210 : Not So Period Period-Detail

I mentioned ‘period look’ in the last post. There were certain building features that I felt made Napoleonic model buildings look more modern than they should. The most obvious was brilliant white window frames. Other questionable historical finishes being brightly painted doors, scarlet roof tiles and ultra white walls. Chimney pots were also a feature that it was easy to forget only became the norm in the mid-1800s. The panelled door, too, although a familiar feature in European towns since the beginning of the 18th century was not so common in the rural communities of the Napoleonic era where the plank door still held sway.

Useful Colours

The colour I found the most useful for painting my models was a grey-brown, named Cashmere in the DecoArt series of paints. This was the same colour I painted my bases, which matched the colour of my tabletop of terrain tiles. The DecoArt acrylic paints were useful for painting model buildings. In larger quantities, big pots of emulsion paint were more useful for covering larger areas. For many years, I had been using Dulux’s Osprey, the same colour as DecoArt’s Cashmere. For touching up figure bases, with its higher measure of pigment, Foundy’s Rawhide Light 11C – the same colour, again – was more suitable.

After brushing this colour over my models and bases, I found the best wash was standard Raw Umber acrylic paint – not Burnt Umber, which was too red for my taste. While Raw Umber gave bases and terrain a subtle shade, I usually reserved a Burnt Umber wash for adding warmer tones to figures.