samedi 27 janvier 2018

Tattooed Germanic warrior

In one of his posts (It'll never happen!!! - I encourage you to read it, a lot of interesting ideas there), our friend Sprinks of Wronghammer opened a discussion about the projects that we would like to do, even the craziest ones :) I will write about my own huge project one of these days, but before, I have to progress in smaller projects to decrease the size of the Big Plastic Pyramid, and the slightly smaller Lead Mountain too.

One of these projects is to paint an Early Germans army, for DBA and AdG.

For the moment, I've painted a few warriors (some of them fighting early imperial Romans last year), including a horn blower (already displayed in 2017), the last of them being a naked tattooed warrior.

The warband so far:


They are a mix of Caesar, Hät and Esci figures. To add some more variety, I also have some Strelets Germans on my workbench.

The front man is a naked warrior, and I must say that, at first, I didn't intend to enlist him in the band. Maybe you wander why ? No, it is not because I have a problem with nudity - I would rather have a problem with weapons but I happen to paint dozens of them, strange isn't it ? ;-)

No, in this case, I have a problem with accuracy. Naked warriors are not unknown in occidental culture, but rather rare nevertheless. If we frequently see naked fighters in Greek and Roman art, it certainly has to do with artistic license, and not always with facts. There are little written accounts about naked warriors. One of the best known testimony is the story of the battle of Telamon (225 BC) by Polybius. The Republican Roman army led by the consuls Gaius Atilius Regulus  and Lucius Aemilius Papus defeated a coalition of Cisalpine Celtic tribes including the  Insubres, Boii and Taurisci. In this battle, the Gaesatae, or Transalpine mercenaries, were said to have fought naked except for their weapons.

In my research, I couldn't find any primary evidence of naked Germanic warriors, although many manufacturers represent some. In the end, I decided to paint my small guy, and to represent him as a berserk, in analogy with later accounts on vikings. And I wished to tattoo him, to give him a magic protection against his enemies' weapons.

This is the result: the tattoos are entirely speculative, an attempt at copying some sort of rune art.




And our guy with his raiding band.



What do you think of him ? Would you have any clue related to naked Germanic warriors ? I need your help on this point. Thank you in advance !


25 commentaires:

  1. Great looking warband! The results you achieve with respect to muscle definition are outstanding.

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    1. Thank you Jonathan. I was not very happy with the skin painting this time, I think that the tattoos are some sort of camouflage.

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  2. Really nice work as always Phil, the mix of minis in the warband look great together. I must say im looking forward the big mystery project :)

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    1. Thank you Sprinks. Not really a mystery since the answer is written in your blog :)

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  3. Wonderful painted barabrians!! Seems to be they could make the legion frighten ;)

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  4. Des tatouages très réussis et de très belles figurines, bravo!

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    1. Merci, j'espère quand même m'améliorer un peu sur les tatouages, ça reste un peu brouillon

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  5. Nicely done, the tattoos really add that extra punch 😀

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    1. Thank you! I agree, I will add more of these. It is probable that many men were tattooed. It just read today that vikings in Russia were seen as tattooed down to the fingers, interesting.

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  6. He looks ferocious, maybe the clothes?:) Nice tattoos, i do not know if accurate but they work for our purpose: fin,imagination and eye-enjoying!
    By the way I also visited Sprinks:such a nice multi-project-suggestion post!

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    1. Almost sure that the tattoos are accurate, and they add something, particularly on badly painted minis (this one was not nice before the tattoos) :)
      I think that Sprinks and you share the same sort of overflowing imagination :D

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  7. I see you really researched the barbarian-tattoo topic, well done!
    Sad that our imagination makes not thousands of figures become painted automatically by magic :)

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    1. You mean, the ones you see when you close your eyes ? Yes, too bad :)

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  8. Great job Phil and a little artistic license is fine be me. What is AdG?

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    1. Thank you Bruce. Oh sorry, I should have explained, my bad. AdG stands for l'Art de la Guerre, an excellent french ruleset for Ancient and medieval wargaming. What is interesting is that the base system is compatible with DBA. The official website is here (and it is translated in english :)): http://www.artdelaguerre.fr/adlg/v3/?/en/

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  9. hi die alten germanen klasse arbeit

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