With the new year Im starting a new project. I chose to do Prussians for the Napoleonic period. To a large part I chose them because they seem to be easy to paint en masse and quickly because they have simple, unadorned uniforms. They should be a good choice for speed painting.
Another reason for doing these as a speed painting project is that these will be based in a more traditional way, i e close together, than the 1808 project I also work on (and no, I am not abandoning that!). So these will be in 32-man battalions with the same frontage (!) as 20-man units of my 1808 Swedes and Russians. The plan is to start with 5 battalions of regular line infantry of the 1st and 2d East Prussian regt. using the Perrys’ metal figures in greatcoats (especially suited for speed painting!). But I happened to have some Warlord Games Landwehr lying around, so I used them to test my speed painting strategy first. Id say they took around half the time, if not less, compared to other typical Napoleonic figures. And the Landwehr has more detail with the caps, legs and bare feet etc to do which the regular infantry dont.
I am very happy with them. Obviously, the clothes have a very simple appearance, but I think that works well on these. The secret to the speed painting is that I simply cut down on the highlighting, apart for some strategic areas such as flesh and black (black cant be shaded with a wash; because there just isnt anything darker than black!). I used the same wash all over (AP strong tone), but over the white/linen areas I watered it down quite a bit. More to come soon I hope!
Pancratist 