DBA Gallic Army, the cavalry elements

Well, very little time to paint in this year's end, a lot of work before the holidays. But at least I could finish the heavy cavalry element, except for the base, sorry.

The HCv element: Hät figures that I was so happy to discover when the reach the market. I previously had to use Essex 15mm figures as proxy.

Close-up on the left rider: I had to repaint the flesh (not easy to see on this picture), the horse (better result than the grey one, IMO), the shield and add some light on the trousers.

You can see them next to the other cavalry unit.

Next step on this project: paint the bases of the whole army.

And probably something else on the blog before :)

DBA Gallic army: first step of restoration

I explained in the previous post that I wanted to restore and add some improvements to my old DBA Gallic army, here you are the first step.

The test figure is a heavy rider. There was no light nor shadow in the original paint, so I began to darken the mini with washes (red for the flesh, brown everywhere else), then lighten with several layers. I also painted some details that I had forgotten, such as the umbo on the shield. Same process for the horse.

The two pictures below allow us to compare before and after.

This is another view of the same rider, which makes me realize that I have some mistakes to correct. Anyway, there is more contrast now, so I think it is an improvement.

I also modified a Light Infantry (Psiloi) element: the flesh has been redone on both minis, I've added some light on the trousers, and the base has been repaired.

the guy on the right had the flesh of a zombie !!

I could have given them another javelin in the left hand

Even better than the rider in my eye. What do you think ?

To be continued :)

DBA Gallic army

I've already written a couple of posts about Celtic warriors by Hät. The minis can be seen here (part I) and there (part II). But long before that, my brother and I painted a complete DBA Gallic army with Airfix, Revell and a few ESCI minis - and we used 15mm essex minis to represent cavalry, later replaced by Hät and Italeri minis. Years later, I also added a few Newline Design 20mm minis to fill the ranks.

I don't have the 15mm riders any longer, but I still have the 1/72 minis. I never finished to base them, but they have already seen action in several battles. And last week-end, I decided to complete the work in order to have a nice army to display.

Before adding some paint on them, I wanted to take pictures of the army in its actual state.
Here it is. The whole army:

On the front rank, the based elements, Psiloi on the left (Italeri minis), and command element on the right (from left to right: 3 Italeri men and one Newline Design). The skin color of some of them has to be redone.

 The warband elements: mostly Revell with a few Airfix and ESCI, all painted before I learned to paint shadows and highlights.

And at last, the cavalry elements. Hät figures on the left, Italeri and Newline Design on the right - my first highlight technique, before the washes.

As an army, they already look good. I won't repaint them all, but repair the broken bases, finish the to-do bases and add some contrast at least on the cavalry element.

More pictures to come to show you the result. Hope you like my old minis :)

Gall óglaigh and Kern

Hi Everyone!

Commenting my last post related to Templar men-at-arms, "Boss" Paul from Paul's Bods (one of the best 1/72 blogs dedicated to 1/72 minis... all right, everybody already knows :))asked for more Medieval minis, so I promised new pictures for yesterday night... well the night is over (here) and I am a bit late, but I could finish two minis and take pictures.

I wanted to start something new for a small vignette, an original or unusual subject (at least for me), because it's always a good way to discover and learn new things. I searched my plastic stocks and picked a set by Redbox for the war of the Roses: Irish troops, set 72044.

I know very little concerning this period in Irish history, so I opened the online bible (PSR), and read about the two main troop types represented in the box:

• the galloglass (from from Irish: gall óglaigh meaning foreign warriors - thanks Wikipedia), heavy infantry originated in the Scottish Isles, and using terrible two-hands weapons such as big battleaxes - maybe a remembrance of housecarls, or of their common viking ancestors)

• the kerns, or light skirmishing infantry, using javelins as their main weapons (by the way, I finally took time to know a little about kerns - a term I read in WRG army lists years ago, without the slightest idea of what they could look like)

You can see below one of the most famous illustrations representing galloglass (left) and kerns (right) in the 16th century by Albrecht Dürer. Though posterior to the medieval period, it gives us an idea of the appearance of these fierce men.

One more thing eventually convinced me to start painting: these men were also known to wear saffron colored coats, and since I can't use my yellow paint everyday, I became very tempted!

And here you are the result, two minis painted yesterday night.  Hope you (including Paul :)) like these medieval men.

Templar Foot Soldiers

Good evening (well it's late in France :)).

I recently bought a set from the Crusader period by Strelets - Military Order Warriors. I wanted to paint some of them as Templar foot sergeants, an addition to my DBA Late Crusader army.

