Sunday, September 18, 2011

Do Overs

I don't know about you, but I'm contemplating re-painting some figures.  Twenty years ago I painted in a completely different style.  I was a paint stainer.  It was a style I learned from a friend of mine, Bill Stewart.  He was, and remains very good at it, is highly productive with this technique, and continues to produce lots of beautiful  figures with it.  I had some success with that technique, but I also produced some very light colored figures I no longer like, and I'm thinking about repainting them.
The two figures in the middle are painted for the Legion system in the Fallen Timbers campaign.  The two outside figures are in the later 1797 regulations.  The figure on the right is in the all-blue winter dress.
With the Jacobites and their enemies finished, I'm beginning work on my next project-my hypothetical war on the Mississippi River between the U.S. and Spain.  Many of the American figures will come from the Old Glory  Mad Anthony Wayne range.  I painted figures for the Fallen Timbers campaign many years ago, staining them.  Today my technique is more of a block color with highlighting way of painting.  I like it better because the colors look more, well, colorful.  I've include some of my old figures, along with some of my newer figures from my Lewis and Clark project as comparison. The other reason for re-painting was that the U.S. uniform regulations changed in 1796 with the reorganization of the Legion of the United States and the end of its odd color-coded style.  With the reorganization of the Legions into four regiments, the army retained many of the features of the previous uniform, but with simple red facings for all units, the colored bands on the round hat were eleminated, and everyone had a black bearskin crest on their headgear, rather than white for some.

These are the same uniforms the Lewis and Clark Expedition wore on dress occasions, and were in service from 1796-1804, and the figures could do double-duty for L and C and my Mississippi campaign.  So I'm likely going to do the repaint.  The alternative would be to buy more of the Anthony Wayne figures.  To be truthful, I have a lot of these figures painted, together with bazillions of OG Woodland Indians, but I've never played a game with them.  They've lived in their box for years!  That is a shame.  With lots of excitement about my project, which could become a nice weekend mini-campaign, I'm leaning toward the repaint.

I've also included a poll.  The question is would you consider re-painting some of your figures?

3 comments:

Ray Rousell said...

Nice idea for a new period. I've got tons of Vikings, some I painted years ago and to be honest aren't that good, some of them I would repaint, other I'd just get rid of, with all the new better sculpted figures you can buy now, it might not be worth all the hassle.

Muskie said...

I've repainted a lot of my models. I knew I could do a better job, but I think I'm too anal. Repainting one or two models even a half dozen is OK. Repainting a whole army or half an army takes a long time, especially if you try to maintain a really high standard.

I wouldn't repaint an army or part of an army again. Before I put my paints in storage I was trying to be more efficient, but I also spend a lot of time on showpiece type models, as appearance matters at the big events.

I also touched up about a third of the army, adding more highlights and detail work. That is also time consuming but doesn't involve stripping and decreasing your painted model count.

William Stewart said...

Kevin,

You didn't go back and shade them after you stained on the basic color. That is the reason why they appear too light. If you shade the dark blue coat you will get automatic highlights and the coat will appear a darker blue. Should take a great deal less time and effort than a total Mako make over.

Bill