"3mm Step by step" Topic

Here's a quick step-by-step for painting up 3mm Napoleonics.

The first big tip with these are to base coat with gray. I'm using armory gray right now and it works really well, giving a consistent but not too thick base coat on which to work. I've tried black and it makes the figs way too dark. White has its own problems (I never personally base coat white for any scale).

The next step is to paint the sleaves and the back of the figs with some blue:

You want to paint them by quickly running the brush down between the figs, the sloppier the better. You want to move fast on the blue and the white, which are the two most time consuming colors. I'd recommend basing up a few hundred or even a few thousand figs on popsicle sticks and doing them all one color at a time. You save so much time this way.

Then pick out the white. I paint the legs by drawing the brush across the entire stick, which keeps the big of shadow needed to keep both legs separate, then I pick out the cross belts and other white bits on the front of the fig by using a slash and dot technique. The trick is to paint the unit and not the fig at this scale. In this pic I've done that and also added red dots for the cuffs:

Finally, use dots of flesh to paint in the hands and faces, and a dot of gold on the front of the shako creates the brass shako plate.

To do the muskets draw the brush across the bayonets in clean sweep, then turn the figure over and do the other side. Then go down the stick painting the rifle barrel/body either silver or brown depending which color you want to have stick out. I use brown normally. After that just do the back packs in brown, add white straps if you want and finally paint the metal base green for flocking. That's all.

Final result looks like this:

One way to make the process faster is to split the popsicle sticks into front rank and the second and third ranks. If you make the ranks really close then you wont need to paint the red cuffs or hands on the second and third rank, which will save you some time.

With some practice you can get pretty fast using this speed painting technique. Going slow I can do about 1000 a day including basing. But I think I can go even faster if I let myself be sloppy with the blue and then use the other colors to correct it. It is basically a "paint over" technique, not really useful on large scale figs but quite good for these little scales where you're trying to be more impressionistic.

This is the way I paint my 6mm, have you tried a wash after you have sprayed grey to bring up some of the detail?

Wow they are small (and from a 15mm guy)

Steve W-
I've tried washes but I find that it makes them too dark. I like the gray to stay as the darkest color on there. I understand what you're saying though. Thing is, I've never really used washes for bigger scales so I'm not that great with them. They're so small, and so the colors really need to be as bright as they can so they stand out. I've actually thought about using a much brighter blue, actually, so that they'd stand out even more. Then again, washes crate contrast, which can be useful. I'm sure there are a bunch of good ways to use washes. Using washes on Austrians might be a good bet. Currently I'm just dry brushing them, so they sort of have less definition than my French. It's also a lot faster though…

Wow! These are some great suggestions to provide, as you said, a more impressionistic looking unit.

>The trick is to paint the unit and not the fig at this scale

What a great mindset for this sized figures, I'll definately have to keep that in mind.

Just to confirm, you don't actually paint the front of the jacket blue, nor the shako black? Another great time saver, & I can see that with the blue sleeves & white belt, the color of the front of the jacket would probably be lost. & since all the colors need to be brighter in 6mm, leaving the shako grey is a good compromise.

I understand that the white slash is the cross belt, but what's the dot? What other white bits are you painting, besides the pants & cross belt?

Have you tried this technique on 6mm?

Are these figures from Oddzial Osmy?

Black Cavalier,

Thanks! The figs are 3mm or 1/600 scale Oddzial Osmy figs. They have an ACW line thats pretty complete (that are actually 4mm figs).

I don't paint the front blue, right. The french jackets were white in the front, and the arms sort of cover up the space that would be blue. If I was painting a unit that had a different colored jacket then I'd try to paint it under and over the cros belt, which might require an extra step.

The shakos are left gray, but I put a gold dot in the shako for the brass plate. I think that the gold shako plate is one of the most important steps. If you didn't put it on there the gray shakos wouldn't work as well. I also think it adds a lot to the overall effect of the unit, making the groups look a lot busier and brighter. I'm a big fan of shako plates.

I've been giving some thought to doing a project with either 2mm or 3mm figures. I really like the looks of what you've done.

One question: how long are the infantry strips? I'm guessing they're about 20mm-25mm, but I'd like to know for sure. Thanks!

Regards,

Patrick

Hi PH Lewis,

The strips are 20mm in length with ten figs. As I'm always mentioning on here, you can only do 2:1 figure ratio or less with these guys, because based on the height and the width of the strip it works out to 2:1 exactly. But the distances for units at 2:1 representation will be the same as for a 1:1 unit because the missing man is inbetween the mini that is present. Marcin must have figured out the size and numbers to be that way because the exact same math holds for the ACW figs. There's 8 figs on 20mm frontage but the ACW figs are 4mm tall, so the math works out to 2:1 yet again with 1:1 frontage.

FMS

I bought some of the Nappys some time ago after seeing pics on the yahoo group ..I shall maybe try and get some done this weekend…Just not sure about rules etc

Forwardmarch: Your usual outstanding work. You've become TMP's 3mm guru and "go to guy". Thanks for all your insights and advice

I had some 3mm troops once, but some angry ants carried them off to serve as slaves in their colony. :)

Seriously though, that's some great work on something incredibly small. It must look pretty incredible when you have lots of units arrayed on the battlefield. Thanks for sharing.

Wouldn't white primer save time…on the trousers? I would probably try white primer, then a thin black wash, then a painting technique similar to yours.