A pyramid in the jungle

The big thing from the cellar is ready, and I must say (for once) that I am quite happy with the result.
Today, the attraction of this blog is a scratch-built Maya pyramid (ta-daam) !

In the previous post, the pyramid was built with polystyren and painted with yellow ochre as a base color. The next stage was to lighten step by step the base color, then add some traces of vegetation - not too much, so that it could be use as an active temple and as an antique building.
Well, if I wanted to be really accurate, I should have covered the building with plaster painted mainly in red - that's what the Mayan pyramid mostly looked like when they were still in service.

You can see the result below:

The enlightement was achieved through several drybrushes (with more and more white added to the base color), except that I also had to paint a lighter line on the top of every stone - a bit long but necessary.
Adding the vegetation was easy: some green paint, green flocking and a little bit of lichen.

The most difficult was to create a scene looking like a primary forest with only a few modelling trees... see for yourself:

That pyramid is a good spot for saurus...

The last picture in cinemascope: Maya-Toltecs vs Aztec invaders.

It's my first serious attempt at building some scenery element, I think I should build a few more, what do you think ? Maybe some houses for my Vikings, or my Rohirrim :)

Maya warriors

As promised yesterday, I've begun to paint some more Mayas. Yes, this time I've painted something historical that was already on my desk, and in 1/72!

Let's have a look:

You've already seen the slingers on this blog, which means that only the two lancers have been painted today - they were on yesterday's last picture.

Let's show more pictures of these men:

It's not that easy to paint Mayas from the Classical period (250 AD to 900 AD). First of all, there is not a lot of documentation on the web, and if you appreciate to work with original sources (as I do), you arrive very quickly to the reproductions of the Bonampak fresco, such as these:

This one is a reproduction

These walls were painted in 790 AD. They represent court scenes, and a ritual celebration for victory in battle. We can see mainly nobles, prisoners, and warriors - but should we suppose that they wear special ritual outfits ? Anyway, we see that the clothes are mainly white, yellow, red, sometimes green or black. Most feathers are green, but you can find many colorful birds in the tropical forest, so I assume that red, white and black feathers are rather common, and blue feathers are also accurate.

Many nobles also wear leopard skin, which I will paint later - remember, I'm starting again, so easy painting first :)

Another typical feature of these warriors are the stone necklaces, and probably gold for the richest among them.

A few more pictures of the figures:

Hope you like them :)

Mayan slingers

One of the projects of the year is to paint a Mayan army for DBA / AdG (l'Art de la Guerre, a very promising ruleset, I must test it as soon as possible).

I already painted two slingers some time ago, but it was before I learned to use the washes to speed the process of painting. I recently painted a third one with that more recent technique (recent for me, I mean). The result is visible on the pictures below, what do you think ?

In my opinion, the contrast is much better with the new technique, and more efficient in a battle scene.

I can't wait to keep on painting this army: with their colored feathers and their leopard skins, they might become one of the jewels of the collection :), and I would really like to use them against my Aztec army.

Minis by Caesar (the best manufacturer concerning the anatomy), pictures by my daughter Hatshepju !

PS: Oh yes, the plastic plants are a poor attempt at creating a tropical forest atmosphere. I visited Yucatan some years ago, I know what it should look like :)