A New Mounted Wizard Joins the Grande Armee

 Though my painting mojo abandoned me for a couple of months this spring, I'm kickstarting things by tackling a project that has been lingering on my desk for at least a year now...A mounted wizard for my Bretonnian army.  I've been messing around with the odd assortment of bits....a wizard figure from the late 1980's and a much more recent (c1998) Vampire Counts mount.  I've been second guessing myself on how these things would work together...but one evening last week I decided to just take the plunge and dive into it and see how things turned out.

I'm Glad I did! ...and am quite pleased with the results

The wizard figure is from the late 80's Empire Knights release...this image from an 1989 Advert (thanks Stuff of Legends!)

 

The mount for such a dashing figure needed to be equally flashy and also fit in with the other 5th edition Bret mounts that the rest of the Grande Armee are mounted on....so I settled on this interesting sculpt from the late 90's Vampire Counts release...which has a very ornate metal head but uses the same cloth barded warhorse that came with all the 5th edition Knight releases.  this image from the 2000 catalog

 

After watching my wife use a tooth brush to create a paint spatter starfield on one of her water color paintings I decided that it might be a cool technique for creating a suitably mystical cloak for the mage and cloth caparison for his mount.

 Below are some WiP photos of the process.

 

 

I think the star field worked out very well and was, honestly, quite easy and saved me from over thinking how to make the large amounts of cloth on this figure work to my advantage.

Now that I'm back at the painting desk more often I hope to have some of the first foot knights to share with you soon as well.

Cheers!

Blue

The Knights Errant join the Armee of the Marquis

 Hi all,

Work has continued apace on the new unit of Knights Errant that I'm looking to add to my Bretonnian army for use in both Oldhammer games as well as Oathmark. 

These guys were a lot of fun to paint and also quite a challenge.  There is a LOT of fabric to shade properly on the horses themselves, and the sculpting on the faces of some of the troopers is a little soft and proved difficult for me to complete to my satisfaction.  In reality the sculpts are probably fine but I'm long out of practice on painting the fairly gracial faces of humans in comparison to the exaggerated features found on goblin, orc and dwarf figures.

...either way...they are done now and its time to move on.

Here is the whole unit and below are individual shots of the unit members.

 

Unit Building: Foot Knights for the Armee of the Marquis

 Hello all!

I had a substantial break in my painting flow with the advent of the holidays this year...which involved me traveling back to the midwest for a week without painting supplies!

Our return to Vermont has coincided with some of the coldest days of the year so far and therefore I have the wood stove burning and the ceiling fans on...this leads to very poor painting conditions due to the dry air from the wood heat and breeze from the fans I can hardly keep my wet palette living up to its name for long! 

So...long story short...I'm still plugging away on the unit of Knights Errant.  I think they are looking very good and I'm get close to done. But I've been using these very dry days to focus on my getting my next units of figures ready for the painting desk once the knights trot off into the distance seeking adventure.

I've decided to add some more infantry to the Armee with the addition of two units of Foot Knights.  One unit with heavy armor, and shields, armed with hand weapons.  And one unit in heavy Armor, armed with great weapons.  I've been collecting the Foot Knights that Citadel released in the short lived 3rd edition Bretonnian release for a number of years and have acquired quite a few.  I've decided to add to this and fill out the units with some of the excellent Claymore Castings figures.  These modern castings fit very well with the 3rd edition Perry Bros. sculpted foot knights and add a bit of "movement" to the unit as some of them are dynamically posed in comparison to Citadel knights.

Here are the Great Weapon Knights, I will use them as Linebreakers in Oathmark and as Foot Knights in Oldhammer Games.