2mm Irregular Miniatures VSF Turkish 1876 in progress

Planning my  forces for  a VSF collection -  and initially going for the Turkish. My order from Irregular arrived in super quick time and although I've  spent only a couple of hours at the painting desk, my  first 800! Turkish infantry are painted and ready for basing. It's been  nearly 30 years since I painted some 2mm Bavarians for Mac's models in Edinburgh, and whilst my eyes are not what they were, my hands are as steady as ever :)

Not entirely happy with my first efforts, I'm going to try a black undercoat with the next batch rather than the grey with black wash i used this time. The  wash did help me to see what I was painting but there are some light voids  between the legs on a few figures.

So my phone is useless for macros, looks like  I'll have to crank up the old camera for the finished figures when they're based. Although I already have Turks and Russians for the 1870s in 15mm, I thought the period was fitting for VSF as the Turkish  navy had  ironclads and gatlings were available.  These are the Turkish regular  infantry plus  redif and nizam units. I have some Romanians to do as well as some Arab irregulars, Sudanese / Egyptian regulars, Caucasian cavalry, Mamelukes, Bashi basouks, and Arab camelry (just for fun) . There's  6 units of artillery , some skirmish units and some commanders, but i have yet to buy some terrain, trains and supply bases.
i'll post some clearer pics once my camera is up and when I've got  these based. Thanks for stopping by.

So far, I've got four battalions  of nizam and three of redif. Here they are on my latest terrain pieces made from foam sheet inserted into the undersides of Hexon terrain tiles.

This looks like a column of Redif companies. I based them on 2mm mdf (3mm seemed to raise them too high) and covered the bases with  GW's Agrellan earth texture over some textured gel used for art. some fine spring flock was chosen to match the lighter  colours of Shipka Pass. Originally I tried using  15mm size bases for Principles of War, but I found the  units ran right to the edges and would be rubbed badly when picking the bases up. Instead I went for 40mm frontage bases that allowed me a little room to get a more realistic look and enough clear space to protect the figures from fat, sausage-fingers. I added some fine brown chopped flock and some little sprigs of  foliage to make bushes and young trees. Much of the open ground around Shipka looks like this according to the photos I've seen. 

A battalion of Nizam (can you tell the difference between the redif and nizam? Im not sure I can!) formed for battle. In front of these I would like to have a battalion of Chasseurs, but they're not painted yet and I need to order a few more from Irregular Miniatures. At ten pence a block, they cost  60 pence a battalion, that's about a third of the cost for 15mm and I can paint about a thousand  men in a day!