Spring Clean Double header

So I wanted to do this for some time but really felt no impetus as the community for painting was hit/miss. Here I’ve found a living environment of fellow mini enthusiasts that have real input to each other. As such, I’m getting off my butt and putting effort into the figures that I’ve looked upon with love but feared screwing up.

I already have assembled the horse, set the figures onto their bases and applied greenstuff to fill some of the gaps on the mounted figure (with a little more needed at the base of the tail). I replaced the pewter lance with a sturdier rod, sculpted around the grip where the new rod inserts and added some gruesome flavor to it.

For both figures I will base the same as I have the knight on foot using Golden’s coarse pumice gel medium. Since there is more space for the mounted version I’ll add some a couple bits for interest. The unmounted version might get something added.

I’ve already started with a Mr. Hobby Mr.Metal Metal Primer-R. and will proceed with airbrush from here to get it done quickly for base colors before trying to get those sweet sweet blends.

I figured that trying to get the right highlighting while the figures were parted wasn’t going to work so a temporary solution of gluing the parts in place was needed. I’ll be breaking these back apart to paint properly and there’s not much worry about the joins as they are all hidden. I’ll be pinning the shields in place for both and the weapons for the mounted version so that there won’t be any easy breakage in the future. I’m not entirely sure how well the highlighting will work on the horse’s shoulders, knees, loins and hocks where the area would catch but I’ll try to make it pop.

Planning for the future of the paint work I need to think about the metals. I’ve seen plenty of true metallics but nothing in NMM. My non-metallic work is passable but I’m not great. Seeing what can be done with it I might as well go headlong into it. Seeing the work of James Wappel doesn’t get my hopes up to what I can achieve but I’ll try anyway.

So I decided to scrap the NMM idea. I’ve had some Mr Hobby Gloss Black primer that I was meaning to use under a fine coat of silver and then candy coat for a Xmas theme figure (which has yet to be done) but thought this would be a great experiment to use it for. I also thought that having a dapple grey horse would look awesome (maybe a brindle if this pops) as I’ve only seen palominos/chestnuts/whites for most mini figures on sites.

So here are the ideas and the current execution. A little underwhelming but its putting pieces together in stages.

So it seemed to me that the images of the Wandering Knight that I saw were a bit too bright for my tastes. Thinking back to Mordheim and the gritty nature of the art within the box set book, also in the Town Crier issues, there was definitely some decisions needed as far as the color palette. I’m generally using Vallejo and Reaper paints with GW washes without much care to get wrapped up with specifics. I’m having too much fun with the organic approach.

After completing the horse’s skin I figured that sealing it with a gloss coat would be best to avoid messing with the dry pigment/light paint work. This also allowed me to worry less about the finished metallic paint for the armor and other bits minus pot helmet to be done later.  This turned out to be a good idea to then cover the mane and tail with a wash of GW’s Nuln Oil and keep the underlying highlight. The horse would act as a muted bright feature to the general dark tones of the tack and gear of the knight. I really wanted to try and keep the brilliance of the metallics a bit lower as blazing silver or the like would overpower the rest of the chromatic paint. With that I tossed on a little bit of Reikland Fleshshade to add wear aside from hitting the visible skin.

In general the future aspects of the figures I anticipate to be bringing up the interest level are the weapons and shields that I need to affix to the figures, the painted highlights and the final basing details.

Ok, so moving house and trying to finish miniatures are not mutually conducive. As I’ve told the Weekender crew I was going to finish up my figure, maybe not seal, before I got out of my house. Well, I can finally get the rest of my painting stuff packed and the last of my crap off and away to the new place. I’m not thrilled with seeing some of the details in such high detail (as my regular painting lights are packed) but I’m pleased that its still some quality tabletop quality that I can still put on the shelf and say “I did that”. I’ll revisit these with a few tufts of grass for a splash of more color but these make me pretty happy for a half ass rush at the end.

I really doubted myself for quite a while to ever be good enough to make minis stand out and held onto these figures with the continued idea that maybe one day I could. Well, getting a wild hair and deciding to just take the horse to task with an interesting coat I am glad to be done. Off the back of this, when I have time, I’ll be sure to make more progress in getting the Horde of Shame diminish greatly.