A Question of Painting

This coming weekend will see the ACW collection under the brush (or rather spray to begin with!). In the run up to this I have been considering not only colour schemes for the ships involved but also the techniques I shall employ and the level of detail I want to go to. The models are quite basic in respect of detail and as I have mentioned in the past, they remind me of large sized 1/3000 types - particularly those of Davco with their exaggerated height. Clearly a hugely detailed 'artistic' paint job would be wasted on them so I am not expecting washes and extensive shading and highlighting to be used. The paint scheme will be very much in the 'Toy soldier' realm i.e. bold and flat colours. I have not decided yet how to tackle such things as doors and windows and one idea I have been toying with is to use waterslide transfers for such - you can buy sheets of this and in, effect, desgin your own which would be really useful (not only for this project I might add!). This idea may also help to solve the problem of the 'fantail' effect on some of the side wheel steamer paddle boxes.

Armour is another area of concern. I do not want to paint ironclads in metal colours. The technique I want to experiment with is to use a base non-metal colour and then dry brush the angles etc with a metal shade. This will be particularly useful for the dark armour of the Union Cairo class gunboats which appear almost black to look at. I may even experiment with using a pencil to 'line' the armour to represent rails etc although this might be a technique too far for the quality of the detailing - they are purely representational after all and not scale models.

I intend getting all the basic painting tackled first and then to mess about with transfers etc before finishing the models off prior to basing on the clear plastic.

Much to ponder methinks.