While I manage to pick up my socks off the floor and remember to take out the garbage, I quite often in my wargaming, get diverted from what I need to paint to paint what I think would be fun to do. While I should be doing other more important things, my new Italians were staring at me. What is a guy to do?
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| The Italians |
There is a certain appeal to the wash technique to painting which I have selectively been employing. The Spartacus army from a few years ago [ post link ] and currently with faces and some large portions of figure , so with the vast areas of white for the Italian infantry, and as I hate painting white, I thought to give the style another go.
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| The Italian line infantry wore white open lapel tunics - they never went to the closed lapel 'Bardin' style - and with combinations of 'national colours' of green, white and red for the facings of each regiment. There is still some confusion about which regiment wore which combination. You will see examples of each variations in different reference books and websites. |
I painted the gaiters, packs and shakos the usual method of heavy highlighting but the tunic, pants and caps were left in primer white and then given a wash. I do not do the technique often enough to understand how much is too much as it dries darker than the application would suggest, so some areas are coated a bit heavily trying as I was hoping to bring out the details a bit more. However, perhaps after a month or two of campaigning, white uniforms, not really pearly white to begin with, would be less than tabletop bright!
The units must still await flags but with the exception of the Velite Guards which did not carry any [see here for their construction link] .
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| Italian Royal Guard Velites |