Let's talk a bit of painting and collecting psychology today. When I started collecting figures I was pretty much solely interested in the history of the British Redcoat in the period roughly from 1700 up to 1900. Specially with Napoleonics I was mainly delighted to paint redcoats and neglect all the other nations. I absolutely hated painting all the French infantry units being uniformed exactly alike without even the slightest variation to distinguish between the line regiments. Couple this with an inability to paint white uniforms and a hatred of painting French troops was born.This only changed with the release of HäT's 8095; 1808-1812 French Infantry big box. I painted some testshots http://www.hat.com/Othr6/Sander04.html and had to do some more research to get them modestly right and so I was struck by the many ways you could paint them, specially when using campaign dress, and tried some of these with black basecoat and so black-lined shadows for the first time. Now I have 3 and a half showcases of figures of which 1 is entirely dedicated to French Napoleonics and their Allies.
The same is now pretty much happening to me regarding the 7YW Austrians. I still hate doing white uniforms but the Revell 7YW Austrian, all 3 sets of them are just so darn good, that a simple paint job will get the best out of them. I only ever started to collect them to convert them to Brits and use them as enemies for the Brits, but now I like painting them just for the fun of it. Some time ago I showed you my combined regiment of grenadiers and now here are my first 3 bases of artillery. Judge for yourselves!
When observing these chaps closely you'll notice that there are red-faced- and blue-faced uniforms. The red ones depict the actual artillery crew members and the blue ones are train personnel oft pressed to help serve the guns to replace casualties or to supply the guns with ammo from the caissons. Two of the guns are the Revell supplied field-guns and one is a HäT Austrian Napoleonic howitzer. I intend to make some limbers and caissons for them as well.
Hope you like them as much as I do.
Cheers Sander
