Saxon paint test

To get some more variety between painting up all the olive drab I decided to quickly test how to paint white 15mm's for an upcoming 1813 Saxon army project. I have a grandiose plan of painting up the entire VII Corps of Reynier consisting of two Saxon divisions and one French division. There's still plenty of time to go as we still have a few games left in the Russian campaign, but it doesn't hurt to start early as there is roughly 30 infantry battalions, multiple artillery pieces and a few cavalry regiments to paint up. Though I might cut down the scope by skipping the French as there are more than enough for most games when you combine the collections of various club members.

I want to keep the paintjob quick and simple to make painting the roughly 700 models a bit less tedious. Considering that I'm not too fond of painting 15mm I sure seem to be doing these a bit too much nowadays :) I guess that's what you get for 15mm being the de facto standard in my two favorite periods at my club.

These Saxons were quite a breeze to paint with only 10 shades and a wash used and the main colour white being painted with my airbrush. About an hour of work including all the drying times was all that was needed and I'm pretty confident that I can push out a battalion in a night or two when I can actually work in more of an assembly line fashion.

The main point of this quick exercise was just to test out which wash shade would be the best suited for a white uniform. The left one has Army Painter Strong Tone ink while the rightmost one is painted using their Dark Tone ink. As I don't really want to start blacklining all the white uniforms I think I'll stick with the black one as it gives a clearer definition to all the straps that can further be enhanced by a highlight layer. Looks quite nice with only a single wash and highlight on top of the basecoat.

Now I'll just have to wait for some command teams that were missing from my order for the first brigade and then I can start cranking these out as small interludes between other projects. I'm aiming to have the Saxons done sometime next autumn so I only really need to crank out a battalion ever second week on average. Not too bad hopefully and should allow me to actually paint up other things in the meantime as well :)

Next up some more American armor. I've got 5 M3 Lee's and 2 M3A1 scout cars with their basic colours painted up. I should get the details done in the next few days and hopefully have them weathered and finished by friday when I'll leave for another hunting trip again.