Mercenaries and Men-At-Arms

Today's post is on some work in progress. I am currently finishing off eight Partismen for Henry Tudor's force. There are plenty more to follow though.  I have twelve crossbomen sitting on the painting desk ready to be primed. More on them at a later date.

As you can see from the pictures I need to complete the painting of the miniatures and finish off their bases.

There is a little work to do on the miniatures with the arming jacks and I need to lighten the armour, which leads me neatly to the next part of my post.

Painting armour

I tend to use Wargames Foundry paint range. I bought their starter sets when they came out back in the early 2000's. I must say i am still using some of those original paints. That's either due to a lack of painting or quality paints. Probably a little of both. I must say that I never got with the metallic colours in their paint range other than the bronze colours. For the metalwork on these models I have used Games Workshops paints, in particular Runefang Steel, Leadbelcher and Nuln Oil (ink/wash).

After I have removed any mould lines or flash I base the model with a sand mix. This is made from two varieties; children's play sand and GW sand mix. I combined the two to get the right mix for what I was after. This is applied to the base before the undercoating. I use Army Painter Grey Primer as it gives the best undercoat for the miniature. I used to use white or black but it made the model either too light or too dark.

The grey is perfect to my mind for creating the subdued colours which are generally associated with the medieval era. Not everyone was walking round in the latest Lincoln Green! I appreciate as well it is a matter of taste. I really like the work of Captain Blood. The quality of his painting and the colour range he uses are fantastic but I prefer something a bit more moody.

Once the model has been undercoated I then paint on the leadbelcher colour. Once this has dried I apply the Nuln Oil wash and finally pick out the detail with the Runefang Steel and it's as simple as that. Occasionally if I have the time I will add thin layers of brown to the bottom of the armour to create dirt, not rust - these soldiers had servants to clean their armour at regular intervals. Once the metal has been completed I pick out the rest of the miniature using the colour range I have given myself.

The base is then painted, for this I use GW Karak Stone with a wash over the top of Agrax Earthshade. I then highlight using Foundry Linen (lightest of the three) before adding the static grass. Once this has dried I add the Silfour grass tufts and flowers/weeds.