Hello my TMP friends,
As promised I'm back a couple days after posting my Union infantry Contrast/Speedpaint treatment.
Now I've tackled some test strips of Confederates, and I have to say I think the results were even more successful than the Union models, and those came out pretty good themselves.
Same exact undercoat here, gray airbrush primer with a drybrushed white paint over it.
The color palette was similar to the Union infantry, but with the addition of some very, very useful and important new colors!
The two best grays I found for basic confederate gray cloth was Citadel Contrast ***Spacewolves Grey*** and Army Painter Speedpaint ***Ashen Gray***. Both of these colors do a great job of shading the uniform in just one pass. And you can go SO fast down a line of these guys when you're painting in batches. You can basically get what amounts to 80% of the model in just a minute or so. You don't have to be particularly neat with these grays as they are on the more transparent side and you can cover them up with other colors afterwards.
Equipment, blankets, and muskets were largely the same colors as used on the Union infantry, but with some notable additions.
The most important new color for Confederate equipment that I found was for portraying russet-colored cartridge boxes and belts, since much of what the confederacy produced was not finished black leather like Union accouterments were. This was a reddish brown color. I found Citadel Contrast ***Darkoath Flesh*** to be absolutely ideal for russet accouterments. Shades and highlights in just one pass. Super useful color for confederates!
The next important addition was ***Ashen Gray*** from the Speedpaint range. This is a very light but solid gray that you can apply to a uniform very quickly and get a lot of soldiers started super fast.
For the butternut versions of confederate uniforms, there were three primary paints I found: Citadel Contrast ***Skeleton Horde***, Speedpaint ***Pallid Bone***, and Speedpaint ***Bony Matter***. These three do a great job of shading and highlighting in just one pass.
And then of course there was the random soldiers painted with the same federal issue trousers as the Union soldiers, which were often captured on the battlefield with other Union clothing and equipment.
I also represented this with the haversacks, doing some in the plain canvas confederate issue versions and also the black, water-proofed Federal issue version, also often captured on the battlefield.
I was able to paint up a total of 33 reb. models to a fairly high level of detail in just a few solid afternoons of painting sessions. The grand total so far after about a week of painting is 33 Confederate and 30 Union.
