Best painting guides/source art for Arthurian Brits??

[SBMiniaturesGuy]

Hullo All,
As I start painting my little warriors, other than looking at the great stuff many of you have posted here, are there some good source books, artwork and/or painting guides for Arthurian British and early Saxons?? Thanks.

[Lowtardog]

The WAB age of arthur book is possibly one of the best I think great eye candy

any McBride artwork too

[SBMiniaturesGuy]

The WAB age of arthur book is possibly one of the best I think great eye candy

any McBride artwork too

Sadly, Out of Print... 

[guitarheroandy]

At the risk of sounding 'big headed', may I direct you to my blog? http://guitarheroandy.blogspot.co.uk/
You'll find tons of Romano-British and Welsh figures on there plus a few Saxons. Some of these have appeared in WAB, Dux Bellorum and War & Conquest rule books, and various Wargames magazines, so they aren't too shabby!!

Feel free to ask anything you like. Painting Arthurians is one of my favourite hobby pastimes... I'd be only too pleased to advise

[xpalpatinex]

I'll second guitarheroandy and his blog. Watched a lot of the units come together on the WAB Forum and it's inspiring stuff.

[OSHIROmodels]

I'll third the call for Andy 

I'll be using his blog when I start my Dux project next year 

cheers

James

[huevans]

Well, since no one really knows what the armies looked like or whether they actually existed and in what form, there are no "rules" as such. There are some posts about what dyes are likely to be in existence at the time. Mainly, it seems, dyes that faded quickly. So only the rich would have vivid fresh-looking colours. The rest is pretty much up to you.

Late Roman has been on my TDL of periods to get into for a while and about the only "must do" rule I've made for myself is to try and paint some decent embroidered borders on my nobles' clothing. My own theory is that that would be a status symbol thing amongst those rich enough to compete.

So by all means enjoy Andy's blog for inspiration and eye candy, but don't feel too bound by anything.

[SBMiniaturesGuy]

Thanks, that's an awesome blog and great looking figures!! Do you have a tutorial on how you made those cool shock dials??

[guitarheroandy]

Huevans is absolutely right. I make zero claim anywhere on my blog or anywhere else that my figures are historically accurate because there is no evidence at all for much of anything. Handy that, as one can be artistic and no-one cares!!!  I had a vision in my mind of what I wanted my troops to look like and went with it. Right? Wrong? Do I care? Nope...

However, as with Mr Evans you will note that my noble warriors all have trim around the base and the sleeves of their tunics. They also have generally brighter and nicer clothes. This is because we do know that wealth was displayed on a warrior's person and cool tunic with embroidered trim, a mailshirt and a dashing helmet, plus a painted shield would show just how important you were on the battlefield. So that is a must for me. My nobles often have brass coloured helmet trim as well, just to make 'em stand out from any ordinary warrior with a helmet. Historical? Probably not...

As for shield designs and banners, well, who knows? I've nicked most of mine from James Morris, Steve Jones (paintingshed blog) and Guy Halsall and from the Late Roman designs that are easy(ish) to paint by hand although I'd recommend LBM transfers if you want mega shields with next to no effort. Some of my banners have animal designs cos they appear in the (very un-historical but rollicking great read) Cornwell books.

The shock markers are purchased ready-made from Warbases and simply have a Gripping Beast casualty model and a little sand (VERY carefully) glued on before painting. Easy-peasy!!!!

Hope that helps a bit. 

Andy

[valleyboy]

I'm currently tackling my backlog of dark age figures so i'm going to have  agander at your blog as well then Andy

For some odd reason I have less angst painting complicated uniforms of H+M era and find it hard to just let uniformity go with dark age stuff

[xpalpatinex]

I had the opposite problem. After years of painting non-uniformed ancient and medieval armies, my switch to well documented, uniformed troops was a little bit scary. Suddenly I had actual information on what they wore (and sometimes color photographs) vs. assumptions based on dyes and carvings. I found the less known armies more creative which was fun. 

[Mitch K]

Another massive vote for guitarheroandy and his blog. Osprey MAA Arthur and the Anglo-Saxon Wars (Nicolle / McBride) works for me. There are some references in WRG Armies of the Dark Ages (Heath), but limited eye candy. HTH.

Mitch