transparent acrylic pale grey (73202) over a white base while still retaining some of the darker undercoat as outline. The brown wash gave my trial figure very Peninsular War-looking brown trousers which, in this instance, I painted over with grey. The figure had a green stuff cooking pot attached to its backpack. I had got into the habit of quickly adding cooking pots to line infantry figures to use up any small amounts of putty left over at the end of modelling sessions. As it was usual for Napoleonic infantrymen to carry their own cooking pot amongst small groups of something like five men, there was lots of opportunity to use up left over putty.
Ever since I painted some Austrian line infantry with a brown wash over a khaki spay base (see Post 29), I had wanted to see how the technique would work with French line infantry figures. The French line figures that featured in my last post were spayed dark brown and they had turned out well but were not necessarily the speediest of paint jobs. An experiment with a French infantry figure appeared to produce the required Napoleonic feel. The waistcoat was a quick off-white dabble keeping the brown as outline. Probably, I preferred the grey wash over white of the figures in the last post and might continue to use the technique. This was simply to use a wash of Vallejo
Pendraken French line fusilier from pack NPF1. The spay colour is clearly visible on the figure’s base. A couple of brown paint washes were used for dark areas while a single wash added depth and highlights to natural textures like wood, skin, hair and fur, and gave outlines to clothes. Difficult to manage areas were disguised by brown wash rather than solid colour.

Brown Wash French Line Fusilier Trial Figure

POST 79
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