1st Battalion of the Livgardet till Fot

Here they are based and all:



As you can see, they are still quite shiny. I managed to reduce it some by playing around with lighting (I have diffusion and neutral density filters for my lamps now, for those who care about such things), but it still shows up massively. Would you believe that they have 5 coats of matt varnish sprayed over them? Neither would I had I not done it with my own hands. I'm guessing that spraying in an attic that is now close to 0 degrees Celsius in temperature is not a good idea. I tried spraying heavy, light, from afar and from close up. No dice. In fact, when I was looking at this picture at its full resolution I noticed that the ends of the grass tufts and the static grass have shiny droplets of varnish hanging on them, so something did indeed go horribly wrong. I'll stick with brush on next time.

Anyway, I went for a bit of a campaign look with these veterans. Things I did to enhance the campaign look are:

• Figure selection. The stand on the left (when facing the unit, so on the unit's own right) has four figures wearing karpus instead of tricorn hats. The Livgardet till Fot received the survivors of several regiments that were in involved in the battle of Lesnaja—I selected the one with the most divergent uniform, the Närke–Värmlands Tremannings regiment. Not that there's that much of a difference: the Livgardet and the Tremannings regiments it received have both blue coats, yellow facings and yellow stockings. The difference is in the details, in this case the colour of the breeches and vest (barely visible on the figures) and the karpus.
• Painting. I painted a few minor uniform items (stockings, vests, breeches) in different colours than the standard uniform. I also broke one of my painting rules and mixed up various shades of blue to paint the main uniforms. The differences are very subtle, but the blues on several of the figures have differing levels of saturation to simulate fading of the uniforms. I also did the five'o'clock shadow look on most of the figures.
• Flags. The bigger the better, of course. To add to the worn campaign look, I distressed the flags to simulate battle damage.
• Conversions. Some of the figures have patches green stuffed onto elbows and various other bits (none visible in the photo). I also did some (very) slightly more involved conversions:
  
   
  
  The chap on the right had his hat cut off and replaced by a greenstuffed bandage (wounded veteran and all), while his hat has been surgically grafted on to the chap on the left. I found out a long time ago that these conversions are a lot less intimidating than they seem at first glance. While the conversions stick out like a sore (green) thumb when unpainted, they sort of blend in with the rest of the unit when painted.

That's it for these guys. Next on the painting table are some Celtic command figures, and I think the first unit of dwarves will be after that.