Playing with paint

The great joy of imagi-nations is that you don't have to do much in the way of uniform research. That can go two ways, either you are free to go with anything that takes your fancy, painting purple and orange legions as far as the table stretches, or you can pick and choose elements from existing armies of the chosen period and combine them in interesting ways. Both approaches can fall apart if there isn't a cohesive overall scheme however, the important thing to remember is that these imaginary companies and battalions are supposed to look like an army.

In order to try out some colour schemes I knocked up a quick template in MS Paint, just an outline looking a little like a jacket and hat with the relevant turn-backs, cuffs and bits and bobs to colour in using the flood-fill tool. The template ended up looking like this...

...nothing fancy, just a solid outline (make sure there are no gaps in order to allow the areas to be filled with colour properly) of a jacket and small-clothes, a tricorne and a mitre cap. For Infantry Regiment 1 which is currently in progress the coloured template looks like this:

and for the forthcoming Infantry Regiment 2 I will be working to the following schema:

I know that it seems fairly redundant and too much faffing about just for a change of facings but personally I find it stops me going off on flights of fancy, helping me to resist using that lime green I bought in a moment of madness and means that when I sit down to paint, I can just paint.

And this is what I have painted so far...

More next time.