A strange mix of subjects on my workbench at the moment! I’ve just about finished painting 18 rank & file Hanoverian Landwehr. As you can see from the picture, they’re all based and ready for the table. There are of course 6 figures missing – the officers, ensigns & sergeants. They are undercoated and ready to paint, so they should keep me busy for the next few painting sessions. I will then have a nice unit of 24 figures representing the Munden Landwehr battalion. As far as finishing the figures went, once I had painted them with Army painter Strong tone, I gave them 24 hours to dry and then sprayed them with Army painter Anti shine. I tend to use a light coat and if the figures are still a bit shiny in places then I use vallejo matt varnish, just brushed on, to finish off.
The next job is to go back over the lighter colours to make them stand out. So I repaint the white straps, yellow hat bands and any metallics. The bayonets get a coat of silver to make them stand out on the battlefield! It sounds like a long process but it doesn’t take too long. The idea is just to highlight these colours, so if you miss a bit then it just looks as though the area has been shaded.
Basing is then completed. Again, I have gone for a quick basing finish. The first task was to mount each 4 figures on a 40mm square renedra base. I then used Vallejo sandy paste to blend the figure bases into the renedra base to get an even surface. When this was dry, I painted this Vallejo chocolate brown to gice a dark base on which to work. I prefer a brown edge to my bases rather than green or black, which are also favoured by painters. Next up, I coated the bases in PVA and covered with a forest brown scatter. This in turn, had patches of Javis green scatter added and then I detailed the bases with smaller patches of Expo flowered field static grass. The final touch was to add some Noch summer grass tufts and of course my ‘trademark’ flowers – in this case, Noch white flower clumps.
In the picture you will also see that I have painted a female admirer waving the Hanoverians off to battle! It’s a bit of a nod to the Warlord box art and she will of course take her place in little Bingham, the town on my war games table. Without getting too commercial, all of the items that I use are available in the Arcane Scenery shop and if anyone out there reading this needs some help, call us and I will be happy to talk through the materials & techniques used.
The other project that has leap-frogged up the painting queue is pack two of the Lucid Eye Neanderthals. Arcane Scenery are now stocking the Lucid Eye Range and of course the Neanderthals go really well with some of the Ice Age DeeZee miniatures that we produce. The Mammoths, Cave Bears & Smilodons for starters! So I’m working on getting a little band of Neanderthals ready for a Hunting party. One is just about finished, except the basing, the other two are just awaiting the fur pelts to be highlighted & the detail picked out. The techinique that I have used for these is slightly different from my usual style. Rather than using ‘dip’ to shade, I am shading and highlighting using inks, dry brushing and mixing lighter & lighter shades of the base colours. It’s a bit more time consuming for me but gives a nice result, particularly when the figures are so well sculpted. Here’s the progress so far. I’ll spend a bit more time in my next blog detailing the colours used.
Progress on the Hanoverian battalion continues, albeit at a snails pace. I had started to paint a batch of 18 figures but progress was too slow and so I decided to finish six off just to get to see how they would look. The picture shows the first six block painted according to the colour scheme from the Mont St Jean site ( see last weeks blog for link). The next stage will be to paint them with army painter quick shade – I’ll use the strong tone or black shade. This will give me the shading to bring out the detail, particularly the faces and trousers. It will also give a clear outline to the equipment and lacing, making them stand out. Once the quick shade has dried, I’ll highlight the figures by repainting the lighter colours, particularly the webbing & lace and I’ll highlight the metals with either silver or gold as appropriate. This will really make the Buttons & bayonets stand out on the battlefield. Of course the most important finishing touch will be the bases! I just need to think about the colour of the flowers that I will use….. Hopefully by next week I will have at least these six finished. One final thought on painting these models. With hindsight, I should have painted the three individual pieces that make a figure separately. It would have made painting the detail much easier, so I will give this a try when I paint the next 18 figures.
The Warlord figures are nice and straight forward to put together and have very little flash to worry about. A bit of cleaning with a file & a scrape with a knife and they are ready for undercoating. Here’s the first batch of 5 ready to be sprayed.
So over the last three weeks or so, progress on my projects have been slow to say the least. The hot weather brings other distractions and it doesn’t help that the paint was drying faster on the pallete than on the figures that I was painting. But work on the Prussians has progressed. I’ve finished an Officer & a sergeant and I also now have my Brigade Commanders completed. So I do have a Prussian brigade of Infantry that I can field in my next battle. Of course the brigade isn’t finished… I could do with completing the Jaeger as skirmishers that come with the set. I’ve started to assemble them but I have had problems with the arm holding the rifle on these figures. It seems that the rifle is a weak point and the rifle butt has snapped off on a couple of my figures. So I have decided to do a couple of minor conversions & replace the broken rifle arm with a musket arm from the Victrix British set. This does mean a bit of filing & filling with green stuff – the shoulder wings need removing, as does the piping on the cuffs and I’ve remodelled the cuff to match the other one. Apart from being a fidley job , it’s not too difficult. I don’t think that the musket rather than a rifle is too much of a problem, I am sure that there were jaegers with both. So that’s about it for this weeks blog – I’m off for a cold drink of something…..
