Sunday, January 13, 2013

The Great War in Greyscale - Belgian Infantry & Carabiniers (37 points)

My Belgian WWI collection to date, with the new additions.
My Great War project has largely taken the back seat with my recent interest in the Spanish Civil War. Nonetheless these models were on my desk, dolefully staring me in the face, so I decided to crack open the monochrome paint to complete this small group of 1914 Belgian infantry. 

These will add to my small existing collection of Belgian figures. This group is composed of four infantrymen in shakos and three carabiniers wearing their distinctive Tyrollean hats.  The infantrymen are Great War Miniatures sculpts whereas the carabiniers are from Brigade Models. I've been lobbying the good folks at Brigade to provide some period bicycles as many of these troops cycled to the battlelines. There are some great photographs showing stacks of bikes near the front or carabiniers having them jauntily slung over their backs.


I found reacquainting myself with this project was a bit of a challenge as the greyscale effect requires me to reorient my way painting. I'm very happy I kept detailed notes key-coding the various shades of grey or I'd be hooped! Nonetheless I quickly got back into the swing of things and had a great afternoon (and evening) listening to an audiobook and painting these up.

I also went over a few of my existing command models to add the 'Sin City' chiaroscuro effect I had mentioned at the beginning of this project. Here is a Belgian grenadier NCO now with a flash of colour (in this case the red band on his forage cap) to identify him as a leader on the tabletop (Sidney's great hex idea also reinforces this). 



The casualty figure below is of a Belgian infantryman (Brigade Models). In the same vein as the NCO above I decided to make the blood as vibrant as possible - wanting to make the effect almost jarring. In fact I want all of the casualty figures be glaring and grotesque in order to support my overall vision of the mood of the project. These bases will get increasingly unsettling as this progresses.



I thought I'd provide a few group shots of the Belgian collection to date.





I need two or three more sections of infantry and a machine gun team to finish this force but it's slowly coming along.

These seven figures plus the casualty will give me 37 points.

20 comments:

  1. Oh wow, that works! Absolutely stunning Curt.

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  2. It is fantastic the effect you have achieved here, Curt. I think I´m watching a black and white movie!

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  3. Amazing, stunning ...I'm absolutey impressed with your project
    Keep them coming, please

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  4. You continue to impress with this project, just loving it so far

    Ian

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  5. Your grey scale stuff is just flat cool Curt!!

    Christopher

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  6. Ah, I've missed this project. Excellent once more.

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  7. I would never have thought this idea would have worked if it was just described to me, but it works well. The blood on the bases is indeed jarring. You're something of a brush poet, aren't you?

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  8. Fantastic work Curt, love the bright red blood. It stands out so much against the greyscale.

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  9. Good to see the return of the greyscale Curt. Real cool stuff

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  10. The red is incredibly vivid, brilliant work.

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  11. Thanks very much for your kind words everyone - much appreciated!

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  12. Dude - this stuff continues to fry my mind. It looks amazing, and my circuits short out when I try to imagine figuring out the monochrome style paint colours...

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  13. Curt, remarkable painting again. I'm deeply impressed by the tone and depth you're getting from the grey contrasts. And the red hand on the cap of the Belgian NCO is fantastic and stands out so well among the grey. This is fast evolving into an absolutely classic collection!

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  14. Greg, Sidney, thanks very much for your supportive comments. Its an odd project but one that I enjoy working on very much and I'm delighted that others appreciate what I'm attempting to achieve.

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  15. There is not much you can say about this project aside from Brilliant!

    John

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Thanks for your comment! As long as you're not a spam droid I'll have it up on the blog soon. :)