About a year ago I traded some miniatures for a large collection of Front Rank Napoleonic Russians and just finally got around to trying them out. I've never painted any Napoleonic miniatures before as the period was always pushed aside for other periods for a variety of reasons, but I've always liked the look of Front Rank Napoleonic figures and thought it would be nice to try some someday.
I do not own any LOTR miniatures for Curt's Fellowship entry fee for the AHPC, but I knew Curt was a fan of the Napoleonic period so I sent him an e-mail asking if he would accept some Napoleonic figures instead and he happily said that would be fine. Now to my shame I didn't send him a figure last year because I forgot due to other distractions(weak excuse I know) so instead of doing one figure I did two to make up for that shortcoming.
Full disclosure I've never delved into Napoleonics generally preferring the North American period, but was always curious. So how did painting my first set of Napoleonic Front Rank figures go......I enjoyed it! I think a great deal of that has to do with the sculpting style of the figure itself which made it a pleasurable experience. Also, they do look rather eye catching with all the braid work and sashes. I feel because the sculpting was so nice it made that fun to do whereas anything less well sculpted would have turned it into a chore.
So am I now going to turn out hundreds of Napoleonic figures and plunge head first into the great black hole of Napoleonics you may ask. That's hard to say as I'm a horrible butterfly making any kind of prediction difficult to say the least so for now I'll just say I'll paint some more as I both enjoyed the experience and really like how they look and see where it goes.
Since I'm new to painting Napoleonics I had to decide on the approach I'll take in that will I worry about getting everything right or paint things how I prefer them to look while retaining the impression of the period. Well since I take liberties in almost everything I do I won't make an exception with Napoleonics and will continue to paint things in the impression I want while still retaining a legitimate period feel. If it's accurate then that's great, but if not then that's also fine as long as I'm happy with the final look which is what is important with our personal figures.
Napoleonics has a lot of white and if you have too much bright white imho it can overpower things so I decided a more subdued white was the order of the day. I've seen Russian uniform coats painted in a a dark green almost black and others medium bright which neither work for me so I went for what I feel is a medium dark green and liked how it turned out.
Hmm.... what next to do....more Russians, Texas War of Independence or perhaps something ancient ....I'm curious to find out what I'll do.
Thanks for viewing!
Miniature Company- Front Rank