Back to the Carolingians

I finished painting spearmen and archers last week and would follow up with the Frankish knight, but last week I had a number of DBA Renaissance sold off which took a bit of time. Thanks again to the gamers who purchased the Polish and Cossack armies.

Knights, in fact 36 of them are pictured on their plinths. I like painting horses, but the trick here to organize your efforts so you don’t dampen your creative juices.

I like Old Glory for their variety of poses per pack and the cavalry are no different. Each pack has riders in four different poses and horses, usually six. This works out perfectly for the quantity that I wanted to do as six horses can be placed on each plinth.

Each plinth therefore, had one unique pose for horse which I place on each plinth. For the next plinth, I shifted the exact sequence by one position on the next plinth and repeated the process, so each horse appeared in a different position. I repeated as best as I could with varying the riders.

There is logic behind this.

After applying a ground coat of grey primer in the evening, I was able to start the following morning with an hour’s worth of painting.

Flesh, spears and half the horses were done essentially with two colours; flesh of course and red brown. I start with hands and face, and then move to the spear for which I mixed the red brown with desert yellow. After all 36 lances were finished, I moved on to the horse.

Perhaps from the photos you can notice I used six colours; each colour is painted on one horse on each plinth, but move up a position each time, so the overall appearance the colours run diagonally across.

Now for the shields and banners or pennons, I used six colours but painted the same colour horizontally across. Painting first, the rear of the shield, painting the front side tidied up the appearance. The array looks nearly complete, but the whole session took less than two hours over two days.

With a break tomorrow, I will resume by painting the chainmail, leg and arm protection, helmet and cloaks. This will be spread out over two sessions while I begin sketching the shield and pennon designs on paper. This helps me organize my time better.

Cheers,