What I've been working on

I've been in a bit of a painting slump recently. Any project gets 3/4ths done, and then something else takes my fancy.

So I have tried to impose some discipline on my painting, while still enjoying what I'm working on and finishing something. Repainting a kitchen, a front hall and assorted stuff does not count.

So here's what I've finished lately:

What do you mean I cannot mix periods like this?

1 French Musketeer from Regiment Languedoc for the Dutch Wars
1 Mexican Infantryman for the 1860s/1870s clashes with Apaches, Comanches, Kiowas and the US Army.
1 Mounted English Civil War Royalist cavalry senior officer - tentatively for Sir Humphrey Bennett's Regiment of Horse
9 Sassanid Clibinarii

They show off several new facets of my painting ability. When I paint 15mm figures, I glue cavalry to the horse and paint them as one unit. I'd originally done that with 25mm figures as well. However, it posed problems - especially when putting multiple figures on a single base. It was very difficult to maneuver a paint brush around to paint the figure, let alone spackle, paint, gravel, wash, dry brush and static glue the bases.

So now I mount cavalrymen on a nail in a wine cork glued to a soda cap, while I glue the horse to another soda cap. It makes things much easier to manipulate and get into the empty corners.

Only the two infantrymen were fresh paint jobs.

The 9 Clibinarii were the second part of 18 I purchased from Gripping Beast last year. I hated painting those figures. The horse and men had serious flash issues, to the point where I had to take a Dremel tool to them just to get the bows to fit in the hands of the figures. Gluing the bows in was also a pain. About halfway through, I decided I thoroughly hated how they were coming along and threw them in some Pine Sol to start over.

I started over. As my confidence has grown, I have begun to attempt more elaborate armor patterns, similar to those done by An Hour of Wolves and Shattered Shields. I have yet to do any quartering, but I have done single horizontal lines and double horizontal lines and vertical lines. I'm quite pleased with some of the color combinations:

Double white and green horizontal lines. Very colorful.

White and red horizontal lines. This one was very involved, but worth it.

Ignore the fuzzy Cavalier in the way; ooh and aah at the yellow and blue striped lamellar armor.

I took a different tack with these. Instead of just randomly using a color, the way I had with previous Sassanids, I took a "knight" approach and tried to give each figure a set of colors to tie them together.

All the unit needs is their flag. I have some interesting flag patterns from Shadows in the Desert, but those will be used on the general vignette. These may just get an A&A standard of ribbons on a pole.

The Cavalier was also a repaint of a figure I had first painted at 18/19. It was a good paint job for somebody starting out, but I can do MUCH better now. With a lot (40 Old Glory Cavalry, 6 boxes of Warlord Cavalry, 2 boxes of Dragoons and another four boxes of Infantry) more ECW figures in my possession that need painting and basing, it seemed far more effective to strip them down and rework. So into the Pine-Sol they went.

The officer is a test figure for how to paint buffcoats and blackened armor. When I'd originally painted the figure, I just painted the coat and leather equipment white, and the armor silver, then hit it with a Minwax stain. It worked, sorta. Now that I'm much better, I went with something different.

The armor was primed black, painted with Reaper's Blackened Steel, then hit with Vallejo's black ink wash. It gives me the very effect I was looking for - metallic, but dark. Fairly straight forward. The buffocat was actually painted using Reaper's Blond Hair triad. I wanted the coat to stand out from the leather boots and leather cross belts. I'd also read how variable buffcoat quality can be, and that the better quality coats are lighter. Since this fellow is a colonel at 1644 scale and a captain for Once Upon a Time in the West Country, it seemed logical to go lighter. I'm pleased with how it worked out.

Next up is a Sassanid general vignette:

Planned vignette - cavalry general exhorting the troops (A&A), standard bearer (A&A) and drummer (Gripping Beast)

Their horses

Then more Gripping Beast cavalry. The Light Cavalry is much better behaved, but I still have to deburr two standard bearer hands to put the Essex horsetail standards in them.

Rumors of this blog's demise are slightly exaggerate

I've been slowly making my way through the pile of pewter on the painting table, as the winds and period enthusiasms take me. Since Sunday is usually slow at my LGS, I decided to take some pictures.

One of my projects is a 25mm Sassanid army for Might of Arms. The Sassanians (in 15mm) were the first Ancients army I ever collected, and so I'm quite partial to them. Might of Arms is a fast playing, quite flexible, and quite enjoyable "all period" ancients game. While it is probably a bit too generous in your ability to command your troops, it does provide a good compromise on playability and accuracy. I rather enjoy it.

One of the members of the club has always wanted a 25mm Belisarian Byzantine army, so I agreed to paint Sassanids. Might of Arms provides suggested Army lists, which while FAR too small at the given 1:50 scale to recreate historical battles, are at least illustrative of what size armies the game can handle in an afternoon, and what the ratios of forces are. While Christmas is probably too ambitious a completion date


The current objective is the "left wing" of the Sassanian Army. Three regiments of clibinarii (9 figures each), three regiments of light cavalry (4-6 figures each) and a general. So far, two of the clibinarii are completed, and the third is on the painting table.

Clibinarii Regiment #1 from the front:

Rear:

Side, with a close-up of the shields:

The figures are a mix. Standard bearer and musician are Gripping Beast, while the troopers are all Old Glory. Lances are from Xyston, and the standard is from Essex. Shields are all Little Big Man transfers for Gripping Beast miniatures.

Sassanid Clibinarii Regiment #2:

Side view:

You can clearly see how my basing style changed radically from Regiment #1. Regiment #1 had the base painted with Delta Ceramicoat Mississippi Mud, then immediately dipped in the rock. Silfor tufts were later glued on. For Regiment #2, I paint the base Mississippi Mud, glue rock to it, wash it with GW flesh wash, then dry brush it with Delta Ceramicoat Teddy Bear Brown, Vallejo Thick Ochre, and then Delta Bamboo. Dry and Summer grass mixtures are then glued to the base to finish it. I'm much happier with the results, and given the possible terrain in the Sassanian Empire, it's still equally plausible.

My painting style has also advanced. Every figure has at least a base color and highlight everywhere, and large expanses are shaded, main colored, and then highlighted.

All of these are Gripping Beast, with the large draco standard by Essex. I had high hopes for the figs, and I was sadly disappointed. There were LOTS of issues with flash. To make the bows fit, I spent an afternoon with a Dremel buzzing out their hands. The horses also had a LARGE amount of flash, especially around the forelegs. Finally, the draco - while VERY pretty - is also fragile.

The results are pretty, but they're a LOT of work. I'm not that motivated to get back to Regiment #3, about 1/2 done. Instead, my colonials collection has absorbed my fancy, with 15mm Napoleonics fighting for second place. But, as they say, that is a blog post for another day.

First Sassanid Clibinarii are almost done!

I'm waiting on the Gripping Beast shield transfers to finish setting before they get varnished and based.

Pictures will come tomorrow.

Edit. The bases for the figures are 2mm longer than the 60x40mm bases for them, and I cannot find my clippers. Pictures will have to wait.

I just hope they fight the Byzantines as hard as they fought me! These guys did NOT want to be painted one bit.