Speed Painting Warlord Games' Prussian Landwehr Part III - Muskets, Packs, Straps and Hats

Yes, they are ready for basing.  Thirty-two of Warlord Games' fine Prussian Landwehr are ready for basing.  Of course, the camera is cruel and I can see that a couple of faces need touch up.  I am also disappointed with the steadiness of some of the straps on the fronts of the figures.

Speaking of straps, like everything associated with the Prussian Army's uniforms of 1813 to 1815, there is some debate.  Warlord Games' painting guide and box art shows the figures with white straps.  Blandford shows black or white straps and Osprey shows almost exclusively black straps for the landwehr.  I am torn by this issue.  I would prefer black straps for ease of painting - just black over blue with a dry brush of dark grey to bring them out a little.  But, I have to admit, once completed, the white straps just look better, snappier.

 The figures are largely finished.  I doggedly stayed as close as I could to the two color a day schedule but some days ran over.  The number of corrections to previous work were almost too many to mention and considerably slowed down the process.  In particular, repainting the white pants and the blue coats over and over again became the biggest obstacle to finishing the figures quickly.  

Why not wait until the end and just touch everything up all at once?  Two reasons. First, taking care of mistakes as soon as they occurred reduced the likelihood of my missing a mistake later on.  Second, in my experience, waiting until the end to make corrections does not save me any time.  The last painting session simply becomes an long and dreary exercise.

To the left is a photograph of all of the paints I used to complete the figures.  Note that there were no less than three different colors of green.  I used the Citadel Foundation Knarloc Green as the base for the cuffs and collars of one unit.
However, it took two different greens to find a color bright enough to stand out from the Phthalo blue jackets.  


For the second unit, the collars and cuffs were painted light blue using Musket Miniatures Blue Grey.

I used three different whites.  Bone White (an old Howard Hughes/Magic Realms color) for the pants, FolkArt Ivory White for the straps and Ceramcoat Antique white for the bread bags.  It is not clear that there was much difference in the whites the day after they were applied.  Normally, I would use a light or medium grey as the under coat for the straps but it seem to take too much time and provide too little return with a deadline approaching.

After a little touch up on the drums, some of the faces and a couple of muskets, the figures will be based in railroad ballast and then finished.  More of that in the final installment, Speed Painting Warlord Games' Prussian Landwehr Part IV - Base, Wax and Dullcoat.