"SYW Prussian Grenadiers 13/26" Topic

More Minden figures.

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Inspiring, I really like your style, wish mine looked half as good!

They look great.

Very nicely painted. Thumbs up.

Amazing paint work…Now, you have to tell us about the light buff you used (correctly!) on the IR13!!!

Very well painted. Congrats!

The Buff.
Over a black undercoat I do two coats of light orange brown. It's a GW colour, I think "vomit brown" or some such. There's quite a bit of leeway on what you could get away with there.
The important aspect is that it's orangey.
This complements the blue and makes them look nicer.
You could mix up something similar with orange white and a bit of brown to knock the edge off the orange.
Then a highlight of naples yellow.
Original colour plus a little burnt umber into the deeper folds.
Final highlight of naples yellow + titanium white.

That style on the figures is something quite different I decided to try when I starte off with the Mindens.
I'm still experimenting slightly.
Finding a style that suits me whilst drawing inspiration from the likes of Dallimore and Sascha Herm.

Beautiful! Everytime I see your work and then look at mine, I get depressed.

Now, you have to tell us about the light buff you used (correctly!) on the IR13!!!

What would be your source for going with the buff on IR13 instead of white?

I will have to check my Bleckwenn and my Menzel plates to see what they used.

Excellent!! Always my first love SYW.

If anyone has a couple of unpainted Minden Prussian Grenadiers please contact me and let me know……just need a couple

hussarbob1746.webs.com/index.htm

Hussarbob, would fusiliers do?

The IR13 facings changed from very light buff to almost white as the war went on. I believe Menzel shows them light buff and Bleckwenn almost but not yet white. The pompom stayed the same, light buff, so you can get a glimpse of the color of the early facings in Bleckwenn.

My impression is that the precise colour any of the buff/straw/sulphur/whatever Bn is rather open to interpretation.
Maybe IR13 really ought to be much paler.
You might even say it probably ought to be paler.

I chose the scheme very consciously based on the effect I knew it would have.
It might be rather too dark and bright.
I very much doubt any absolute reference could even possibly exist.

My main interest has always been ww2.
For some years I knew the colour of uniforms varied and I also knew the US was likely the most standardised after mid war.
Some time back I saw high quality colour film taken 1944 ww2. In one sequence a US infantry unit is passing in deuce and a halves.
In the back of each truck were at least a dozen different greens with HUGE variations.
Ever since then I've been rather less absolute on uniform colours.

Here's one of my most favorite references. Given the dyes and pigments in his era were not like those of today, I tend to rely on Knotel who painted these in the late 19th Century, when it comes to SYW colors.

link

Slight correction…The cigarette cards were painted in the early 20th century. His father was the one painting similar uniforms in the late 19th century.

G'day.

Andy, they're beautifully done, mate. Among the best I've seen.

Interesting point about the orange complementing the blue. I'm just painting up IR 49 and, frankly, the dull orange small clothes with Prussian Blue coats looks bloody awful! But that could be my painting- I'm not highlighting these 18mm figures, just block painting and outlining.

Ioannis, the facing colour for IR 13 will always be argued, mate. But the pom-poms were a light yellow, not pale straw, and in any case Prussian pom-pom colours didn't match the facings in about half the regiments.

Knoetel's a good resource, but he does make major errors about the Prussians, so needs to be cross checked. Bleckwenn, Menzel and Dorn and Engelmann say white- see the Menzel plate for IR 13 at

link

Menzel does show both white and pale straw, though interestingly the officer has the white facings.

Even Duffy has changed his entry for the regiment to white, in his 2nd edition of "The Army of Frederick the Great". So I believe white was the regulation colour for Itzenplitz.

Having said that, I know that cheaply bleached wool can go yellow fairly quickly and that the troops would probably wear their "old" coats on campaign, if they could. Add in little chance to wash their coats, only brush the dirt off, and the facings probably were a light buff colour in reality, at least on campaign.

More importantly, portraits of that period often get a yellowish tinge to whites and darken, which would make white look like a pale buff or yellow. And we know Knoetel liked to use portraits as a source.

Still, who can be 100% sure? Nobody can really say you're wrong. And the buff facings on Andy's do look good.

Cheers.

Dal.

cheaply bleached wool can go yellow fairly quickly and that the troops would probably wear their "old" coats on campaign, if they could. Add in little chance to wash their coats, only brush the dirt off, and the facings probably were a light buff colour in reality, at least on campaign.

This seems like a plausible explanation. I read somewhere that Menzel based his drawings on actual uniforms and equipment that he acquired in the 19th century, so maybe he had a uniform sample for IR13 and mistook the yellowing of the cloth for its original color rather than the white that it was supposed to be.

Somewhere else, I recall seeing some cartoonish contemporary 18th century plates, done in the "Albertina Manuscript" style. Perhaps a view of these pictures would clarify the conundrum. I don't have the answer – that's all that I can say with any certainty.

That said, the figures are well painted and a pleasure to view.

Ioannis – I have emailed you, sir

hussarbob1746.webs.com/index.htm

They look great – much better than Herm or Dallimore.

Your cheque'll be in tomorrow's post, von.
;^)

send me a painted figure instead ;-))