builds a cutter and a corsair, both in 1/1200 scale.
The figures come from the excellent range for TooFatLardies' Sharpe Practice released by Alban Miniatures, but are obviously perfectly suitable for any Napoleonic wargame in 28mm. The pack contains four figures in different poses, and wearing a mixture of regulation trousers and overalls. After a bit of research in the always useful Osprey reference books (in this case, #52 of the Men at Arms series, The Royal Green Jackets), I chose my palette of colours and set out to work.
All the figures were cleaned of any mould lines and flash (actually, really minimal, I must say), washed in warm soapy water, rinsed, and left to dry overnight; finally, they were undercoated with GW Chaos Black spray primer.
The skin tone was obtained starting from a coat of GW Dark Flesh, and the colour was built up, highlighting it with successive thin layers of VMC955 Flat Flesh and, later, of VMC815 Basic Skintone. A thorough wash with GW Ogryn Flesh was followed with final highlights of Basic Skintone.
The uniform begun with VMC894 Russian Green, highlighted with VMC924 Russian Uniform Green. Again there were a couple of washes, with GW Thraka Green and Badab Black, in order to increase the depth of the colour, with final highlights of Russian Uniform Green.
I wanted the overalls to have more of a ragtag look, so I tried to have the colour look less consistent than the regular uniform. I started with GW Foundation Adeptus Battlegrey, and built highlights with VMC990 Light Grey and VMC907 Pale Bluegrey; again, a couple of washes with Badab Black and Gryphonne Sepia; which were followed by more highlights in Light Grey and Pale Bluegrey, adding a little white to the final touch.
The black cuffs, together with all the leather (shoes, gaiters and backpack), were painted with GW Chaos Black, lightly highlighted with VMC862 Black Grey, while the blanket roll was painted in the same way as the overalls; the bread bag was painted with VMC976 Buff, washed in Gryphonne Sepia and re-highlighted with Buff, while the canteen was painted with VMC943 Grey Blue.
Since I did not have the excellent range of decals that Alban has created for these miniatures, I traced the markings for the 95th Rifle Regiment on the backpack and on the canteen using thinned-down white paint and a very fine brush.
Finally, I added a degree of dirt using ground-down pastel powder (Burnt Sepia), applied with a dry brush. An extremely thin brown ink wash was used to finally bring everything together before the final protective coat with GW Purity Seal: now these guys are ready to go skirmishing in the Peninsula!
