The Great Redoubt

I’ve finally started my 28mm Napoleonic project and while I do plan on doing Russians at some point, I’m starting out with some French as you really can’t really game the Napoleonic period without them, After spending some time cleaning and assembling a box Perry French Infantry, I started looking at how I wanted to paint them. For me, the main bugaboo with French Infantry is painting all of the white straps and belts that go over the white chest piece of the tunic. Having proper definition between components is important, but I also don’t want to spend more time than necessary to get it done since I’m looking at having to paint 100’s of models.

After trying the normal black prime route, I don’t think I’ll be doing that for the rank & file at least. You can get very crisp definition between straps, belts and coats, but at the price of doing multiple layers of precise painting with detail brushes. I don’t have time for that. The next experiment will probably be giving the models an all-over coat of Vallejo Sky Grey, which is what I’m using as the base color for all of the white areas right now and then using a wash of some sort to get the definition/separation I’m looking for. The new Pro-Acryl Black Wash looks very promising and I’m going to try and acquire a bottle and see how it works.

On to the main subject of the post.

French fusiliers wore blue coats for most of the Napoleonic period (excepting the white uniforms issued in 1806/7), but what shade of blue is the right one? This is really a trick question for a variety of reasons:

• The proper shade of new French blue coats would be something very dark. Indigo was used to dye the wool and a new coat would be a very dark blue indeed. At 28mm scale this would look more or less like black on the tabletop. I would like something that actually shows up as blue on the game table.
• The actual color of the coats would vary from dye lot to dye lot. Assuming every new coat would be dyed the exact same color is probably wishful thinking.
• Once the troops were in the field for any length of time, sun, rain and dirt would quickly do their work on the coat and you would likely see something lighter and faded on a majority of the troops.

This is a long way of saying pick the blue that you like…. it should be something dark blue versus royal blue or light blue, but choose something that appeals to you. They’re your models so paint to please yourself and not some random person on the internet.

I’ve assembled a number of blue paints over time and these were the ones I looked at. This is a non-comprehensive list and consists of paints from the lines I can easily buy in stores here in the Twin Cities. I didn’t look at Citadel or Army Painter paints but there would be suitable choices in both lines.

From left to right:

• Pro-Acryl Dark Blue
• Pro-Acryl Blue Black
• Pro-Acryl Payne’s Grey
• Vallejo Game Color Night Blue
• Vallejo Game Color Imperial Blue
• Vallejo Model Color Dark Prussian Blue
• Vallejo Model Color Prussian Blue

I’ve used Vallejo Model Color paints for decades and Dark Prussian Blue used to be my default choice for French Napoleonic blue, albeit for 15/18mm models in the past. The new formula Vallejo Game Color paints show promise and dry very matte. Finally the Pro-Acryl paints from Monument Hobbies are becoming a new favorite of mine. Very fluid, excellent opacity, they airbrush really well and dry matte.

Here’s the experiment I ran. The control stripe across the top is a common base layer I see for “Napoleonic Blue” – a mix of 75% VMC Prussian Blue / 25% Black (I used Pro-Acryl Coal Black). The ratio is approximate based on ‘drops’ of paint… every time I mix it it’s a little different, but that’s OK, especially for depicting pre-industrial revolution clothing.

The paint was applied on the back of a white envelope that was at hand. Photo was taken using warm interior lighting on my iPhone. Handwriting by a real adult regardless of how it looks. 🙂

A few opinions:

• VGC Imperial Blue and VMC Dark Prussian Blue are almost identical with Dark Prussian Blue being slightly darker.
• VGC Night Blue is a very dark but very saturated blue. It’s the most ‘blue’ of the 4 candidates on the left.
• Payne’s Grey is a dark grey with blue overtones. It’s a great addition to Pro-Acryl’s line and something you don’t see in miniature paint lines often.
• Blue Black is really a very dark grey with a blue tone mixed in. A lot of people plan to use it with 40K Space Marines as a zenithal highlight for black armor. I think it would work great for that.
• In my opinion I think the Pro-Acryl Dark Blue is the closest to the control color. A little less black perhaps but pretty close.

I’m going to use the Pro-Acryl Dark Blue for my base color. In all honesty though I think you can’t go wrong with any of the 4 candidates on the left. Once you apply more layers you won’t see much of it and it won’t make much of a difference in the overall paint scheme.

I’d been looking for a base color I could use straight out of the bottle since I don’t normally use a wet palette and I’m lazy. I thought this quick experiment was useful and I hope you find it of interest as well.