Napoleonic Spanish Infantry (1808) in Bicorne

Well, I finally made progress on something! The last time these made an appearance in the blog they were in the development stage. But I needed another Allied unit for an upcoming battle and these fit in well with the British that I already have. They are Napoleonic Spanish infantry in bicorne (1808).

Spanish troops look pretty nice, even if they are usually rated rather poorly on the tabletop by most Napoleonic rules. They have almost Seven Years War style uniforms, reflecting a Revolutionary France influence of replacing the tricorne with the bicorne.

This build is fairly similar to all my 42mm soldiers. It uses a standard 1 11/16" pawn for the head and body, with craft foam used for the arms, cartridge box, bicorne, and rosette. A small piece of square balsa dowel is used for the bayonet sheathe and the musket with fixed bayonet is a flat toothpick. As always, the feet are a wooden heart shape. It really does not get much simpler.

One thing that is different about the arms and bicornes from previous experiments: I used a computer controlled cutting machine to make the parts, resulting in a quicker and more consistent product.

I used some white dimensional paint to make the strap over the rosette on the bicorne and on top of the shoes, to make the feet more three-dimensional. Other than that, the rest is pen and paint.

I decided to use a permanent marker with a brush tip for things like the eyebrows, mustache, and dark lines separating colors. I then used thick paint to edge right up to the pen lines in order to control the thickness.

Unlike previously, I did not add painted muskets to the painted figure at the end; I glued them to the figure before I started painting. Big mistake. That made it harder to get paint on the back side of the musket without slopping over onto the white uniform or black bicorne. It is not so much that it looks bad – I doubt you can even see it unless you actively looked at a awkward angle – but that it plays on your mind when you are holding the figure close to your face at awkward angles. You notice it all the time, so the error looks much larger than it really is.


In the end, though, I am pretty pleased with how they turned out. Sad it took me so long to finish them, but happy they are done.