PRUSSIAN CUIRASSIERS, 1866, WORK IN PROGRESS (BARELY)

Prussian Cuirassier, Franco Prussian War Era, Edouard Detaille, 1882

Wikimedia Commons. 

Well, dear readers, there's not much new to report on the gaming scene.  I recently ran another game of BBB with KS blocks, but was so engaged with facilitating it that I didn't capture any photos. You can, however, check out a report of the game on Mark's My Brave Fusiliers Blog. I'll eventually update the information on the BBB Resources Page to reflect the tweaks that I did to that scenario.  In the meantime, I thought I'd put up a work in progress post on my current painting. 

Northstar Prussian Cuirassiers and Cuirassier Command 

Not much to look at, really, but these will eventually be two regiments of Prussian Cuirassiers for my Chocolate Box Wars Prussians.  These figs have been primed and sitting about waiting to be done for months (maybe more...I lose track). I finally picked up a brush this week and  tackled the horses (more work than they would seem: undercoated with burnt umber, wash of black, then drybrushed with burnt sienna; then painted the manes/tails black and drybrushed them dark gray; still need to do the harness--which will be leather).   Although I already have two regiments of Prussian Cuirassiers, they are Foundry. They're nice enough, but given that all of my other Prussian Cav are the larger and more detailed Northstar figures, I could not resist "upgrading" my heavies to fit in (chore though they may be). 

As a primary reference, I'll be using Bassett-Powell's excellent Armies of Bismarck's Wars, a "usual suspect" sort of text.  It is a fine reference (don't get me wrong: I highly recommend it), and in my earlier years, given how comprehensive it is on the subject, a text like this would have been the only source I would have used.  However, nowadays I also consult other materials, such as prints, uniform plates, and paintings by artists like Karl Rochling and Eduoard Detaille; these latter may be romanticized, but I would wager that they accurately render uniform and equipment details given that they were produced at a time when those who actually wore the garb and carried the kit were among the primary audience.  I think I really began to appreciate (and use) these other kinds of sources when I was creating forces outside of what the "usual suspect" references addressed. It's not that I don't use Ospreys, etc, any longer, but now I don't rely on them exclusively.  So what began as a necessity has grown into an integral part of my process. If anyone is really interested in going down the rabbit hole of seeing how I incorporate "alternate" references, I would encourage them look over the posts on my Russian Army of the Russo Turkish War era as a good example.

In that spirit, for this project, I am drawing on my collection of Sturm Cigarette Cards. I was fortunate enough to pick up several albums of these on ebay; the bibliophile in me likes them, but they're also useful references (imagine that; a practial curio!).  To use these alternate references, I take digital snaps (or download digital images), paste them in a word document, enlarge them, and bring that to the painting table.  For the curious, here is a pdf version of my Prussian cuirassier cigarette card compilation and my other sources compilation for this project.  And just to round out this post, here are some nice pictures of the relevant cigarette cards (as usual, you may clix pix for BIG PIX):

And that's all for now...

Excelsior!