Atheling's Early Byzantines- Made the Cover of "Slingshot"- Page 31. 23-04-2023

[Hu Rhu]

Wonderful painting on those Steppe Nomads. 

[David H]

Outstanding - a fantastic unit you have created. 

[Atheling]

Thank you kindly guys. 

[Tonhel]

That is amazing!

[Atheling]

That is amazing!

Thank you Tonhel. I've still got a unit of Steppe Nobles to go with the Horse Archers but I'm having difficulty in deciding how to base them, when they are painted 

I think I might have mentioned that I'm working on a unit of Aventine Heavy Kavallaroi at the moment. I'm also prepping a fairly large Roman Army for The Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge starting Late December, which is holding the painting back a bit

[Atheling]

I had a spare half an hour so decided to take a few shots of the first six, basically the front ranks of a unit of Early Byzantine Heavy Kavallaroi in I have on my painting table in the studio. The horses are complete but remain unvarnished. I learned a lesson when putting together Belisarius' Boukellaroi in that I forgot to make sure the cavalry models actually fitted onto the horses which resulted in a great deal of anguish as I feverishly (but very gently) filed away at the painted and varnished Boukellaroi models until they eventually fit the barded horses. A mistake that I wasn't going to repeat again. So, it was out with the "bastard file" (TM) which I used to file the underside of all of the Kavallaroi models in order for them to fit on all of their mounts. I didn't want to leave anything to chance! This meant trying out each Kavallaroi model on each horse. Worth to avoid a repeat of the heartbreak of having to repaint  and varnish the filed "underbellies" of the Boukellaroi!

I recently bought a very large number of Late Roman models from both Footsore Miniatures Late Roman Range and Gripping Beast Late Roman range in preparation for the The Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge which will of course be documented on LAF. My aim with the Early Byzantine Heavy Kavallaroi is to get the unit finished as well as three Infantry Command Bases prior to The Challenge. I will almost certainly complete the former task in time but might fall short of getting the command bases completed simply because of the sheer volume of Late Romans I have to clean up and prepare by December the 20th so I can start slapping on the paint the next day.

I thought it might be of interest to some to see how my miniatures look roughly half way through the painting process. They looks a bit untidy in places, which is not a worry as my Art College education is a real boon in terms of mixing colours that match the hues already applied to the models. I am lucky in that it's not something that I usually have to spend too much time ruminating on; as colour theory (re; Colour spheres!) were drummed into me at an earlier age.

A word or two on the horses. The tones of the horseflesh are more of less made up and somewhat removed from how they would appear in reality. This is fine by me as I really enjoy painting horses and it would be unusual for me to be unhappy with the results. As long as I can take my time, have a good old mess around mixed with some experimentation, I am good.










The Kavallaroi models are roughly at the halfway stage. It should be pretty clear that I paint from a very flat matt black undercoat on top of a black primer. As mentioned in the above, it should also be somewhat clear that I have an idea of what colours I'm going to apply to where as I paint.







Cheers.

[Roo]

Glorious colouring in

[Atheling]

Thanks Roo 

Great to be finally back onto the swing of things- though shortly after taking the pictures I did screw up the jackets with too dark a wash! 

[Roo]

Ah shame, you’ll pull them back to magnificence…looking for are to seeing more

[Atheling]

Ah shame, you’ll pull them back to magnificence…looking for are to seeing more

Basically I stupidly used an old wash as a glaze to tie some complimentary colours together and it dried as a mess! It was more like I'd washed the miniatures rather then applying a very thin glaze 

Gonna have to try to fix them tonight.

[Atheling]

This unit was started prior to the beginning of The Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge with the first six cavalry models being completed before I went into clean up, prime and undercoat a whole Late Roman army for the challenge, which ended in the Great Varnishing Disaster which put pay to all my efforts on that project. Needless to say it interrupted any progress on my Early Byzantines as well as affecting a huge drop in my painting morale. I shave still to get my money back for the varnish that was provided to me with the promise that it was a "dead flat matt" but I will not stoop to naming and shaming; not yet anyway LOL.

Anyway, that's all by the bye. Overall I think this unit has come out rather well. I spent a long time on the horse flesh, something I really enjoy painting as you can really go to town on them. There is a degree of artistic expression, which I'm happy with as we are essentially colouring in toy soldiers.

The unit is double armed with both kontos and bow so I threw in a a few miniatures in full mail in the process of loading and loosing a few arrows for a little variation. Also, I added another Draco to the chap at the back in order to balance out the composition of the unit, providing a counterfoil to the large Chi Rho banner.

I did not manage to make enough time to take all the shots I wanted so I'll be adding some single base piccies sometime soon.

There are more images available on my Just Add Water Blog should you wish to take a look:
https://justaddwater-bedford.blogspot.com/2022/03/byzantine-heavy-kavallarioi-first-unit.html

No single bases yet as I'm really pressed for time today. I'll try to upload them tomorrow if I can.

[brunei35]

Fantstic as ever Darren, cheers

[Atheling]

Fantstic as ever Darren, cheers

Thanks brunei35. Appreciated

[Atheling]

In order to get the promised images of the single bases taken I was up a little earlier then normal. The photo's have been taken mostly with artificial light and I do hope they hold up to my usual standards(?).

In this post I've included samples of the single bases from the front only- there are a heck of a lot of pics!

If you want to see more from various angles of all of the bases please hop on over to my blog here:
https://justaddwater-bedford.blogspot.com/2022/03/early-byzantine-heavy-kavallarioi-first.html

Base 1:


Base 2:


Base 3:


Base 4:


Base 5:


Base 6:


Cheers

[Hu Rhu]

Wow.    Those are some of your best work ever.