Sunday, 17 March 2013

Scots for Cravant - WIP


I’m making modest progress on a number of fronts, so this is an update on prep for Cravant game, this time on one of the essential elements - more Scots.


The French army at Cravant was effectively a Franco-Scots force, with the Scottish mercenaries potentially comprising around half of the total men. This created a need to supplement the modest Scots contingent that I already have. Since amassing my HYW armies, Claymore Castings figures have arrived on the market, and so I decided to use these. Although the dress and armour is of a slightly earlier period (circa 1400) they are lovely sculpts and so this allows me to turn a blind eye to the minor anachronisms of ‘wrong period’ – something which I expect most others outside of ancients & medievals can’t so easily get away with. A couple of Perry men at arms have snuck their way in too.

I’d also been remiss in not having painted up any Paul Hicks designed figures before. The only disappointment is that, as deadlines need to be met, I have had to go the way of the dip to get enough figures done, which means that I’ve not had the opportunity to do justice to some fantastic sculpting – the figures are truly individual; full of character and flavour for the period. I will have to revisit them sometime.



A dark tone dip has been brushed on and no further highlights added afterwards, so please don’t look too closely at these if you get to Salute! The only detailed handpainting has been some heraldic devices on the coats of the leading men at arms. Humbrol Matt Cote was applied to tone down the high gloss finish that comes from using Army Painter dip, except on the armour plate and mail where it enhances the look. However I find that the varnish never really kills off the gloss in one coat, so they really have a semi-satin finish.



They are glued to 50mm square MDF bases from 'Warbases'. Basing is to be done and flags added, so I’ll post some final pics of the contingent.

5 comments:

Dalauppror said...

Impressive sight !!!

Looking very good !

best regards Michael

Engel said...

Ohh... impressive indeed.

Jonathan said...

Absolutely brilliant!

Stuart said...

Very nice work indeed.

I'm also new to Paul Hicks' work and his figures are a joy to paint.

I think it adds more character to mix them a little as it perhaps adds a flavour of lesser equipped or well off individals.

Stuart

Stephen said...

Anachronistic Scots - outrageous!

Great work as always :-)