"First attempt at French company and elite colors" Topic

Hey just posting some pics of my french 1809ish pattern infantry test battalion before basing and flags to see if I missed any details. It was a lot of information to process in terms of the company and elite sub markings so I want to make sure I didn't miss anything before I finish these and do another 100. (these are 15mm)

Let me know what you think, or what I missed, thanks.

Difficult to say as your figures are so dark compared to the light background.

Sorry about that, it's the first I've heard of the issue but I will definitely try some different contrasts when they are based.

He does not mean there is anything wrong with the shade of blue, but that white background does dominate the photos, so colours are harder to distinguish. It particularly affects the Light company.

Your colours here are far more "realistic" (ie they look like what we see in museums) but folk do argue about lightening the colours as the scale gets progressively smaller. I did on WWII battleships, but personally would not on figures 15/18mm and above.

100+ of these will look impressive .

Thanks. I will see if I can take better shots later but I did use dark shades. This is part because my first test paint of a grenadier unit I felt looked too bright, especially for the blue. I'll keep experimenting though! I used Reaper midnight blue for the above line guys as it has some purple in it.

Below are the grens:

The grenadiers above look fine to me and if these are 15mm figures they are pretty good too.

Photography is all about light and plenty of it.

Jim,
I used vallejo french blue for these which I figured would be sufficient, but I got some comments that it was too bright and having done the research myself I kind of feel like it is.

Like deadhead said though because of the scale it's probably arguable/plausible. I am going to try and lighten them a bit if I can't get brighter pictures.

They are indeed 15-18mm but they are non heroic, I really wanted to go for a different look where the units will look good (and disciplined) en masse.

Nice work.

These will indeed look great en masse. It being 1809 ish you could have some more fun with the drummers uniforms.

Good point about the drummers!

It is so difficult to get a dark blue or dark green right in smaller scales. Bad enough in 28mm but, in 15/18mm, worse yet.

One answer might be to stick to your guns. Use the darkest blue you can find (I have a commercially available dark blue, which I mixed in its pot with 33% black…that looks like museum coats for Napoleonic French or Union ACW! hard to tell from the Black spray undercoat as I am working)

But maybe use a much brighter highlight. That I find interesting though, what do you mix into the base blue colour?

White, looks all wrong. A striped uniform results. Grey, much better. Lightens it and takes out the colour also. A light sandy colour…that gives a remarkable result.

The drummers are a good point. I assume this is optional as I did not see the fancy ones in any of my diagrams, but I will look into what I could do.

@deadhead I think I will just reinforce my midnight blue or go exactly 1 shade lighter, which is something the reaper triad enables. I don't line highlight 15mm as I find it can mess up the ideal viewing distance… I have some italians where I used more advanced techniques and blending but I found it left them with less contrast and looking foggy on the tabletop.

So instead I simply pick 1 color and keep it strong, ink and then reinforce it with the same color if necessary.

You can see me doing that a lot with my old test run of Austrian casts:

link

On the drummers MarbotsChasseurs has posted some excellent uniform details for Davout's III Corps in 1809. They may give you some inspiration
TMP link

Really nice link, thanks!

I finished up a 2nd unit and tried to take better pictures, maybe the colors can be seen better: