'French Blue' What the hell is that then?

Hello there! I am currently doing a number of projects in between working at the hospital and one of them is to complete a battalion of French light infantry for a refight of the battle of Maida. They will also be used for the 1809 campaign and the Peninsular.

I have not painted Napoleonic French for over twenty years. I used to paint 15's and 25's, (as was then), but am now collecting Perry's and Front Rank for my work now.

After searching around the internet for suggestions of what shade of blue to use (even to TMP), I found a wide range of suggestions in many different makes of paint.

I use Vallejo paints, which narrowed it down a bit but I do use the triad system so looked at the Wargames Foundry paints and bought a few from their range as they looked very promising.

To help me find what paint I require and what colour or shade goes with what I make my own colour sheets and write up a painting plan for each of the units I paint. This stops me having to refer to different books all the time when painting and then weeks or years down the line I can still remember what colours I used to paint them if I need to paint more!

Here are a few examples of what I mean. I group the colours in, for example, Greens (above), then red triads on the left and a colour chart for the 4th Swiss I painted recently. I have similar for each colour triad and each main colour, (red, blue, green, brown and yellow). This helps me find the colour I want straight away.

Back to the French blue. I did a test figure and thought well that's done then! However I stopped and thought 'That's maybe a bit bright?' I looked through my reference material at home and did a few searches on the internet and started to think it was too bright after all. I feel I had been influenced by the illustrations from the Osprey books on Napoleons light Infantry from many years ago.

I did some colour swatches for the blues I was thinking of using, including the Foundry paints I had brought and started to do some more trial figures.

Foundry Paints:      Blue 65 a,b,c    These are intended to be used as a base, middle and highlight. I started with the first shade but on painting the mid coat and leaving it to dry, (wet paint appears brighter as it reflects more light), I  found it very hard to tell the difference between the two shades. The third, highlight, shade was noticeable but did not stand out enough for me.

I was beginning to think I had either 'blue blindness' from looking at so many different shades of blue I could no longer tell one from the other or they were only slightly different!  I left it for a couple of days and found the same thing. So on to something else.....

Vallejo Paints:     899 Dark Prussian Blue, 965 Prussian Blue     I have seen this combination suggested a number of times. I first tried a black undercoat with the dark Prussian blue but found it was miles too dark for me. The indigo dye used in real life was VERY dark and when it faded, quickly, started to give off a definite green hue. I was beginning to feel that going with reality was not going to pay off as it was looking like I was going to give my French troops black uniforms!

With this still not looking good after adding the 965 Prussian Blue I tried it with a lighter undercoat but still not fun. Next up.....

Vallejo Paints:       965 Prussian Blue, Various mid coats and highlights, (840 Andrea Blue, 925 Intense Blue, 930 Dark Blue, 962 Flat Blue, 963 Medium Blue).      These combinations just got lighter and lighter and while I knew this colour did fade in real life I was just not satisfied with the result. 

I started to mix paints to get what I wanted. Starting with an empty dropper bottle I used a two ml syringe and a drawing up needle to mix fixed quantities of 899 Dark Prussian Blue and 965 Prussian Blue. This started to get near to what I wanted and used a grey undercoat on the figures to help the shade of blue look lighter. Things had started to come together.

One night I had a few minutes to spare so I went back to the Foundry Paints and instead of using the triad I used the 'a' shade as the shadow and the 'c' shade as the main colour and added some 840 Andrea blue as the highlight. Bingo! All's well with the World and I can now get on with the light infantry.

Here is a colour comparison of the colours I was using. Top left is 965 Prussian Blue. Below it is 899 Dark Prussian Blue. Along the top is mixes of 899 Dark Prussian Blue with progressive additions of 965 Prussian Blue. Top far right is 899 Dark Prussian Blue again. The group of three lower down is the Foundry paints. The large square is Foundry 'b' and is done to show that a larger area of the same shade dos look lighter than a small area.

I was not expecting this photograph to come out as clear as it has but I was surprised to find the different shades of blue are apparent.

An interesting article on different dyes available in the Napoleonic period can be found here

I will hasten to add that this is for 28mm figures, not 15's as the smaller areas of paint will make things look darker.

Now on with the French!