Basic Napoleonic Painting: New treatment for old Airfix

Bah! Humbug! Spend a fortune on fancy new metal? Never! You'll be wanting a living wage next. Christmas is over and the reality is...I'm broke. Still, the much maligned 1/72 Airfix figures are still around and a neighbour, friend, person who thinks you sad and takes pity, relative or person who had grown up may yet have a bag of these old popular figures in a cupboard some where. Get them, or the ones you know you have somewhere, and paint them up. They make great units!...oh, don't make that face...look, even the odd ones from the Airfix French Napoleonic Artillery are useful...stop smirking, it's true...

 When I base I use 'No More Nails' 'Hard as Nails' 'Don't Bite Your Nails'...well you get the picture. But it just isn't useful for basing. Stick a blob on the front of the shako and half your chagrin at these old figures will fade as it makes a sound pompom that will take paint.

 So this is the bare article, and yet...

 ...happy days looks not bad with paint. Of course, the main complaint with nearly all plastics is that the paint flakes off.

 This, though depends on your primer. A good plastics primer is an expensive type of paint (though not quite as expensive as say Army Painter) but is worth it a) because if you decant it into smaller containers so that the whole lot is not exposed to air all the time you paint, it will probably last for years and do thousands of figures and b) because primers for plastic are extremely flexible and don't lose figure definition and don't flake.

 As you can see, the primer (which is white) takes cheap black acrylic really well...

 ...and then away you go...Obviously, I use the black undercoat method for Napoleonic's.

But, if you are a white undercoat painter, you can cut out a stage and go straight to the colour stage. I think the artillery marching figure makes a good flank company infantryman.

On a tip from a mate (Colin) I now paint figs on nails. I know other folk do this with metals which sometimes requires that you glue the fig to the nail and snap it off after painting and varnishing is done, but with plastics blue or white tack is plenty strong enough.