Napoleonic French - 6mm - WIP part II

 Hi,

Here is a short advancement status about the old guard I started about one week ago.

Status and pictures :

On going Grenadiers of the old guard are painted and varnished.

Same thing about the Chasseurs à Cheval de la garde.

They have been painted on evenings, by 1+ hour sessions along the week.
As a total time spent, I may estimate between 4 and 5 hours of total work to get there (for each of Grenadiers and Chasseurs, so about 10 hours total)

Paints I used :

I used a black primer (brushed Humbrol black matt 33, slightly diluted) then I used Prince August (Vallejo) acrylic colors except when said otherwise. Here are their references (numeric only as names are in french).
Conversion tables exist between PA and Vallejo references, so that should not be an issue if use Vallejo rather than PA.(ie : (PA) 970 = (V) 72)

For grenadiers :

Uniform blue : 965
All whites : 918 (Ivory - I never use pure white)
All blacks : 950
Red : 817 (kind of scarlett red)
Rifle wood : 846 (Mahogany ?)
Back pack : 875 (clear brown beige ?)
Rolled jacket : 836 (a grey - realized once done it should have been blue for the guard)
Flesh : 327
Gold : 996 - Metal colors in standard Vallejo/PA are not good. I still use that one (as I have it) but it has to be applied on a black background. At a time I will better use Vallejo Airbrush Metal Color (see thereafter).
Steel : Vallejo Airbrush Metal Color 77.716 (Aluminio satin) applied with a brush (obviously). That metal color is far better than any conventional Vallejo/PA metal colors.

For Chasseurs à Cheval :

Green (saddles/uniform) : 970
Trumpet exception (blue) : 840
Yellow : 948 - I prefer that "gold yellow" as offering better coverage and color depth than regular yellow.
Horses : 846
All other colors (red, white, black, metal,...) are like Grenadiers.

As a varnish I use an art acrylic painting varnish (Amsterdam 115 MATT for acrylic - brush applied). My 250 ml bottle is still 2/3 full after 3+ years... I pass 2 layers of it each tme. It makes it inexpensive in time, does stay clear and offers a good protection. Only thing is that it is a little bit satin but at 6mm it perfectly does the thing on my side.

What next ?

Still to be done is the basing. I have too few bases ready for them, so will have to cut and prepare (far) more. As I usually do, I put them in a bag waiting for bases to be ready. Also, I prefer to run dedicated basing sessions so will anyway wait to have more minis to be based before running a session :

Yep. Not sure they will all fit the 4 ridiculous bases remaining so far ;-).

Now, my French backlog :

So, here are :

• Line infantry
• Light infantry skirmishing
  
• Lancers of the line
• Lancers of the guard
• Elite Hussars companies
  
• Carabiniers
  
• Foot artillery
• Horse artillery
• Limbers
• remainings of previous backlog, so few of :
• Hussars
• Dragoons
• Cuirassiers
• Command

Anyway, my current focus is on Prussians.
So this week, I plan doing :

• 3 Landwehr batalions (24 minis each)
• 2 Uhlans regiments (12 minis each)

Once this will be done, I will probably change my mind with some english troops (that are nice too ;-)) for which I have an even more huge backlog.

Cheers and stay safe.

Bruno.