My first ever attempt at painting troops was undertaken when I was eight years old. I bought a box of Airfix plastic Napoleonic French Foot Artillery (!) from Cooper’s Toy Shop in Rotherham. Having dashed home and pulled the assorted bits from the sprues, I started slapping on the Humbrol paint. An hour or two later, they looked pretty good for an eight year old, with five pots of paint. The devastating aspect to this story is that after a couple of days, all that ‘hard work’ had gone to waste as the paint began to flake off leaving my brave band of artillerymen looking more like a leper colony than a stout battery of the Emperor’s finest!
Fifteen years later, when I took up the hobby again, the above experience had matured into a finely honed pathological obsession with pre-painting preparation. Hence my guide, included here, simply as an alternative to the much better ‘FOUNDRY MANNER’, begins with a section on the pre-painting preparation of your figures. Throughout the painting guide you will find samples of figures that I have painted. Most of these images used to appear in the Gallery section of the old version of this site. On re-designing the site, I decided not to bother with a gallery, but include pictures of my painted troops here, where they belong, with the painting guide.
To naviagte through this section of the site, simply click on the Page Navigation Bar at the top of each page in the guide.