British & Indian Flags from the 1860 War with China

As promised a while back I have drawn up flags for all of my British units for the 1860's China expeditionary force I am painting. Some of the colours are based on actual flags I have seen pictures of, others I have deduced from looking at the regiment's history/museum sites and applying that to the 1844 regulations.

All of the flags are drawn using Serif Drawplus before converting to a jpg. The originals are intended to be 10mm square when attached to the figures, but there's more detail than that so they can be printed out bigger. Even so I didn't put any text on the battle honours scrolls as they get blurry on my printer.

I have experimented with giving the background colours texture but I'm afraid flags don't look like that. Whilst cloth looks crumpled if you throw it on the ground or put it in a frame, flags that are hung outside in a breeze do not (just as real clothing doesn't look like the current 28mm three colour shading style portrays it).

You can get quite a way with just taking the regulations. The Queen's colour is the Union flag, with a crown and the regimental number in roman numerals in the centre. I've only done one here - for the 1st Regiment - as I had a spare standard bearer in my figure order.  Royal & County regiments and others with a designation have the title on a red circular background within the Union wreath, the centre of which has the regimental number in roman numerals. Guards regiments are different, but as I don't have any of those I didn't research them.

Battle honours are only on the Regimental Colour. The Regimental Colour is the colour of the regimental facings, but there's no clear rule for the background for battle honours. It seems they're normally blue or gold.

Some regiments have a regimental symbol on them, - I've included them where I could find positive evidence of their use.

There are two regiments missing from this list. The Ludhiana sikhs and the 60th Rifles. The former because I seem not to have saved the file, and the latter because they didn't carry colours on the battlefield.

1st (Royal) Regiment, Regimental Colour


1st (Royal) Regiment, Queen's Colour


2nd (Queen's) Regiment, Regimental Colour


3rd (East Kents) Regiment "The Buffs", Regimental Colour

31st (Huntingdonshire) Regiment, Regimental Colour


44th (East Essex) Regiment, Regimental Colour


67th (South Hampshire) Regiment, Regimental Colour


99th (Lanarkshire) Regiment, Regimental Colour


15th Punjab Native Infantry, Regimental Colour


17th Punjab Native Infantry, Regimental Colour


Comments

  1. Great work, Trebian - very effective ;)

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    1. Glad you like them. I was thinking with the number of hits so far this would be a contender for the "Least interesting blog post" award 2013.

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  2. I quite like drawplus, do you find it easier to convert to jpg and then print rather than print from directly drawplus?

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    1. I print straight from Drawplus. I might try the jpg conversion if you can assure me that it makes a difference.

      The pictures on the blog are jpgs.

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  3. These looks very nice. I think I shall have to brush up on my GIMP skills!

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    1. Try Drawplus, I find it easy to use and inexpensive. It isn't really drawing it is just bolting together shapes. Virtully no free hand at all.

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  4. I think I misunderstood your "All of the flags are drawn using Serif Drawplus before converting to a jpg" - Did you mean the jpeg conversion was to post to the blog? Printing straight from drawplus has always seemed easier to me for printing images to the size wanted than trying to do so with jpgs.

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    1. Yes, I "jpg'd" in order to post to the blog, that's all.

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