The Waving Flag: 15 mm ACW Union Infantry Command (Warrior)

Thursday 1 April 2021

15 mm ACW Union Infantry Command (Warrior)

To compliment the ACW Confederate infantry I finished in August last year, I have completed three bases of Union infantry commands. All figures are from Warrior Miniatures.

The main reasons for doing this was firstly to use my newly printed union flags and secondly to work on a colour palette for the Union uniform; particularly the dark blue of the coats.

In the end I achieved the same effect with two completely different paint recipes. The base with the flags was my first attempt using exclusively Vallejo paints. The outer two bases were painted, in part, with DecoArt Crafters acrylics.

Both dark blues are based on a thin coat of Vallejo 70.899 (Dark Prussian Blue) with added talc to prevent the shine.

Paint Recipes
I first tried highlighting the coat with a mix of Dark Prussian Blue and Vallejo 70.962 (Flat Blue) at roughly 4:1 but this required a wash with a mix of Dark Prussian Blue & black to tone it down and kill the shine.

This method was really hard work as the Vallejo paints did not varnish well: the previously matt finishes ended up with a distinct sheen. This was not due to the varnish but the paint itself (see below). I ended up doing a lot of messing about after varnishing the figures.

The second method used DecoArt Truly Blue as the highlight colour. This paint dries, and varnishes, dead flat (told you it wasn't the varnish) but requires just a touch (4 or 5:1) of Vallejo 70.961 067 (Sky Blue) to increase the contrast with the base colour.

Overall the recipe based on DecoArt Truly Blue is quicker during painting; requires no additional washes, and does not risk annoying post varnish recovery work. This will be my preferred method for dark blues from now on.

This larger image should help compare the various blues I used. In the end I think they match well despite using different paints.