Progress so far and the wrong sort of Swiss

So having been extremely poor in keeping this blog up to date I thought I had better report on my progress so far with my French infantry WIP.  Id love to say that I have been so busy painting these that I haven't had time to update the blog but this would be far from true.  The truth is that, in addition to real life interrupting progress, I have also been distracted with starting a new project which I intend to be an 'imagi-nations' project involving seven years war Russians- I will write more about this anon.

For the time being I have returned to the creation of my French infantry.  Having pondered the question of bases for long enough I've stayed traditional and gone with six bases of six figs although with 50mm frontage these ensure that figures are nice and close.  The pic below shows the first three battalions partially complete.  I reckon that I have around 30 figures still to paint.  So I had better get on with it.

Picture below shows my WIP swiss regiment.  It has just occurred to me that I may have painted a regiment which didn't service in the peninsular- namely the 1st Swiss regiment.  Im not sure this is a particular tragedy and I am not inclined to re-do them.  Will have to check my references again.

I hope to make better progress and have resolved not to paint anything else until these French are complete.

Basing dilemma

I've been considering various basing schemes for my peninsular naps. I'm using Black Powder as rules, I'm collecting both sides so don't need to fit in with any one else.

I really want bases to be crowded and have a vignette appeal but still want to be able to represent basic formations; line, square and both march and attack column. I like the visual appeal of formations with officers etc standing behind the line. So after much blue-tacking of figures to various sized bases I'm considering using 60x60 bases with four bases to a unit and 8-10 figures on each. This looks good for the british in line and allows for reasonably convincing square to be formed by turning bases back to back.












Tis style however doesn't look as good for my French as the all important column looks a bit sparse.












If anybody can point me in the direction of successful, dynamic schemes or offer any thoughts I would be immensely grateful.