Here is the painted first cavalry squadron of my Hinton Hunt 20mm Army. They are sporting the uniform of the 7th Hussars (Elites).
After taking these photos, and looking at them enlarged (so the figures look like the are the size of 120mm display figures) it made me want to go back and clean up around the horse tack and a few other places.
All in all, I am pleased with them. Now (after the aforesaid cleanup) I will have to convince myself to varnish them (never having varnished wargames figures in the past, and certainly not with gloss varnish).
I painted this unit in, for me, record time. In the future, things may take a bit longer. Part of the challenge with these figures (and hussars in general) is the complicated and multicolored uniforms. I kept going back and forth between colors and cleaning up here and there.
Can you tell any difference in the white premiered figures from the black? It was considerably more difficult painting the figures primed in white (in terms of making sure the paint covered the entire figure). The advantage, though, was that I could see the detail that needed painting.
Your comments are welcome.
Bravo! Hussars are tricky beasts, but you've handled them very nicely.
ReplyDeleteBest of luck with the second squadron. WM
Thank you! And thank you for linking my blog on your blog.
DeleteThose are very smart Nolan - good job! When you apply the gloss varnish I'm sure you will be pleased with the extra depth of colour you achieve.
ReplyDeleteDepth of color sounds great to me. I do like the look of the gloss finish. These are water based acrylics, so perhaps I will try it on one figure first to make sure it does no damage (running etc.). I bought some Winsor & Newton gloss varnish, however, on closer examination of the bottle i see the words oil colour. Any thoughts (will this product work with acrylics?).
DeleteI imagine it would. A water-based acrylic varnish may be more likely to cause problems!
DeleteThat's the way to do it! Start with some of the hardest figures, do a great job on them and the rest should be easy. But they will look even better when shinied up a bit.
ReplyDeleteIts hard to tell the difference so I'm pretty much guessing based on prejudice but I would suspect that in the last picture the 1st 2 were white undercoated and the next 2 black.
Very nice and neat Nolan. Are you going to convert, officer, standard bearer and trumpeter?
ReplyDeleteI hadn't thought about that yet. I have not converted (except with paint) in the past. If I decide to do so, what tips would you give?
DeleteIts good to see your first figures turn out so well. You will find that the Gloss varnish will make the colours pop.
ReplyDeleteThank you. Pop sounds wonderful.
DeleteWellington Man is the master of conversion.
ReplyDeleteFor officers, try and get hold of the correct horse furniture. I am not sure if JC makes a horse for a personality figure with the leopard skin, but hopefully you can get them, for other units its a pointed shabraque and for French heavies the horse that Napoleon rides. Of course you can get nearly there ( in terms of pointed shabraque, with the French guard light horse with the roll at the back cut off.
For an officer, simply remove the carbine and a paint job will deal with epaulettes. Peter Bateman used to remove the arm and sword and solder on a new raised arm waving sword. It looks great, but requires quite a bit of work. You could make an officer from a Lasalle figure and do a headswap back to the normal colpack from a hussar. Other personality figures are good for officers...I think Baraguay d' Hilliiers is great for dragoons. The Prince of Orange will work for an hussar unit. Again you might swap heads.
The standard bearer just has sword and carbine removed and is drilled through the hand to take a staff. The elite hussar with carbine is a neat conversion because he has already detached the carbine from his leg and is proffering it to be cut off! The trumpeter...well you can either convert a trumpet and put it in the figure's hand, or buy some suitable Newline Design trumpeters, cut off the arm and solder or pin and glue it onto the figure ( having first removed the figure's sword arm.) Again the elite hussar holding carbine is useful here. Of course the trumpet can be strapped across the back of the figure, leaving the right hand free, or with the sword shouldered. You might want to headswap the trumpeter with a shako figure. For head swaps it is a good idea to pick up some of the poorer quality stuff that appears on Ebay, because the heads are useful, or again, you could use a Newline. When removing heads I twist them off, holding them gently with modelling pliers, if necessary packing the jaws with card to prevent damage. Twisting heads generally gives a flat level surface to mate to the new body. I then drill both head abd body, pop in a short length of pin and use thin superglue. If you are a wizard with the soldering iron a la WM then you can solder head to body.
First rule of conversion is to get yourself a stock of partsand keep the heads that you remove, buecause one day those Old Guard grenadier heads are going to be so useful to make the Bavarian guard ir whatever.
For drummers, use a marching figure with musket removed, hands drilled for sticks and a drum, either bought freestanding , ir snipped from some other figure. Even a badly moulded pirate from the 70s or a horrid old, fat headed, Minifig S range can be snipped away from the drum, leaving the precious instrument to be attached to a new drummer. A US company called Musket Miniatures, I think, who made separate drums(lovely) and trumpets ( too tiny). They appear to have been taken over and I could not find the drums listed, but maybe they will return?
Wow! What a wealth of information. Thank you for taking the time to put this comment together. This certainly inspires me to keep my eyes open for the figures and parts necessary to do the conversion. Do you then base the officer separately to act as colonel, or do you base them to fit within the unit?
ReplyDeleteI try to base an officer, standard bearer and musician within each unit. That said, I do not always manage that and some units, either bought painted, ir from many years ago,, just have 12 or 24 standard HH figures. ideally, though I put the command in th unit.
DeleteAs yo colonels, Ian started M&M with the armies having a separate mounted colonel per unit. Now that is a tall order, especially with large forces. There is also the small problem of many nations not having an easy colonel figure in the range. I sometimes wish that when the figures were on sale, I had purchased many more command sets and personality figures. At presentvI am aiming to provide a general fir each division of troops , that is for every three or four battalions, which seems a practical number and gives some idea of the chain f command. We did toy with the idea of gicing each division commander a command radius that all units in his command had to be within as that would prevent a battalion just marvhing off to the other flank unless the overall commander sent a staff officer to them.