The other day I took the chance to go back in time to 1815 and actually take a few pictures of the battlefield. You can clearly see the state of the wet ground after the Union Brigade had swept down the hill. I will use these as colour and modelling reference for basing my Waterloo armies and thought they might be useful for anyone else thinking of doing the same.
Hundreds of heavy horses have left the ground a churned up quagmire.
17 comments:
So some horses trampled through there? Interesting. Looks like static grass would be a good match - at least for the grass. Someday I'd like to pay a visit to that battlefield. Dean
This isn't really the Battlefield of Waterloo of course but a picture of local farm. The field contains twenty odd horses and I've been meaning to get up there and take a few ref shots for quite a while now, job done. The colour of mud is a very tricky question.
Sorry Dean Is was just posting this while you were by the looks of things.
Great reference photo! Sadly, no help to me who'll be fighting in more arid Mediterranean environments.
And for the mud colour - I'd use Foundry's 'Waterloo Mud' shade..
Perhaps use a clear resing to settle into the dips? I'll be very interested to see how it goes.
Resin is a good idea. No good for my 6mm Naps but would work for 28mm.
Foundry do produce a three pot Quagmire range.
Oh, I was joking with my comment! They do seem to produce paint for most things.
I think my Dad, like BRB suggests, used a clear resin for the rivers he made for our table. It gave a pretty good result but it will obviously take some experimentation.
I think the resin idea is a good one but it will take up too much time, I like to steam through figures. I will probably use polyfiller on some bases and then paint it with gloss varnish to make it look wet.
I think if you poured a lot of gloss varnish (with a little ink or burnt umber oil paint mixed in) into the depressions, it would look great!
Do you use Burnt Umber a lot in your bases? I may have to look back at your basing post and have a look. Thats a good idea about the ink and gloss, I'll have to try a few things.
Burnt Umber and even GW's Snakebite Leather. Now after posting these great reference photos and mentioning those responsible for D'Erlon's demise you will now be obliged to produce a suitable rendering of said Waterloo mud-field replete with trampled bits of Frenchmen sticking out of it for authenticity.
And to entertain your demanding blog public who will by now be clamoring for another Iron Mitten original!
Cheers,
Doc
Hi Secundus, at the moment I use Raw Umber; it's a really good colour for mud (although many other mud colours are possible). Raw Umber has a hint of green in it. I progressively mix Buff Titanium into it.
I'm currently in the process of painting an area 1200 x 4800mm in those colours! One big base.
These are Oil paints are they?
Hi Secundus, you don't have to be oils, I use acrylics (Windsor Newton or Cryla; pretty cheap paints, too! Especially the big bottles of Cryla).
I only use oils on horses (although small amounts of oils mixed into gloss varnish might be a good solution for your mud...)
Oh good i was hoping you were going to say that, I'll look through all my old paints from Art school, i may even have a raw umber in there.
Haha, so it wasn't the famed field in Belgium. I need to get out more often :)! Dean
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