Finally, some progress...

We'll, true to form it's been quite sometime between posts. The sad passing of Laura’s grandfather on the 17th has meant that my painting work has been put on hold over the last few weeks as I spent most of my time with Laura and her family.

I got out my brushes for the first time in a while yesterday and finally finished off the Austrian gun and crew which I’ve been ‘sizzling’ up since I launched this blog. I must say I’m very pleased with the result. Based up for the Lardies’ Sharpe Practice ruleset, the gun is a 6 pounder with five crew and a grizzled NCO based separately as the ‘big man’ command figure. Three of the crew and the NCO have the red facings of the highly trained artillery corps, the other two have the light pike grey of the Handlanger corps – virtually untrained men who provided muscle rather than expertise. I love these figures, and I think I’ve managed to set up the base pretty well as representing a gun in action. The basing has turned out very well, with all five of the crewmen removable to both simulate casualties and to allow them to abandon the gun.

Both the gun itself and the figures are all 28mm Front Rank figures, the muskets, box-type thingy and the discarded scoop are from Nic at Eureka miniatures. The cannonball is from a tag which came with a new pair of converse shoes!

I’ve also finished off a Front Rank Jäger officer. While mixing the Light Pike grey for the collars of the Handlanger blokes, I wanted to test out how this would look on the jagers – they also wore light pike grey. From the research I’ve done, including asking some advice of ‘the’ expert on the Austrian Napoleonic army, Mr. Dave Hollins, I understand that this should be a light blue grey colour rather than the dark grey often depicted. I know lots of people paint jagers up in dark grey - more power to them by the way - so I thought I should put in that little explanation before I get a load of comments telling me that the colour is wrong. :)

While I enjoy the research behind painting Napoleonic figures, matching uniform details and colours, I do realise that any quest for realism is pretty hopeless. Before colourfast dyes, and with a myriad of cottage industry types supplying the uniforms, I’m sure there would have been a lot of variations in colour.

So, here are some pictures of the completed gun and crew, and of the Jäger officer. Hopefully the next update shouldn’t be too far off, as we’ve got a long weekend coming up.