250 man ACW project, day 3

Day three is complete. I finished painting all the hair, backpacks, and headgear on all the figures. Now I know which of the figures will be yanks and which will be rebs.

I wish I had some better light for photographing the whole job, but all the figures won't fit on my table at once.

The floppy hats got a drybrush right over the black primer. It looks pretty crude in a photo, but remember that this figure is very, very magnified. At gaming distance, the hats look pretty sharp. I used three different colors for the hats.

To finish 250 figures in a week of painting, I have to take some shortcuts. That's especially important because I only have 2-3 hours of painting time each day. At the very most, I'll have 21 hours of work time. It'll probably shake out to something like 15 hours, requiring a pace of 16 figures per hour.

I'm not going to attempt two-tone shading. I usually do use shading on my 15mm figures, but these are getting a simple block paint job. That's the way most of my 15mm ACW collection is painted anyway, so I'm not sacrificing the overall look of my armies just to make this project easier.

I will shade the flesh. Figures painted in a solid fleshtone never look quite right to me.

Here's our marching Union soldier again, showing the progression from day 1 to day 3. You can't see his hair in this shot, but it's painted a nice dark brown.

Tonight I'll start on the next phase, painting the coats, trousers, and blanket rolls on all the figures. This stage may take two days, but I'll make a post tomorrow showing my progress.