Thanks lads
Well, you knew I couldn't leave it alone, didn't you...
I've painted a few more gunners, to round out my late medieval artillery...
Firstly a couple more Burgundians, to supplement the 8 already done for the bombard (see several pages above!)
And secondly four more Savoyard artillerists...
And here are the Savoyards en bloc...
(By the way, colour scheme is completely invented - I haven't got a clue what Savoyards wore. But I think they look quite snazzy
)
And finally, I also just bought a painted unit of marching metal billmen off eBay.
Why, I hear you cry?
Well because I don't actually have these particular figures, and they looked quite well painted for eBay (which makes a change). Including a couple of plastic command figures, that's 14 figures for my bid of 70 quid.
Which - deducting the actual cost of the figures themselves - means about 4 quid for the painting of each figure. Which ain't bad, being little more than the price of a pint in London! The lot also included a mahogany display plinth, which I suppose might come in useful one day
They were painted by Matthew Archard (sorry, don't know if he frequents LAF). In the flesh, they didn't look
quite as good as in the listing, but good enough from more than a foot away. The painting style is more impressionistic than my own, with less colour contrast. But I'd describe them as a reasonably good wargames standard. They were however, hideously shiny, so I started by giving them a good heavy coat of matt varnish. I've then retouched the faces, hands, bill shafts and various bits of detail like the bucklers, just to lift them a bit.
The biggest problem was that whatever was used to attach the figures to their square MDF bases, is the strongest adhesive I've ever met! It proved impossible to prize the figures off their MDF bases as I had planned, without risk of breaking or damaging them in the process. So in the end, I just trimmed the MDF squares right down, and then mounted the whole assembly onto my usual 25mm steel washers. I covered up the resulting mess with groundwork and foliage. Unfortunately, this makes it look as if each man is now marching on his own small hummock, but never mind
It's an instant additional unit, representing the Duke of Buckingham's men (Heavens! An actual historical portrayal, whatever next?
)
01 June 2012, 02:52:46 PM
