stuff I own, my Vietnam War figures, the Macedonians/ Successors I have had lying around for almost twenty years...

So here are the latest examples of the breed, courtesy of some calico, some brass wire and some acrylic paint.

His Majesty's 27th Regiment of Foot (The Inniskillings) will soon be done and their standards are here to help rally the troops to completion and an outing at Barrage in Stafford on 8th July.

G

The figures are Redoubt

I hope I have done the regiment justice. I like the difference between their flags and the norm for British Army units in this period, the regimental number simply replaced by the fortification badge of the city of Enniskillen/ Inniskilling.

A Labour of...something

Hello again.

I chose the 43rd Foot as one of the regiments to feature in my Seven Years' War in America (aka French & Indian Wars) project for three reasons:

1. They were present at many of the actions in that war.
2. I had pictorial references available depicting uniforms and so on.
3. I wanted each regiment I painted for this project to have a distinctive facing colour, so all units were different in this regard, and their white facings fitted the bill nicely among all the buff and yellow of other regiments.

All went well during the painting of the rank and file, with which I have always commenced the units for this project, but then it came to the reversed colours worn by the musicians. I might dislike painting red, but how was I to do a white uniform without using a white undercoat, which I very, VERY RARELY even consider?

Now, back in the day, I painted an entire Austrian 15mm Napoleonic army's infantry units, all 15 of them I think, from a black undercoat and very decent they looked too (IMO). However, a single, 28mm "character" figure in a white uniform, painted up from a black undercoat and surrounded by a host of figures painted from a red undercoat got me thinking that it just would not look right. Hmm.

I took the plunge.

Now, there are many who swear by the white undercoat, but it has simply never worked for me. I never got my head around any sort of technique that left me with clear, delineated transitions between colours that I like, that meant I did not have to keep over-painting mistakes, etc. And that hideous sliver of white showing through where you could not quite get the brush...In short, painting figures only became a hobby when I discovered black undercoats (thank you, Kevin Dallimore!). White has been used exclusively for largely "white" or experimental things since then, such as skeletons, water elementals and Death Guard (mine are actually insipid green...it's a long story).

Anyway, I could see no satisfactory way around the white undercoat route for this guy, so away I went. For the first time also in this project, I chose to do the complicated regimental lace on this figure that British infantry regiments were adorned with to a greater or lesser extent at this time. I had just done "white" or "yellow" beforehand and will for subsequent units. But this guy needed something to offset all the white, so he got the blue dots/ squares (whatever they were in reality) on his lace, as worn in my main picture of the 43rd, as found in the Osprey "Combat" series book, "British Redcoat vs French Fusilier" by Stuart Reid. A double page spread of a soldier from the 43rd features on pages 12 and 13 and a whole camp scene of the regiment preparing on page 46. A little conjecture on the cap finished things off.

Purists may find a few issues to attend to, but I am happy with him, especially as he will join up with 23 of his colleagues very soon.

G

The viewpoint from which he will usually be seen, in the front rank of a regiment of 24 figures in two ranks of 12.

Hmm. A tad rough in places with the blue...

And thank goodness the drum shell was a simple affair!