b) CLOTHING: this sounds very simple and it is as simple as you want to make it. I use a big brush (1 or 2) to block-in a basic colour. Again, it doesn’t matter if your colour goes where it shouldn’t, as you can always tidy things up later with your ubiquitous black paint. Next you can either choose a lighter colour from your collection and dry brush across the raised areas of clothing, giving a highlight to your figure. Or you can mix your own highlight colour. With reds, browns and greens, this is done by adding a little yellow, or with other colours a little white. It is worth experimenting with this, as sometimes all you need do is add a colour that is a lighter shade than the one you have blocked-in with, which gives a subtler highlight than adding white. That is about as much as I tend to do, but, of course, you can take this further by adding extra highlights. I tend not to, but at this stage I go round with my black again and put back in any shading lines that have been painted over.
c) BELTS & BOOTS: I tend to be quite haphazard by this time and use a standard leather colour (brown, red or green) with plenty of spit! Depending on the figures I sometimes use a buff colour for leatherwork or, if it needs to black or white, I use horse colours to get that slightly shiny effect. If I’m in the mood, I might add a little yellow to the base colour to highlight some areas of the leatherwork. As with all other things, once the paint is on, tidy up with black.

The chap on the left commands a squad of British Paras that my boys use to play a WWII skirmish game called ‘1945’. The rules can be downloaded free and are very easy to learn and play. The figure, like all my small WWII collection, is from Black Tree Design. The three figures on the right, are Front Rank Design, British Napoleonic Light Company. I sold these a while ago on e-bay. They were intended to be used with one of the many sets of free skirmish rules available on line. One of the positives of skirmish gaming is the individual basing, which makes the whole painting process much simpler in my view.