American Civil War – The Regiment from country roads West Virginia, Blue Ridge Mountains, Shenandoah River

So after a longer than intended distraction from this project I returned to finish painting the regiment. I started painting the command for the regiment – I will post this seperately – and finished the rest of the regiment with a highlight, which was just a re-application of the base colour, which also allowed a final fix of any mistakes or gaps.

The photos are not the best representation but the troops do look better at a distance with the highlight but I don’t honestly think it was worth the effort.

By this point I was happy with my colour choices and preceded to paint the main base coats, i.e, skin and cloth and the musket wooden parts and the canteens. I mixed match everything while still trying keep grey the predominat colour and I think this was achieved.

The next step was to paint the straps and details, so the metal musket bands, the cap peaks and trims and yes… even buttons. I was cotemplating painting the bag an off white then I saw a a documetary where the renactors had white bread bags and white straps fot the canteen and I thought that’ll do for me. For some reason with historicals the moment the straps are painted the model comes to life. The next step was a wash of Strong tone ink. This bubbled a little and has settled strangely on a couple of minis but the majority look well.

To finish the models I will reapply the base coats as a basic highlight. The one problem I have with the paint scheme is the length of time. 2 nights finished two coats of the main colours, 2 nights for the details, 1 for the wash and now another one or two to highlight and another to base (for 20 men). I’ll update when these are done. One night is about four hours painting which include tea making and flaffing.

I used the artillery crews as a trial for my colour scheme and I pretty much kept my original choices, one thing I added was a red just for the artillery crews hats. I also choice not to paint buttons… I know the horror!

The cannons I painted black mixed with leadbelcher metallic to for the rifled barrells and brass for the smoothbore. The red wheeled cannons I later found I had painted very similar to the Matthew, Mark, Luke and John cannnons from Jacksons Brigade as shown in the film God’s and Generals. So happy days! if anyone asks it was intentional.

I never enjoyed basing and usually stop at this point, but finally! I found a method I enjoy and like the look of. I base coat the bases brown and from OTT store I bought some grit and fine green flock and the result to me looks like beaten grass with a few rocks added for good measure.

A great way to kickstart your ACW army is with the battle box from Perry miniatures. This contains a horrendous amount of lovely plastic minis to build several infantry regiments, a cavalry regiment and artillery batteries with some terrain. These can all be used for both north or south.

Starting the ACW war I knew the colour scheme would need careful thinking. I wanted a mid war confederate army, perhaps Chancellorsville or Antietam as I wanted to focus on Jacksons forces to begin with.

To create the desired effect I needed a mix of butternutish browns, greys, blues and more “civilian” colours. I’ve added the paints I used below, roughly there is two shades of grey, brown, green, blue and then a red and tan colour.

After research I quickly realised like most periods the uniforms are not so uniform and there is every variation of shade under the sun. I then decided I was refusing to buy more paints as I have dozens of earthy browns and greens etc. so gathered all my paints and made my choices. The one thing I feel I am missing is a bluer grey so I might use GW spacewolf grey for this (don’t think thats what its called but it’s got wolf or fang in the name, you know the one).