The 'Black Gang': Black from head to foot?

[Plynkes]

Wasn't sure where to put this, so I put it here.

I want to paint a handful of engine room crew for my gunboats. I'm planning to use some of the more generic sailors I have (ones without hats and such), and paint them in a generic manner. This is so I can try and get away with just painting one set for now, rather than one for each of the three or four navies that I game with. So I thought, I know, I'll just have them covered in coal dust so you can't really see the uniforms.

So for one thing I'm after is ideas for painting such fellows so they don't just look like they've fallen in a bucket of black paint.

The other thing is that they are mostly for gaming the Great War (but maybe will double as Victorians, too). By then oil-powered steamers were all the rage, rather than coal. Am I right in thinking that? Would an oil-fuelled boiler's crew even be black from head to foot? Something makes me doubt that. Would gunboats and such in colonial backwaters have oil boilers anyway?

I've never been in the engine room of a steamer. How'd you reckon I should paint these fellows? I really want them to look different to the Bristol Fashion deck hands and gunners in their pristine tropical whites up on deck.

[Prof.Witchheimer]

they dont look black I dont think that the steamer guys would look different. But if you like the idea to paint them black, why not?

[Lowtardog]

You want smudges rather than cover them in coal soot. If you want to risk it Paynes grey oil wash works a treat a bit on the hands, knees and the odd hand print on trousers and possibly some on the face

[PeteMurray]

I don't see why they wouldn't get very dirty regardless - Oil burners are leaky beasts, and there's always gallons of lubricant to slather over everthing.

I remember hearing an engineer of a steam engine say that he actually got cleaner at work once they converted the locomotive from an oil-burner back to a coal-burner.

Suggest a generous dark gray drybrush over everything.

[Lowtardog]

Its the stokers you want covered in clarts suitable ones with shovels and that

[Vanvlak]

Although I'm more familiar with modern oil-fired boilers frommy shipyard days, I would say that even in earlier times they wouldn;t get that messy except in very particular occasions - the rare streak of black should do. Coal stokers would have been far messier.

[xeoran]

Black-grey mix on brush, wipe most of it off, dapple on points of contact (mostly front of body: face, knees, elbows, chest, lower legs etc.) On face add a little more grey to make smudges (possibly with corresponding marks on the forearms). Make sure the eyes are very white.

Look at pictures of miners for how coal dust accumulates on clothing.

[Will Bailie]

Have a look at The Sand Pebbles for inspiration - lots of time spent in the engine room in that one!

Not that I use movies insted of proper research or anything...