Painting Peter Laing Figures as Toy Soldiers

      My job requires me to shovel snow. The school I work at has 51 doorways that must be cleared. As I work the day shift the doors we keep clear are the main entrances, and the other shifts clear the rest. Wednesday's snow storm hit in the morning right as the kids were arriving, and so we were out trying to keep the doors clear for the kids. And as there was only half a day of school, we had to turn around and clear the doors again before the buses arrived. What's more, after the kids left the snow stopped and the sun came out. I spent the rest of the day clearing the doors around the school so the other shifts had only to salt and sand the doorways.

    Now it was a very light and fluffy snow, easy to move. I also had to remove snow when I got home. As soon as I got home I went to work on my driveway. Now at first I was just going to shovel, but grew tired of it quickly and brought out the snow blower, did my drive way and a couple of neighbors and had the job done in less than an hour. I prepared a cup of coffee and settled down to start work on a new project, only to find myself drained of all energy and sat at my desk trying to get motivation. It didn't work so I ended up watching Youtube videos of the Trooping of the Colors. I suddenly felt inspired.  I went back and started going through my Peter Laing home casts of Victorian Parade figures. Pulling out some spiked helmet soldiers and high gloss enamel paints,  I slapped a coat of paint on them, and being happy with the results, pulled out some British Crimean infantry home casts and slapped more paint on them. It was then I remembered what drew me to Peter Laings in the first place, their toy soldier like appearance. I am thinking more that when it comes to painting PL figures,  I might be using the high gloss paint and simply paint them as "toy soldiers" and not "military miniatures". Below are comparisons between the high gloss paint job and flats.

    I also inspected my Crimean War British Guards I painted with high gloss paint a couple of years ago and they reenforced my decision to adopt this paint style.

My Peter Laing Crimean War Guards. If you notice the bearskins are of various sizes and shapes. These figures were originally painted as 1750's British grenadiers, with the bearskins trimmed down to look like mitres.  When I realized they were converted Crimean guards, I built back up the bearskins using epoxy glue. 

Close up of three Guards painted with high gloss enamel paint.

4 home cast Crimean British infantry painted the same style.

4 more British Victorian home cast infantry. The two on the left were painted with gloss enamel, the two on the right with flat hobby paints.