I’ll start with my usual apology for not posting regularly. It’s almost six months since my last post and as usual, I have been busy, although it’s not all been modelling. The last month has been spent on holidaying in Tarragona, Watching the World Cup ( it’s difficult to paint with high blood pressure!), a ten day road trip to the West Country (including three castle visits plus Stonehenge.) and enjoying the sunshine, loafing in the garden with something nice to drink.
I have made progress with painting my Turcopoles, with eight now completed. My plan is to make twelve altogether, two units of six skirmishing cavalry for my Crusader army. The figures are from Fireforge and as you would expect, they are nicely moulded and go together well without any fuss. Although light cavalry, I decided to make sure that they were well armed with bows and swords and shields – two of them will be carry lances as standard bearers. This is probably not necessary but it gives me the chance to have more flags in my units!
I carried out some initial research on line and also using the books that I had regarding the crusades. In the main, the results were a bit sketchy and finding some nice reference pictures was not easy. I painted the first batch of four based on this research and was relatively happy with the results. I started by priming the horses in Army Painter Leather brown and the riders with Army Painter Uniform grey.
To paint the horses, I used my favourite method of starting with a dark brown – chocolate brown and then used two lighter browns, Flat brown and Flat earth, to dry bush over the base colour to get a degree of shading and to bring out the detail. I decided to give two horses black manes and tails for variation. I also added some white or black ‘socks’ to the horses as well as some white markings on their heads. It all helps to give a bit of variety!
I finished the horses by painting the leather work with saddle brown and then used Burnt red or Dark Prussian blue on the saddle cloths and bow and arrow quivers.
The riders were drilled between the legs and I used cocktail sticks as handles to hold them whilst painting. In between painting, I simply stuck the cocktail sticks into a big blob of blutack whilst working on the next figure. I used Burnt Red, Pastel blue and Khaki for the tunics and padded coats, chocolate brown for any leather ( highlighted with flat Earth) and just colour blocked everything in before applying an ink wash.
When it comes to the inking, I now use different inks for different parts of the figures – Softtone for most browns and golds, Dark tone for Plate metal, whites and greys, Blue for blues and Red for reds and of course flesh tone for flesh!
Once the ink is dry, I’ll tidy up any obvious errors and re highlight using the original colours. This is particularly necessary when retouching the white as the ink can just make it look dirty.
The basing is simply vallejo dark earth paste covered in sand, with a boulder (stone) added for interest. I then cover everything in strong tone ink and then when dry, Dry brush with Iraqi Sand. I will add some beige tufts but have run out at the moment – I haven’t had time to get more!
The shield designs are from my own imagination. Turcopoles were in the main, Christian Syrians so I tried to give them an Arab appearance with out making them appear to be from the Muslim army.
So that’s it for now. In my next blog (hopefully next week) I’ll share some pictures of the next batch of four which I am about to complete as well as some addition detailed research and information regarding Turcopoles.
In the meantime, I hope that you find this useful and of course, Happy Modelling!