IR Macquire Painting White on White- A Method

This is IR Macquire and as you can see their uniform and accoutrements are mainly white.  This of course is a painter’s nightmare especially in the smaller scales.  The difficulty is making detail stand out and not be subsumed in a sea of whiteness.  There are many proposed solutions to the problem from black lining which looks unnatural to building up various shades of grey or cream to white which is very time consuming.  Worse, unless very skilfully done it might not work.

I want to share another method to bring succour to fellow aficionados of French or Austrian Forces. Let’s turn again to IR Maquire who could so easily be a white out but instead have nice definition.  

This is how they were painted in a timely and effective fashion.

The cleaned-up Blue Moon 15/18mm castings were given an undercoat of undiluted white.  Then the bases were painted tan with no care to avoid overrunning on shoes or gaiters.

Once dry the hats, gaiters, shoes, scabbards and cartridge boxes were painted black. Once again overrunning was ignored.  Then musket stocks and hair and haversacks were painted. Coloured facings and cockades were added.

Finally flesh and metal buttons, hilts etc were carefully painted and the locks, barrels and bayonets of the muskets.

Once dry the castings received a wash of undiluted brown ink and were left to dry overnight.

Then using white I painted over the now nicely delineated straps, turn backs, hat lace and highlighted limbs and waistcoat edges. Leave to dry, varnish and base.

I hope you’ll agree they do look tolerably nice.