Now I've started to provide coloured templates, the problem of defining colours is something I'm having to tackle. It doesn't help that I don't use a properly calibrated monitor, partly because when calibrated my monitor is far too bright and gives me bad headaches so I like to keep the display fairly darkish. So I'm trying to standardise the colours I use, the basis I'm using for this being the readily accessible Wikipedia pages on colour here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_colors which give RGB definitions etc.. I make no claim to being 100% correct or entirely purist about this; as we know, 18th century uniform colours are nightmarishly difficult to define anyway. But it does help to have some sort of standard by which to work. Just in case anyone wants to know! :-)
Being a uniform and flag design service to wargamers and to the imaginary crowned heads of 17th and 18th Century Europe, especially of the Seven Years War period - now By Appointment to the Court of Saxe-Bearstein! (But please note that the uniforms and flags presented here are not fictional - they are genuine 17th and 18th Century uniforms and flags that are as authentic as I can make them from my sources.)
Add to that, of course, the facts that every single supplier used slightly different dye mixtures each time . . . plus fading and weathering.
ReplyDeleteSomeone once said something to the effect that every single historical army could be correctly painted in "dried mud" color. . . . Of course who wants to paint their armies that way?
Don't worry about it, David, your guesses are probably better than most.
-- Jeff
Thanks, Jeff. Yes - very true! Standardisation is a rather modern concept, as is durability - and even in modern armies there's plenty of variation when men provide their own equipment to replace the standard issue stuff.
ReplyDeleteI think of the 18th century Prussian army, where to give a semblance of uniformity the smallclothes of each infantry *company* had to be dyed together - that does suggest a good deal of variation in practice!
David.
Sir David, Can't wait to see what uniform you select for youself as a new Brigadier General...
ReplyDeleteI'm sure whatever colors you come up with are excellent and as historically accurate as you can make them given all of the limitations. At least they can give us a basis for comparison. I doubt anyone could reasonably quibble about exact shades, only comparative ones at best, I'm thinking. Maybe they could say one unit wore very dark blue and another unit wore a lighter blue, for example.
ReplyDeleteHi Bill,
ReplyDeleteI'm having a good rummage through the materials to see what uniform would look best (IMHO). Will let you see what I come up with soon! :-)
All the best,
David.
Thanks, FB. Well, I do try, although one is often working with either very little information or very contradictory information, so it's not easy. Then again, why should it be easy? ;-)
ReplyDeleteAll the best,
David.