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WIP Critique French Colonial Chasseur Indigene a Pied, 1914

Discussion in 'vBench (Works in Progress)' started by Dan Morton, Sep 11, 2017.

  1. Dan Morton A Fixture

    Country:
    United-States
    Again, a little history about the figure first... Chasseur indigene a pied translates (sort of…) to native hunter walking. He wears a uniform made locally called a djellaba. These varied in color, texture and design from locale to locale. A khaki cheche is wound around the fez. The soldier carries a typical Lebel rifle, but might have begun the war with an outmoded Gras rifle. French colonial chasseurs could also be called tirailleurs, which is an Algerian French term for "sharpshooter" or "skirmisher".

    The tirailleur and chasseurs a pied regiments were all actually infantrymen recruited from the French North African colonies of Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco. Most of the Tirailleur regiments were Algerian, though the 4th and 8th were from Tunisia. These regiments had varying numbers of battalions, ranging from 3-6.

    Materials – Head from unknown OOP resin model kit. Rifle from Model Cellar. Neither were modified, except that the fez (cheche) and cloth wrap and a little chin beard were added. Since I didn’t have one that fit properly, I sculpted a musette or bread bag, a casting of which will be added to the figure later. Sculpting done using MagicSculpt and Kneadatite mixes.

    Illustration 2 roughly provides the pose, but not the uniform and equipment. From two photos of reenactors wearing different djebella I picked the darker brown one with black or dark blue stripes and some unusual looking seams. The djebella sold it! Because the djebella was locally made in the Colonial districts it varied a lot in design, color and materials.Hop

    Apologies for my crap painting and photography. The assembly and painting work is incomplete and the photography is barely good enough for WIP.

    Reference photos were from militaria web sites, reenactor web sites and Osprey, Armes Militaria and Uniformes magazines. Reference photos of the djebella and other bits were collected at The Poilu militaria shop in Paris, two French museums of the Great War and the major French military museum in Paris.
    Lots more work to do! Hope you like the WIP figure.
    All the best,
    Dan

    Attached Files:

    stoffy01, John Bowery, Chrisr and 3 others like this.
  2. valiant A Fixture

    Country:
    United-Kingdom
    Nice work again, Dan - another right up my street!(y)
  3. Dan Morton A Fixture

    Country:
    United-States
    Thank you Steve! Much appreciated!

    All the best,
    Dan
    valiant likes this.
  4. KenBoyle PlanetFigure Supporter

    Country:
    United-States
    Very nice Dan! As I said on your other post, thanks for the history and construction details.

    Ken
  5. Chrisr PlanetFigure Supporter

    Country:
    Australia
    Great stuff Dan - lovely to see a quite different subject being modelled.

    Chris
  6. Dan Morton A Fixture

    Country:
    United-States
    Thanks Ken and Chris! In this case it was a browse through back issues of Uniformes and finding the djebella last year in Paris at "The Poilu" got me interested! Even though the djebella was dated from the end of WW2 and into the 50s, it was still fun to find it. Kinda wish I'd bought it, but the owner wanted a pretty penny for it.

    All the best,
    Dan

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