"Learn to Love It" Topic

According to Mike Siggins, if you're into Napoleonics, you need to learn to love painting French line.

Have you been successful in forcing yourself to enjoy painting quantities of a particular figure?

Rarely. Probably why I prefer DBx and FUBAR and now 6mm.

Yes. Its mindless and fits my intellectual capacity perfectly.

If I didn't enjoy it, I wouldn't be doing it.

Yes I can do it in 6mm…….28mm is another matter!!!

Nope – used to play Orcs, Orks, Skaven and goblins

Now I play skirmish and avoid units more than 8

Some-one shoot him for daft statements like that!

Actually I like to paint French line

Orks – a horse of a different colour – I paint them because the Little Prince likes them!

French line are what you learn to endure, not learn to enjoy.

Even when I look at 20 completed 6mm Bn I still can't get exited by them.

I've just done a pile of French infantry for WSS and at least there is SOME variation in those to keep me interested but Napoleonic ligne are just remorseless grind.

Funnily enough I've spent the evening painting French line voltiguers and I got so bored of doing it that I decided to take a break and look at TMP. I hate painting French line infantry, which is a shame because I've got hundreds of them lying in my lead pile.

Not "love" but I don't mind painting figures with lots of mail (aka chainmail). Black undercoat followed by dry-brushing silver.

Certainly not.

Where can one read Siggins' writing nowadays, anyway?

Yup. French Line Meditation (tm).

Quite the opposite. Thinking "how bad can it be", then stopping after finishing twenty out of one hundred.

I've certainly come to appreciate some figures that I initially found quite unpleasant--painting a lot of a figure often reveals interesting things about a sculpting and ways to paint them more effectively. Endless hordes of ACW troops comes to mind.

I'm not sure I've come to love painting them, but I've certainly come to tolerate figures I initially detested and enjoy the process of painting them. On the other hand, I recent threw out a box of Italeri 1/72 AWI Americans because they sucked so hard. So maybe I'm all just big talk.

The first 1,000 French line infantry are the hardest. After that, your brain is too numb to care.

I don't have a problem with it. Pop in a few period DVD's and I can go for hours. Until the optivisor starts to give me a headache. Getting old, and not being able to see, sucks.

Well, in the past 40 years I've painted up roughly 60 battalions of them x 18/unit = 1080. The French line infantry uniform is annoying intricate to paint – white lapels and turnbacks piped red, red cuffs (with cuff flaps) and collars piped white, blue pockets and shoulder straps piped red… and then the distinctions for the Voltiguers and Grenadiers. OTOH, at least pre 1811, you can have some fun with the drummer's uniforms, and throw in some units in overcoats and/or campaign dress, different colors of pants (grey, buff, brown, especially in the Peninsula), and so forth.

I've learned to love sending them off to Sri Lanka to get painted. And, darn, if they don't look better than my own efforts!

I've painted up 350+ Austrians and 200+ Prussians with 350+ to go, all in 25/28mm. I painted 4 battalions of Westphalians and 4 of Legere, but no line. I will avoid that as long as possible.

Its like marriage, just grit your teeth and endure it….

It's one of the things I've struggled with over the years but I think I've finally cracked it by painting in batches of about 12 and having several options on the go at any one time.

Yes, endless French line = therapy.