6MMRPC: Week 3 Russian Perry Napoleonic 20lbs licorne WIP (1)

Besides my technological hobby project this week, I've been putting in some more time on the Russian Naps. I mostly paint 15mm french, but have shifted gear to 28mm Russians. It's a bit strange working on a bigger scale again. I definitely notice my brushwork is better now, but I've also discovered that certain items I can let slide, or that work at 15mm, don't work great on a bigger scale.

One of the things about painting historics (including ww2 stuff) is that you can (and should) look up what the colours are. Then you can give them a passing nod and cough a bit about weather, inconsistent dye jobs, inability to really know a colour from Black and White photos and other great excuses. Dyes from the 1800's (and everything before the modern chemical industry) were neither permanent, or light fast. They washed away and bleached fast, so close is close enough.

Interestingly in (abbreviated) research, it seems like the french and the russians used similar colour for their artillery. I'm probably wrong, but through the magic of crappy dye, I'm right. Amazing.
I tried my airbrush again to lay down a coat of vallejo golden olive. This is not an airbrush formulation, so I thin with windex, apparently I botched something as the colour preferentially settled on the highs instead of the lows. I've found similar effects when I over-dilute ink with water, so I suspect I had too much thinner. Luckily when I hit it with green ink (to see if I could avoid hand painting it again), it ended up looking alright. I haven't bothered highlighting with green, and probably won't.

I hit the iron fittings with black, and the cannon with bronze and then a sepia ink. I intend to highlight both prior to declaring a finish.

I've included the two pictures to illustrate the strangeness of light box photos. The upper shot had the light coming through the tissue paper. I moved the upper light forward, so it was direct on the model. I feel this is much more realistic colour rendering. I think the amount of shadow is an indicator I'm doing something incorrectly though.