Not everyone is in scarlet...

 While most of the British full-dress uniform of the Victorian era was scarlet, not all units were thus dressed and the rifle units wear a dark-green, almost black, dress uniform. The Canadian militia, closely following the home-country's example, would wear their parade ground attire, having no other, onto the Canadian Prairies for the Northwest Rebellion campaign in 1885.  These riflemen are my conversions from Perry plastic Union American Civil War miniatures with mostly just a head change using the Perry 'Home Service' helmets or creating glengarries from green-stuff.  The bases are made from a home-made styrene sheet from empty sprues melted in acetone. The log marker, also on one of these home-made bases, indicates the "suppressed" status for the unit.  It is still a visible reminder for the players, yet blending into the terrain.

In the background is a dice tray created specifically for the collection as it matches the terrain mat. It looks inconspicuous on the tabletop hiding as a field.  

Painting style changes

Like your choice in clothing, hair style, heck, even type of underwear, your style of painting can change over time. The latest new army I painted is a "Anglo-Saxon" Dark Age. With all the hype for contrast paints recently,  I went that route but even more so in just using inks to do the job. I primered light grey, dry-brushed heavily in white then applied the inks. 

deployed for action in a recent game at a fellow gamers house.

The figures are Old Glory 28mm (love em or hate them...) which I picked up on a good sale and which provided a 24 point Lion Rampant "task force". Thinking of the printer ink cartridge concept of using only blue, yellow and red colors which, when mixed can provide most colors one would want (yes, yes, excepting white which, would be limited in the dark ages - pun intended or not...) I went about as quick as possible to create this tabletop collection. From primer to completion of basing was only 10.5 hours so c.10 minutes a figure. As this is not my usual wargaming era, so not that much wasted time completing this collection. However, I very much like the effect, and while not my usual style, my "contrast style" works with these figures quite nicely I think. 

With the idea of new styles of painting, I took a picture of some of my very first wargame figures I painted including a Minifig 25mm Duchy of Nassau (Napoleonic) of 1976 and a 25mm Minifig Parthian in the glorious gloss c1981. You can contrast these to current figures in my collections seen below in a recent game. 

As my eyesight goes, I will probably be more and more careless about the preciseness of it all and go for the easiest of styles, but it is interesting that there is quite a few different ways to paint the little buggers.....