Here you are four of these men - enough figures to represent one DBA element. I really appreciate these minis, they are perfect to represent a defensive line, and the black and white shield of the order is nice (and easy) to paint.

Let's show them. The first pictures were taken with a dark background, so that the contrast is not too strong, we see the details rather well.

Next pictures are an attempt to show the minis as if they were in action in the Middle East - good weather, but dusty sky. The foot soldiers are operating together with the knights of the order.

I am quite happy with the result, each man differs from the others but they look like they form a unit. What do you think of it ?

Orcs and Gobs, and more

Back to 1/72. Do you remember the goblin I have painted a few days ago ? Now he's got a fellow, and some orc friends - a good occasion to gather the whole tribe, including a warg rider and a troll (painted earlier this year).

For some reason, I've had trouble taking proper pictures (probably the lack of light, the weather is horrible today), so not my best, sorry.

I hope you like them anyway :)

Goblins by Caesar, orcs, warg and troll by Dark Alliance.
The troll has already been visible in this small tutorial. 

Ajouter à l'Anti-bannière

Dungeons & Dragons Boardgame

Yesterday, while checking the stats of the blog (Yes, don't you ? I particularly appreciate to have visitors from all over the world), I read the comment written by Geordie, from Geordie's Big Battles, and I crawled the web to discover his blog that I didn't know. Lots ans lots of different subjects, nicely painted figures, big battles... I was curious to read the posts under the label Fantasy, and I found this one, which recalled me great memories: Playing around with "Speed Painting" some "Fantasy" with "Washes", because of the minis displayed, plastic toy figures from the Dungeons & Dragons Boardgame by Parker. Do you recognize this box ?

This is the french version of "Dungeons & Dragons: The Fantasy Adventure Board Game" (2002), the exact copy of the one I offered my son when he was 10. It was a simple dungeon crawl game in a fantasy universe, and a good introduction to RPGs for my children... I was right on that point since they are still involved in RPGs as players and occasional designers, more than 10 years later :)

The box was full of things, including a lot of figures (compatible with 28mm fantasy figures):

I was very happy to read Geordie's post, because we had many a good adventure with this game, but I don't think that it met great success, and it is rare to hear or read about it. I left a comment on the post, saying that I wished to write something on my own, and here we are.

Last year, I had enough time to begin to paint the minis of this box. Once again, I wanted to turn poorly regarded minis into nice game pieces, and I thought that some of them might become interesting monsters for my 1/72 fantasy armies. This is what I could get:

The tiles on the pictures come from the game box, but not the wall  that I bought in an aquarium shop.
Some individual pictures: The Troll

The Bugbear (I try to find the english name after the french description, correct me if I am wrong :)):

The Carrion Crawler:

The Ogre:

On the following pictures, you can see the monsters in their various daily activities: dwelling the dungeon, crawling the dungeon, attacking anything and particularly adventurers (a human word describing "armed people who steal anything in your dungeon, sweet dungeon and destroying the rest"). Admire the taste in architecture as shown on the original columns !

I would like to thank the painter from whom I stole the idea for the bases - unfortunately I don't remember who he or she is, because I lost my internet bookmarks last summer when my laptop was stolen. Anyway, thank you.

At last, a couple of pictures of my workspace in the cellar.

Once again, my daughter took most of the pictures of this post.
And now, I am looking for players for another dungeon crawl :)

Hope you liked this post.

Sign of Life

For those, passing by, who may wonder whether this blog is still active... the answer is Yes: little activity, but some traces of plastic life on plastic grass :)

Two men from the Napoleonic Middle Guard:

One small goblin from Caesar, not in the usual GW green.

Hope to go back to the brushes next week, but this week-end, I go diving in Antibes on the Mediterranean Sea. The weather is perfect, I take my camera, maybe some fishes on this blog soon !

I've almost forgotten...

... how to use brushes after my long summer break! No, my holidays didn't last for two months, I have been working most of the time, but I managed to take some days off, I will maybe write about it one of these days.

In the previous post, I wrote that the next unit on my todo list for my Late Imperial Roman army was a cavalry unit. Unfortunately, I had no time to paint a lot, but I could at least paint the first man as a test shot, and his horse of course :)

Here's the result:

Well... funny how fast you can lose your painting skills... and the pictures are not very good either, but I must admit that I wanted to write a post as soon as possible :) With autumn coming (not winter, not yet :)), I am likely to paint a little more.