Sunday 7 June 2009

My Russian Army...

Hi all,

Over the years I have painted many Russian units, most of this work has been for my brother who collects the Russians but also for another friend who also plays the Russians of 1812-14. This army is fascinating to research, it is large and formidable with a depth of history which rivals any other major European power of the day.

The pictures in this installment are predominately Cavalry, the Artillery and Infantry will follow in the near future. These are units I have painted over the past 10-15 years which I am most proud of. The variety of types is fairly large with a predominance of AB figures used. I will endeavour to add to this section many more pictures as I can.

The following two pictures are two views of a Russian Grenadier of the 1806-07 era. They show the great bushy black plume and the pink facings of the Kiev Grenadier Regiment.











The next set pictures show the Russian Cavalry I have painted on mass, it is pretty close to an entire Cavalry Corps consisting of all types, Cuirassiers, Dragoons, Hussars and Lancers. With our Rules system being one figure equals 40 men these regiments boast roughly 18 figures full strength. However, several of these regiments are in need of one or more figures to finish them off.

































In the next pictures you can see the Heavy Cavalry Regiments I have painted, the Cuirassiers. These are circa 1812-14 showing the men of each Regiment wearing the full Front and Back plates of the cuirass. There are several regiments shown here such as the Horse Garde, Chevalier Garde, Novgorod Regiment and the Little Russia Regiment. Please take little notice of the flags as they are incorrect, we know this and will be fixing that problem as soon as we get the correct ones to replace them.






















In the next set of pictures you can see the Dragoon Regiments of the Russian army, these figures are also AB miniatures and yet again they are very well sculptured. They were very easy to paint and very quick also. The great thing about Russian Dragoons is that the uniform is relatively plain thus an entire Dragoon Division could be painted up in a very short time, at least for our system at least.






















The next set of pictures shows the Russian Light Cavalry, namely the Hussars of the army, namely the Garde Hussars. These figures are once again AB miniatures simply because the sculptures are perfect. The Hussars are painted up in their 1805-07 costume and look magnificent. I must say, they were a joy to paint even if difficult because of the perfection of the figures. I was able to put so much detail into the painting simply because of the level of detail on the figure.












































The next set of pictures shows another Russian Hussar Regiment, the White Russia Hussars. I only have 6 figures painted up so far but hope to have the rest completed as soon as possible.











In this set of pictures I have the Polish Uhlan Regiment of 12 figures. Once again I chose AB miniatures for the figures, they are clearly way above every other brand for detail, proportion and ease of painting. When finished I was astounded with the level of realism in the poses.












































4 comments:

Andy McMaster said...

Those Russians, and your other armies are bloody lovely! Russians were my first armies in 25mm (Hinchcliffe mid 70s) and I'm slowly returning to Naps with the Perry 28mm plastics.

I like your 15mm style though and may try some of the 'looks' on my own 15mm AWIs.

Thanks for sharing

Andy

Shane Devries said...

G'day mate,

Glad you like them, I myself learnt the style from another painter in Melbourne Australia way back in the early 90's. My brother and I commissioned this guy to paint up the Russian Chevalier Gardes you see on my Blog. When we saw them we were so impressed I changed my own style from white undercoat to the black undercoat and never looked back. He also painted in such a way that the colours would not touch the other colours but left a thin black line, I adopted the same approach.

Regards,
Shane

Galpy said...

Have to agree with you the AB figures are way better than anything else on the market. You paint work is very good the hussars look amazing

Shane Devries said...

Thanks mate, I really enjoyed painting those Russians, the sculpting of the figures really allow fine detail workmanship for painting I must admit.

Shane