Sunday 3 May 2015

A bit more painting in the last days of April

At the start of the month I thought I was doing quite well with my painting effort: By mid month I had painted forty eight Austrian infantry and quite a nice looking unit of Esterhazy Hussars. Then everything stopped. The plans I had for painting my own stuff, numbers wise, looked like they were taking another nose dive.


Fortunately, I've managed to drag things back in the last days of the month. I've added another unit of Austrian infantry, and with plans for the Chotusitz scenario in mind, three units of Austrian Grenzers. Back on track; 96 infantry, 8 cavalry and four flags done this month.

I have finally decided how to paint my Grenzers. I like these uniforms so much I'm going to go for maximum uniform variation over 'order of battle' accuracy. I will paint only one 'battalion sized' unit from each regiment and field very mixed looking forces of them. 

 First up, a unit painted as Infantry Regiment 42 Gaisruck. 

I find anything purple / violet hard to paint as the enamel choice is extremely limited. Consequently, this unit has 'sun-faded' facings.

This is the fifth unit I've painted in this 'marching' pose. If you have to paint lots of Austrians (by Front Rank) it is definitely the pose to paint - the arm position covers up almost all of the frontal straps and lapel detail.
 I've given this unit a white Colonel's Liebfahne based on the Greenwood and Ball illustration. This standard is different on each side. 

I prefer the yellow regimentsfahne, because it has more contrast with what are basically white uniformed troops, but as Austrian infantry standards have no 'unit distinction'  it is the only variation possible. So far I've painted at a ratio of 5 liebfahne to 8 regimentsfahne.
Three units of Grenzers.

Front Rank only make Grenzer in one uniform so some minor alterations will be required for the types I want; I've already painted three units from the Karlstadter military district wearing the Front Rank uniform. The Banal military district has a similar uniform, but the colours are very similar to the Karlstadter, so I've chosen not to do the 'Banal Grenzers'.


The first two units represent units from the Warisdiner military district. 

Warisdiner-Creutzer with dark green dolman and cuffs, and Warisdiner-Sankt Georger in light green dolman and cuffs.

The cuffs are plain square cut for these regiments so their was some work required removing the pointed, braid edged cuffs before painting.
The first of three units from the Slavonisch military district.

A unit of Slavonisch-Gradiskiner in a very fetching uniform of red and two shades of blue edged with yellow braid. 

The other two regiments from this region will require quite a lot of minor uniform alteration before painting.



6 comments:

Baconfat said...

All beautiful work. The faded purple looks great, but the red Grenzers are the nicest models I've seen in awhile.

Der Alte Fritz said...

Take a look at the Crusader Croats too. They fit in very well size wise with Front Rank.

JAMES ROACH said...

Hi DAF,

I do like the Crusader ones very much and might have gone that way if I hadn't already bought the FR ones, years ago, for the units I have chosen to do already. They would paint up wonderfully.

But, the ones I want to do next are ones from the other two Slavonich regiments - they have fancy dolmans and barrel sashes, which is fine, but they have no braid at all, or buttons, on their brown coats, and square unbraided cuffs. The FR ones have less to file off so I'll go FR again.

I can't blame manufactures for not doing figures for these regiments, after all we are talking SYW levels of interest not Napoleonic levels of interest.

BigRedBat said...

Terrific work, James!

Ray Rousell said...

Great looking figures!!!

PaintPig said...

You got to love the Austrian SYW infantry they look awesome and you have done a fantastic job