Volunteer Zaragoza’s Light Battallion 1809

Hi all, at last an update of my blog!

This is the last figure I finished a ZARAGOZA VOLUNTEER 1808-1809 a nice figure Sculpted by Diego Fernández for Art Girona.

I bought it from AMIS (It was of a modeller from that modelling club tragically passed away: Mr. Valter Rocco) so I’d like to dedicate to him and I think that he would be happy to see it painted…..

The figure represents a Spanish soldier and tells us a story about the Peninsular war: the tragically famous second siege of Zaragoza in witch more than 60000 peoples passed away.

At the end the french troops won but the price was very hight….

….from wikipedia: “Under the terms of surrender the garrison marched out of the city and stacked their arms outside the Portillo gate. They had the choice of going into captivity or joining the French army. Of the 32,000 men at the start of the siege only 8,000 survived.

The terms of surrender allowed private property to be respected and a general amnesty was granted to the city. Although some looting took place the city was not sacked.

The suffering of the city had been terrible with estimated deaths of 54,000 made up of 20,000 soldiers and 34,000 civilians. Lannes himself estimated that the population of Saragossa had fallen from 55,500 to 15,000.

The French had also suffered losing about 10,000 men – 4,000 in battle and the rest to sickness.

Palafax (spanish commander) himself was harshly treated by the French who imprisoned him as a traitor at Vincennes.”

(more about the sieges of Zaragoza you can read: first siege – second siege)

As I wrote the figure is from Art Girona and I painted it only with acrylic paint (mostly Andrea).

I painted the flash with Andrea paint set adding to the mixture some red for the cheeks and prussian blue for beard

For the blue I used the Andrea set, using as base the firs shadow and adding some flash to the mixture to have a wheathered uniform.

For the black I started from the german tanker uniform from vallejo panzer aces line adding for light dark flash from Andrea ad for shadows Andrea’s old flat black.

The dirt has been made with pigments

The rifle was made with oil from W&N and the metallic parts with oils and metalic colors from Tamiya’s metallic markers (X11 & X12). All the shadows and the linings have been made with black acrylic.

Here are the photos: