Wednesday 4 August 2010

SYW French Grenadier: Peimont Infantry Regiment #4

The Regimental Officer made an appearance a week or so back and now it is the turn of the grenadier, as with the previous post these photos are to help my poor old peepers before I decide to motor on with the rest of the unit.


I t gives the eyes a break to take the photos and then view them on the screen where it is much easier to pick up on any detail, hence the combobulator keyboard and other desky type stuff in the background.  More detailed shots of the painting process will follow with a description.


The uniform for this regiment remained fairly well unchanged for much of the 18th C, with the waistcoat colour being the major change.


I'm a little surprised that the cross belts come out quite tan in the photos, as with the Lally figure, even though they are a cross between a buffish dirty brown in the lead. Similar with the cartridge box which is a much darker tan colour where as here it appears the same shade as the belts.


Overall there is only a few differences between the line infantryman and the grenadiers as far as the figure is concerned, these being the sabre and the moustache. A few more exist in uniform colour such as the hat lace is considered to be gold-coloured (not gold) lace as opposed to yellow hat lace in some sources and brass buttons as opposed to yellow buttons.



All these details can be argued till the cows come home, my two main criteria are is it accurate enough to be easily identifiable as the regiment it is painted as and secondly does it please me. This is pretty close to satisfying those criteria.


Reference sources Mouliard Les regiments sous LouisXV (above), the Osprey No 302. Louis the XV's Army (2), Kronoskaf (below) and Pengel and Hurt uniform booklets. Once again sources vary slightly, take Kronoskaf plate below sourced from the Lucien Moulliard plate above one shows a black cockade and the other white? I think white looks better, hoorah!



5 comments:

  1. Nice work. I like the French gris uniform. One of the first figures I painted(IIRC) was an Imrie-Risley 54mm SYW French Musketeer. I painted him as the Royal Roussillon Regt. I painted the cross-belts in white. Anyway, these are really nice figures and realistically proportioned. Dean

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  2. I agree with Dean - that's really impressive work there. I've never modeled the SYW but will have to abstain - I don't need yet another unfinished project!

    What are your long term plans for the Regiment?

    Miles

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  3. I like the process you go thru...pretty detailed, nice job.

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  4. love the blue shade in the white areas very suttle

    Peace James

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  5. Thanks lads

    Dean I think that by the the time of the AWI the belts were white, I seem to remember painting some many years ago. I'll own to not liking the look of (or painting) white belts on white uniforms, probably because it takes more talent than this pig possesses to pull it off well.

    Aww c'mon Miles every "proper" wargamer needs a SYW project in the closet ;-)
    They will set of the dubya dubya one ships off beautifully.
    The long term plans are to bring the French up to eight battalions initially, the first batt. from eight separate regt's (using the OOB from Fontenoy as my pick list). Then move on to Prussians and Brits/Hanovarian.

    I'll be going through the process i'm using for the white/grey in the next week. It is saga like at the moment and is a real pain in the arse (golden demon like in time :-( required).
    I'm still searching for a way of shortening the procedure and still get a good graded effect without the three step/tone look.
    I had a good look at the process for the red coat of the Lally regt. but it doesn't seem to work so well with white. At the moment I doubt that any two figures from the Piemont regt. have been painted with the exact same process while the search continues.

    regards
    dave

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Good, bad or otherwise I love to hear what you think..... mostly