Napoleonic Russian Infantry

In my last blog, I spoke about my new project, to paint up and provide forces for a battle-of-Borodino game planned for this summer. We will be recreating the Duchy of Warsaw’s attack on Tuchkov’s III Corps. I am providing part of the armies for both the Polish and Russian contingents for the battle. My friend David Davis is painting the Poles for me (as he likes painting French and will do a great job) while I’m doing some of the Russians. The Russian 3rd Corps consisted of several grenadier regiments, including the famous Pavlosk Grenadiers. 

I’ve started early on my painting, partly to make up for the lack of progress in the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge. My Russians will be painted in the same style as my Napoleonic French (regular readers may recall my blog on Painting a whooooole lot of French Infantry from a while back). The principle is block colours followed by a wash and then highlights.

I started by spraying the Russians a dark green as an experiment (using the PSC German Uniform spray), although later tests with a Grey primer proved equally effective. Then I started to block-colour each section, starting with the deepest colour: the uniform, painted VMC 970 Deep Green or VMC 968 Flat Green. I deliberately wanted some slight variation in the uniform colour. This was followed by painting the greatcoat roll (VMC 992 Neutral Grey) and then the trousers (white). The boots were Black Grey (VMC 950), not black, so a black wash would darken them and show up the detail. The base is painted flat earth (VMC 983). 

Next were the muskets, using a wood brown colour. Flesh was added to the hands and red to the cuffs and shoulder stripe. A steel metallic colour was used for the barrel and bayonet, and brass for the buttons. All that was left, was to ink the model. I used a brown was (Army Painter Strong Tone) on the flesh and black (Army Painter Dark tone) everywhere else. I might try making up a grey wash for the trousers; the brown didn’t look right and the black is pretty black - too much of a contrast with the white. Lastly, the model had the white sections highlighted with Ivory (VMC 918) and the flesh tones were highlighted.  

The heads and backpacks were sprayed black and painted separately before being glued on. I used Black Grey for the shakos and backpacks, inking them the same as the main body. While this may not be a high detail technique for producing character models, it is a great technique if you want to see regiments on the table in a reasonable time period. Stay tuned for more updates…