Romano-British for Dux Britanniarum

Do you ever get the feeling that a miniature just doesn’t want to be painted? That you can’t get the colour combination correct or you just aren’t satisfied with what you’re doing? We’ll Ceawlin was like that and he took me far longer than he should have done.

By way of background, Ceawlin is my Saxon Lord and the last figure in this force.  He is 29 and has a Man Mountain physique meaning he will get a bonus for feats of strength like breaking down a door.  He also  has the Lustful attribute meaning he covets the women of others, so suffers a penalty when testing the loyalty of his men (possibly he has been led astray by Saebert who had the same attribute). He is a Wodenborn aristocrat, born in Britain the son of a foederati in Roman service. He has a Tribune’s Tribute in wealth.

Ceawlin is Footsore’s Early Saxon Chief figure.  I wanted to give him some finery, so started off by doing a light blue tunic with yellow trim. The blue was a base coat of 50/50 VMC Grey Blue and VMC Prussian Blue which was then highlighted up by adding White. The yellow trim was a base of VMC Beige Brown, the a 50/50 mix of Beige Brown and Yellow Ochre and then a final highlight of Yellow Ochre. So far so good.

I then gave him a green cloak with red trim and this was just too much. My wife then told me that there is an old saying that goes “Red and Green should not be seen, except upon a Fairy Queen.”

Now I fully accept that the OTT project system is a place where you stand a greater chance of spotting a Fairy Queen than you might ordinarily. But this is a historical project and I wasn’t  having my Saxon Warlord described in such a way, so the green cloak was hastily painted over in black.

I then went into a bit of hobby funk with Ceawlin and couldn’t summon up the energy to finish him.

The change came when I decided to try the cloak again. This time I decided to go for a brown cloak that was less likely to distract the eye from the blue and yellow tunic. But I wanted to make it a bit finer than the norm. I therefore tried a technique from the Dark Ages edition of the Painting War series of occasional magazines. This involved starting from a base of VMC German Camo Black Brown and then gradually adding Chocolate Brown to the mix in 25% increments. In between each highlight you put in a glaze of 50% of the previous highlight mixed with 50% of the next highlight heavily diluted with water. This went on until you had a highlight of pure Chocolate Brown. This was then mixed with 50% Flat Earth before a final highlight of 100% Flat Earth.  Very time consuming, but you get a nice transition between highlights.

The brown cloak was a much better counterpoint to the bright tunic and I started to feel a lot better about Ceawlin. One interesting thing I noticed about this figure is that he wears a fairly long hauberk of scale mail that comes quite a way down the front of his legs. Interestingly, this isn’t sculpted on at all on the rear of the model between the scabbard and the cloak. This seems to have been an oversight on the part of the sculptor as it should be there if it came to the same length at the back. As such, I had some fun painting on the scales (something that would have been harder if he wore chain mail) in the small area where they should appear.  You can see my efforts in the Lloyd shot above and I’m quite pleased with them.

As Ceawlin is an aristocrat, I decided to risk giving him a glided helmet. It was a bit of a risk as it could have looked a bit over the top, but I think it’s worked well.  I always use VMC Old Gold for this sort of thing as it has a more muted tone than VMC Gold proper.

An LBMS shield transfer completed the figure and Ceawlin is now ready to lead his troops.

I’ve now completed two opposing forces for Dux Britanniarum. I think Ceawlin took so long because I couldn’t quite bring myself to make that final leap to actually finish a project.

I’ll try and post some pictures of the complete Saxon force later this weekend and then maybe actually play a game and do a battle report!

Having said that I couldn’t quite bring myself to finish a project, I should add that I have some extras and some terrain still to bring into the mix.  However, I think having two table-ready forces is an important milestone!