Crazyredcoat's Crazy Compendium of Collected Creativity

Just a short* update today. Long story short, there’s a stereotype that men never read the instructions…though experience has taught me that this is just true; we don’t. Turns out that Perry have a guide in the box for how to paint the riders and saddles and also turns out I made some mistakes. Luckily, a bit of careful painting allowed me to rectify them fairly quickly as most were simple colour changes. The most important part of this was a part of the research that I forgot about with British Cavalry; Campaign vs. Parade.

The first, glaring, mistake this shows is the shabraque** which I originally painted with a solid gold band as I assumed it would have been in the same colour of the cording on his jacket, this was wrong on both the service (campaign) example and the parade one…and there was no way I was painting the dags along all the folds. So campaign it is.*** The roll on the back of the saddle was also something I had mistakenly got the colours wrong on. I went for a grey-blue that a lot of British equipment like water canteens and gun carriages were painted in, but it is clearly meant to be the same blue as the uniform. These were both easy enough fixes on the horse and I’ve done that already.

He looks a little less flashy now, but he looks accurate! Or as good as I can manage with what I have. The stripe on the leg of the rider was also an incorrect colour as I, again, assumed they were in cording colours, but alas they are in facing colours**** which, for the 2nd KGL, are white though I did them in silver to be a bit more flashy again. As I’m still working on an entry for the jackets, I will save those images for later, but I thought it’d be a good idea to show where research can sometimes lead you astray…and to check the boxes for some hints…

*Or as short as I get…

**The technical name for the cloth under the officer’s saddle, I knew it had one…

***I do intend to use these chaps on a battlefield one day, after all.

****The colour of the cuffs and collars which denoted regiments in the army at the time.