Well, the boys are on the painting table. As the last few blog posts have been about the gaming side of the hobby I thought it was time to return to the workbench and show you the progress with my latest project, my Irish Saga Band. Progress, as usual, has been rather slow but I have finished the four Irish heroes that I could use either as Curadh or as an extra unit of Hearthguard. When it came to choosing a colour scheme for these figures I was very much influenced by the Footsore web site and of course, in particular, the figures that were painted by Charle Baynon. I have also used some references from elsewhere and I am now finding that the Pinterest site is quite useful in this respect. The following link will take you to my Dark Age Irish and Celts board that I am building.

Dark Age Irish and Celts

There are some good references on this board and it shows what can be done these days with technology. In the past I would have been scratching around in books and magazines to find such images and it would have been quite impractical to have them at the painting table. Now I can just load this page onto my i-pad and it is there right in front of me when I am painting. So with these four heroes to add to my band, it is starting to take shape:

I also took some close up pictures of these figures in my light box. It’s interesting to see some of the ‘blemishes’ that you don’t see when the figures are on the table and I suspect it is the ability to be more careful in blending at this level that makes the professionals so good at what they do. My lads look a bit dark around the eyes!

So having painted Irish heroes with big choppers it was time to move on to the Irish Warriors with … I think Bill Thornhill must have modeled this one on his own physique!

Enough of the smutty jokes. I have now painted a full unit of eight of these Javelin armed warriors with another eight following closely behind on the work bench. So by the end of this week I will have at least 5 Points for my saga army. The main unit that is missing is a warlord or commander.

I haven’t given too many painting details in this article but by and large, I have stayed with the limited pallet that I used for the Irish Finah and other Irish figures. To see the details, just click on these links to the relevant blog articles:

THE SAGA CONTINUES.

FOOTSORE IRISH SLINGERS – DONE!

AN IRISH SAGA

I’ve also made good use of my own technique of block painting the basic colours, then applying a dark tone ink wash, then repainting with the original colours, leaving the shadows and adding just a few highlights where I think that they are needed. I’ve also copied Charles Baynons idea of using multiple layers of light matt varnish between coats to protect the finish.

So that’s it for this week. Next week I will show the complete army and I hope to show you some of the scenery that I have also have been working on.