Painting Day 3-A.T.K.M. French Cuirassier-54mm

I took a couple of days off. Work gets in the way of painting sometimes. Not whining, just keeping long hours during the first quarter of school.  I Minwax'd the Cuirassier over the weekend and finished it out tonight. It took about 1.5 hours even stopping for some dinner.  These figures do paint up nicely.  I'm still not sure about the tall green grass thing under the horse but will finish it out and see how it looks.  I don't think having it is a deal breaker however.  I'm looking foward to seeing a 12 figure regiment, en haye, on the game board.  

You'll notice I'm beginning the basing process.  It's a really difficult process...:) Paint the base Vallejo Beasty Brown (you choose whatever color-I just had 12 bottles of it laying around after my ECW project.) let it dry 30 minutes. Put a thick coat of Elmer's Glue. I use whatever is around. I'm a teacher so I'll scrounge up a bottle of School Glue on the cheap.  I put a combination of Medium and Light weight Woodland Scenics brown ballast. I buy the big plastic bottle. My bottles have lasted three years.  Ha! I put the ballast in a cleaned up plastic lunchmeat container. Do try this at home!  Finish the glue thang by spreading it around and dip the figure into the container. Badda-Boom-Baada Bing...done! I then glue down some Medium weight railroad rock stuff from Woodland Scenics. Paint it Dark Grey when it's dry.  I use Basalt Grey by Vallejo.  Use whatever you like.  I dry brush the rocks with Howard Hues Concrete then lightly touch the rocks with a medium viscosity Acrylic white.  I use cheap tube White for this part.  Get some static grass from your favorite Local Game Store. I get mine from the Model Railroad shop because I can get more stuff and save a little in the purchase. As per the ballast, I've had this stuff for about three years too.  Brush on some diluted Elmers in a classic WW2 British camo pattern and sprinkle the static grass on the base. Thump the base a couple of times.  The grass will stand up on its own.  This is the most time consuming part of the basing.  I then repaint the edges of the miniature with more Beasty Brown to finish it out. All my figures have magnetized surfaces. I sign each figure base and date it.  Sounds weird...well...pretty weird...it's cool however to look under some figures you've not played in a while and find you painted 10 years ago.  Musing of an old man right?  Anyway, here's the miniature painted and ready to base up. 

You NEED some of the figures if you collect 54mm Napoleonics. Easy to paint, easy to finish out