Thanks for your kind replies, gentlemen. I'm back from our one week holiday by the sea. Thus it's time for an update.
Well, until now I presented my very first beginnings with NWF and my collection of sources. But of course the project went on. Last year in April I spent a wonderful weekend of wargaming goodness at a friend's place near Stuttgart. We met there with a couple of fellows to spent a weekend with chatting, painting and gaming. However in this sublime bunch of fellows I started to paint the second British unit:
72nd Regiment of Foot
The Duke of Albany's Own Highlanders
The regiment was raised in the Western highlands by Kenneth Mackenzie in 1778. It found service on the Indian subcontinent for most of its time. Especially during the 2nd and 3rd Anglo-Mysore Wars in late 18th Century. During the Napoleonic Wars the 72nd fought in Ceylon and South Africa. Then they were renamed "The Duke of Albany's Own".
In the Victorian Era the regiment saw service in Africa, Gibraltar, Barbados, the Crimea, India and Afghanistan. During the Cardwell and Childers Reforms the regiment was restructured and finally amalgamated with the 78th Highlanders to form the Seaford Highlanders (
link to Wikipedia).
This regiment caught my eye because of it's colourful appearance. I found the picture above in the Osprey book about the British Army on campaign and loved it at first sight. The combination of Indian Service Dress and the Tartan Trews were simply to unique for me to be ignored. Thus I gave them a reappearance in 38mm:
The figures are from Perry Miniatures' excellent Sudan range. They represent British troops in Indian Service Dress which are utterly perfect for this very regiment.
Most interesting part of these uniforms are of course the trews. As far as I know the 72nd was the only regiment wearing tartan trews and tartan puttees and thus the greatest challenge was to create an idea of the traditional pattern on those miniatures. Although I wasn't able to recreate the tartan right down to the last detail I'm really satisfied with the overall impression. Especially from two feet gaming distance...
On some of the figures I changed the style of painting the covered helmet slightly. While I didn't do anything but drybrushing on the first figures I tried to outline the segments of the helmet under the cover more on the later figures. Although I know it was covered and probably the segments didn't show through too much I prefer the more detailed look. Let's call it artistic freedom.
As usual I employed mostly Vallejo Model Colors and Vallejo Game Colors. The uniform itself - meaning helmet cover and jacket in this case - is based on VGC 'Khaki', VMC 'Iraqui Sand' and VMC 'Pale Sand'.
For the trews I painted a base colour of VMC 'Hull Red', VMC 'Crimson Red' and VMC 'Vermillion'. Above that dark chequers of VMC 'Hull Red' with thin lines of VMC 'Buff' and VMC 'Pastel Blue'.
Even with a year distance I'm still more than satisfied with the result. Surely some of you artists out there would be able to paint the tartan more accurate but yours truly knows the limitations of his skills.
Cheers
Stefan