Painting a horse regiment.

As I was painting up one of Tom's 15mm SYW cavalry regiments (in this case the Russian Prince Feodor cuirassier rgt) I thought I may as well put a step by step record of how I went about it on this blog. Not that I would dream of telling anyone else how to paint, this is just how I do it. It is a method which I find convenient with mass painting large numbers of figures (particularly 15mm), it give a good standard of figure at minimum effort. This is not to say I don't care about the quality of figure I paint, in actual fact I could get them to a higher standard than this but it would take considerably longer and I would have to ask a higher price per figure than I do. It's all a balancing act.
The figures are Old Glory 15's, the paints vary so much I can't be bothered to put them all on here. I paint using a magnifier lamp and cut the brushes I use short in order to be able to use them without knocking against the lamp while I paint.
By the way can anyone point me in the way of good quality fine paint brushes, I use Games Workshop but I think their standard of brush is going down the pan. Any suggestions please?
The figures.

The 16 figure rgt cleaned, undercoated black and stuck onto bottle tops with white tack (much better than blue tack). I always black undercoat, if you do miss bits while painting they look like shadows, white will stand out like a sore thumb.

An individual figure.

The horses with their basic colour and the reins etc painted on.

A trumpeter, the horse has a lighter shade.

This pic shows the horses finished. They have been washed using the Games Workshop washes, the only ones I really use are brown, black and flesh. They have fancy names but that's the colours they are. Manes and tails dry brushed and a little bit of white blaze on a few of the horses faces. The washes transformed my painting, speeding things up considerably.

This shows the cavalrymen painted in their base colours, red facings etc, off white (don't try washing over pure white, it looks crap) jacket, gloves, trousers and face. The face will be washes with flesh, the rest with brown.

With the washes added.


Leather cross belts, gold braid, white hair, sword and carbine painted.

A trumpeter.

The regiment based (green flock and brown ballast), complete with flags (Maverick Models), always paint the edges of the flags the appropriate colour so no white is showing.
Make sure when you are putting the grass flock on that you gently run your thumb upwards so that the grass doesn't end up hanging over the side of the base. This gives a 'clean' edge to the base and makes a heck of a difference to the finish. Finally the figures are matt varnished with spray.

So that's them done, not top class figures but not bad considering the pace at which they needed to be done to finish the army off. Only five Grenadier battalions, two Hussar regiments and one artillery battery to go Tom, maybe another month!
Dave.