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Monday, August 30, 2010

54mm American War of Independence figures

Above are some British 54 mm figures by "All the Kings Men". These are painted as the light company from the tenth line regiment. The red vests are a distinguishing characteristic of the light infantry, as well as the shoulder "wings".

And here they are in close order. I must admit, that as my eyes get worse I have truly enjoyed switching to these nice large figures. I normally paint while wearing reading glasses, but I may have to invest in a better magnification system, as it is getting progressively more difficult for me to see detail on the smaller scales. Some aspects of getting old suck, but so far the good outweighs the bad by a longshot.

The ensign or trumpeter of the set. Epaulets were just coming into fashion, so at this point my understanding is that they did not denote rank. Here I have stuck with a latter tradition of only one epaulet for the junior officers, while the company commander (below) has two.

You have to love all the frilly shirts and tights. It reminds me of a Seinfeld episode...

None of the figure sported any shoulder boards or epaulets, so I sculpted my own. I have seen pictures of line infantry without, though most at least have shoulder boards. I decided the light infantry really should have wings, so I took the time to pull out the green stuff and make some. Time consuming, but in the end well worth it, and it gives me a unique product.

I recently found a copy of Mollos book on uniforms for the AWI, and hence finally got a good look at what Tarletons dragoons most likely looked like. All the versians of the portrait of Banastre Tarleton that I had access too were very dark, and I could not tell if the buttons were silver or gold and what color the turban around the Tarleton was. Thanks to Mollo as a reference I have spruced up my figures with gold buttons, green turbans and in the case of the officers, gold lace. Mollo had them with a green plume, but I just thought that was a little too much, especially for the troopers, so I left all of the plumes black. The little splash of gold does help the figures make a dashing appearance though.

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