WIP Piper Mackay - Waterloo 1815

I've finaly completed my latest piece from Romeo Models,a 75mm stock figure of Piper Kenneth Mackay of the 79th cameron Highlanders at the Battle of Waterloo 1815.
The kit is beautifully sculpted as what you'd expect from Romeo with great attension to detail as well,i love this scale and i'm looking forward to more napoleonic subjects in the future.

The kit is quite a complicated piece to paint and i had to acomplish this in 3 seperate sub assemblies as it would be impossible to paint if it was all assembled in one go,i really needed to do my homework as well before diving in with the paint brushes,good reference material is essential when painting figures like this,the kilt is the Cameron of Errahct design and is probably the most difficult to paint,i became quite confused to begin with as i had 5 differnt books with the Errahct design and every one of the was different ,i eventually settled for the excellent colour plate from the book The Thin Red Line which has beautiful colour plates on the 79th.
The hose or stocking proved to be more daunting than the kilt as the hose needs to be carefully painted with all diagonal lines meeting at the rear of the hose and is made up of 3 colours (red / pink / white),i actually practised this on an old highlander figure before i comitted myself to the main piece.
The figure was painted in Acrylic undercolours by games Workshop and finished in oils,i also used some prussian green oil paint thinned to a wash and used this to darken the kilt areas just to diffuse the colour a bit,but not completely cover the design,this was a tip i read about used by Bill Horan.
I added weathering to the figure as this was important to portray with soilders on campaign and especialy at waterloo.
For the groundwork i wanted to depict a dried out mud effect as during the battle the ground had started to dry out about mid-day and the 79th wer'e not involved until the early afternoon,i added some foilage to represent the stalks of wheat and also mixed this into the ground mixture to represent areas that had been flattened down,the ground work was agin done in acrylics and finished in oils.
After all this i can say i really enjoyed painting the piece and i would recomend it to anyone interested in the napoleonic wars.

Many thanks for looking and all coments and critisism are always welcome.

Brian

Really nice work. I have this kit in my grey army and am to intimidated to paint it!

Lovely work, Brian! Love the worn out look.

Eddy

Well done on a difficult subject!!

Very good work Brian, as Eddy said the worn out look is very well done, as well as the ground (special atention to the storic note abot the weather at that moment). I think the tartan is perfect and the colors are nice and accurate.
I´m very tempted to paint this figure too.
(I have the impression that you put the lamp- or is it a flash?- too close to the figure to take the photo, and in some way, it burns the colors a little.)

Military miniatures painted by Eduardo Garcia

That does look well Brian.
Carl.

Cracking job Brian! braver man than me, I've never given Tartan ago-waiting for W&N to bring the paint out.

Keth

Superb painting. Lovely figure.
Gordon

Good job Brian, the Cameron of Errach tartan is definitely a hard one but you've carried it off superbly. The weathering is great and really conveys the look of a man on campaign. I think your photography lets you down a bit mate. The background doesn't help either, as it seems to be flaring. Even so, they can't hide the quality of your painting.

jcichon said:

Really nice work. I have this kit in my grey army and am to intimidated to paint it!

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What Jason said x10!!!
You've done a great job, pushing me to get off my arse and take a stab... If it's half as successful as this I'd be proud.

Colin

Great paintjob on this awesome figure.

marc

Well done Brian!!

The swagger and arrogance depicted well in the sculpt and paintwork. One question, I could be wrong but thought that bagpipe chanter and drones were turned from ebony, therefore black or were these pipes different ?
Cheers Eh!

Fantastic work...I'm stunned. Well done Brian.

Xenofon

jcichon said:

Really nice work. I have this kit in my grey army and am to intimidated to paint it!

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Jason,it is very intimidating but i think you should give it a try mate,i felt the same way when i got mine,thanks for your kind coments,

Many,many thanks to all of you who gave very kind coments on this piece,it was a challenge but i'm vey pleased with the way it workied out.
I fully take on board what some of you have said about my photography,it is very frustrating for me as i have had so many people tell me my photography skills let my figures down ,all i can say is i will keep experimenting with different ways to hopefully improve my photography skills.

Many thanks again for your input and coments,they are very appriciated

Brian

Excellent painting on this classic figure Brian and very neat work on the base.

Cheers Ken

mil-mart said:

Excellent painting on this classic figure Brian and very neat work on the base.

Cheers Ken

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Many thanks Ken

Don't worry about the photography mate the painting speaks for itself

Keith

Fantastic job Brian always look forward to your posts,great work on all areas.


Cheers David