Napoleon WIP 1

A bit of an exciting post for me tonight as I have finally taken the plung and painted a really lovely sculpted AB Napoleon figure.

I have had Napoleon and his pals sitting unpainted on my lead pile for many years now for 2 reasons:

The 1st is that I want to keep concentrating on my Prussian and Russian armies and didn't want to complicate matters by jumping into painting the French as well, and 2nd napoleon and all his mates always seemed to me to be a bit complicated on a base, who should be included for a certain time frame (I'm trying to hit 1812-13) and where exactly to put them all on a base?

Anyway there has been some superb 15mm-18mm French eye candy floating about over the past few years starting with Von Bluchers French commands I bought last year (cheers John), John B's completed Napoleon command base last year and more recently stoneman from the TMP forums beautiful French command and a few other excellent commands done by blokes I don't know the name of over on TMP and elsewhere. So with the inspiration flowing I looked my troops out, cleaned them all up and arranged them on a 2 piece base I picked up from Martin at warbases last year.

I was a little scared of doing Napoleon as he really is the main reason we all do this period! I wanted to do him justice for a start and a wee bit added pressure is he is the last of my big commands I plan to do with Blucher and Kutuzov already done. Sure there will be marshals and fancy pants cavalry generals to come but he's the Número uno big cheese for me!

I recently picked up Rafael Perez (Archiduque) Napoleonic painting book which is also great inspiration and used his colour palette for painting Napoleon's coat however I swapped in Coat d Arms dark grey for Vallejo khaki and I'm very happy how that turned out. I'm not sure exactly how Marengo, Napoleon's horse looked colour wise, perhaps the dark ankles I have give him/her are wrong and if someone knows better I may change them. Over all I'm very happy how he came out. Mr Bartons sculpting is simply stunning, I got a great deal of enjoyment out of painting this figure, I really did. I would guess this one has been cast a few hundred times as I had a fair bit of cleaning to do on him before I put paint to brush and I perhaps should have done a little more in certain areas of his saddle but he'll do for me!

This is a rough layout of how I want the command base to look, it will be much better when they are all painted and set out properly and there maybe a little more trimming of the raised area napoleon is placed on. The centre obviously lifts out for use in wargaming and the main base will be for display. I pinched the idea from one of the guys who did a cracking Napoleon command base on TMP.

And my constant inspiration, a stunning meissonier drawing I purchased with my 1st ever wage packet many years ago. Still had some cash left over for dig money and beers at the weekend!

Anyway I hope you like home and I'll do a proper post when the whole base is finished.

Happy wargaming!

Best Paul