Painting 28mm Union Troops

 Here is another bad photo of my work bench, as you can see the Romans have pulled out to make room for Billy yank. After reading the 'Regimantal' Fire and Fury rules the other month, I was filled with ideas and painting passion once more.
It wasn't long before I was pulling out old draws full of ACW and selecting figures for the brush. Some of them have waited over twenty years for it. Just as well because they would cost me a fortune now with Foundry's prices. Always horde I say!

After tearing my hair out trying to work out a good base size last year for my ACW, I was surprised to see that Regimental F+F uses bases with three to a base, the same as my current ACW armies. This was a great surprise and one I had not enjoyed before. The problem was when I got back into painting figures in 1998, I had no internet, nor did I really know any other War gamers. I didn't even buy the magazines. I just painted away in ignorant bliss (I miss those days). I made up my own basing and painting methods to reach my own standards and was happy.
Things are a lot different now with my use of the Internet with all of it's amazing blogs and ideas etc. My old 1998 dusty collection isn't up to my current standards, I mean there not even shaded! Another big thing for me is when I collected them way back when, I would stick all the same poses on to a base. Now I have had years of looking and learning from others, I want to break up these Clone armies and Regiments and add a little variety. Men advancing in line shouldn't look all the same and I have seen some lovely work on other peoples web sites.

 
So the idea is that these 50 odd multiple poses will be integrated with my existing one pose Regiments to give them more character. It also gives me an opportunity to improve the standard of the painting and basing of the old units.

I didn't mess around with these guys, I just jumped straight in and went for it. I had bought the Foundry ACW paint set months before and now just used the colours to bash out the numbers. I think I have ended up with over 50 figures after continually adding to the pile. To speed things up I just painted one colour for the trousers, either Union trouser A, B or C for variety. Then I gave them a wash of (GW) brown Ink...done, move on to the next one. I did spend a little more time on the blue, only because I wanted to try out the Foundry colours.The highlight was maybe a little light for me but they look good.

They were all undercoated black first and I trained myself to leave some of the black when painting over with the colours. This is a basic technique but one I have never used before. For example, I painted around the belts and equipment leaving them the undercoat colour. This did speed things up and stopped me getting too caught up in lenghy detail.

I also took the chance to try out the Foundry flesh tone A, then highlight with Flesh B. I normally just use Flesh B, then wash with delvan wash (GW). I like the results of using the Flesh shade A and found it just as quick as using ink.