Friday 14 October 2016

Painting Great Northern War Saxons

OK so as threatened this is a post talking you through my process for painting. I wont call it a tutorial, that suggests I know more than someone else, this is just my approach and I hope one or two people can pick something from it.




For this exercise I have followed the painting of a small number of Saxons, casualties, Standard bearers and my new heavy cavalry, this will allow me to share how I do both figures and horses.


These particular figures are mostly Warfare with a couple of Ebor standard bearers.
 For the figures I always prime in black and I use a tin of Halfords Matt Black car spray which gives a nice finish to paint onto.
 The horses are primed white as this suits my purposes with the horse much better, again its Halfordsthis time white primer.


Back to the figures and the first job I always do is anything that needs to be black, this is an advantage of priming in black, a quick dry brush of dark grey and your black boots and hat are complete. Particularly handy when painting the Black Guard for El Cid!
 Next I am adding base colour coats or block painting as others call it. The Saxons are in red so a nice dark base coat, the cavalry need a dark buff for their waistcoat trousers and bets, the foot need a pale grey for their cuffs and breeches which will be white later on.
 I personally like to use colour party paints (though not exclusively), they have a good range with decent coverage and best of all are only three miles from my house. http://www.colourparty.co.uk/
Colours used here are MA22 ECW Buff, MA40 Crimson, MA5 Panzer Grey, MA20 mid grey , MA10 Negro Brown.
 Whilst that is drying I have then started to base coat the horses. I have painted an acrylic base coat on the horses. I am painting a bas coat at least 2 shades lighter than the colour I want to achieve, we will add a much darker oil to this later then wipe it off.
 With base coats on its time to start the face. The European flesh is the only Foundry paint I use and I have the three shade set and use all three. I try to keep a narrow dark outline around the eyes, nose and mouth as the two below.

 I am then going to add the mid flesh shade, attempting to leave another narrow line of the darker flesh and also leave the bottom lip dark flesh.
 Finally adding the light flesh highlight only to end of nose, cheekbones and chin point.

I have then added a lighter buff to the ECW Buff and lightened the Scarlet to add a shade to the coats. The foot troops have had white added to cuffs breeches and stockings, leaving decent gaps so that the mid grey folds give a contrast.
 Whilst that si drying into the Kitchen to get the oils out. I always start with the greys and get darker, I tend to mix the colours any old how and throw colours in until I am happy, above a simple grey two shades darker than the white base coat.
 
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 Slap the colour on fairly liberally, its going to be wiped off in about 5 minutes.
 Then taking a rag, I prefer T shirt type material (currently using old underpants no jokes please, I have washed them) gently wipe the material over the model using a clean piece of cloth this will wipe off the majority of the paint, staining lightly the exposed, raised parts and leaving a darker area in the crevices.
 Your going to need to leave them for a couple of days to fdry now, I place mine on the window sill near the radiator to speed the dryng process up.

 So back to the figures, I have now added a third layer of ivory to the belts but only on the raised points across shoulder etc, I have painted the musket and pistols a chestnut brown and added the metal work and hat lace, the figures are finished.
 

 
With the horses dry I am now painting the saddlery and the mains and tails black. along with the saddle cloth

I have added a pale grey border and also used the pale grey on some of the horses hocks and foreheads. Not 100% what this units saddlecloths should be but as Beausts have black facings and the only other Cavalry with black facings (Golts dragoons) had black piped white saddle cloths its a decent bet.
Finally I add white to the piping and hocks/foreheads and adark grey shading to the saddle cloth. Chestnut to the wood of the pistols, bronze pistol buts and steel bits to the reins and the horses are complete.
 I Areldite the riders to the horses and we are ready for Varnish.
Firstly a layer of Gloss, this adds toughness and protects them from wargamers fat fingers.
 Then a good layer of matt. I really like this figures in comfort quick dry matt, I don't like flat matts but satin is too shiny, this gives a slightly egg shell tint to the matt and I like that a lot.

An then we are done. Finished figures are here.









So there we are, hopefully that's enough detail without being too detailed and sending you all to sleep. I will do a follow up post on the basing (I may even base some myself rather than sending to the basing department) and I still have those Polish Cossacks to share with you.


Thanks for reading.

17 comments:

  1. Great post, I see you've snuck in a swedish life guard trooper behind the saxons. 1 swede vs 4 saxons is unfair for the saxons!

    How did you like the warfare cav?

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    1. I really like them Truls, once I have this unit done planning on picking up some of the new Swedes, starting with the companions FOR THE LIFE GUARD TROOPER.

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  2. Interesting post! Lovely looking cavalry. I'm currently painting my first WWS regiment, Swabian Horse, and my first figures larger than 15mm. So this was very helpful to me. Thanks.

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    1. If it has even been slightly helpful David then I am happy.

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  3. Nice, straightforward acheivable style and effectve. GNW is a great period to game.

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    1. Wont work for everyone but I like what it achieves for me.

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  4. Very nicely done...and explained!

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    1. Thanks Phil, think I may have missed one picture of the latter stages but hopefully still makes sense.

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  5. Very nice. GNW is a great period and the Saxons my favourite army

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    1. They were my second favourite to the Swedes, now I am not so sure.

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  6. Nice little tutorial. Interesting that you use acrylic undercoat for the horses - when I do that the paint rubs off exposing the metal underneath. I'm going to have to try your method for priming the figure since it obviously works. Thank you.

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    1. Thanks Paul, don't think I have ever had the primer rub off since using this method although it did happen with brush on paint in the past.

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  7. I think your horses turned out great. I had seen this method done before to great effect. I have considered doing it myself, but I am too impatient to wait three days!

    I am considering doing the GNW in the near future, so I will be watching this blog with interest and for ideas.

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    1. Sorry Below was supposed to be a reply, doh!

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  8. Hi Chad, I look forward to seeing your collection when you get going, feel free to ask questions, although I think a lot of my thought process has been documented here in various posts. I do get what you mean about the oils. I tend to do the horses before anything else. The by the time I have finished some riders the horses are usually dry. 2 days usually I say 3 to be safe. Hope you enjoy your foray into Great Northern War

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  9. Lovely post, tons of work. thank you.

    I like your end results, so the process interests me. It seems that many of best looking horses have an oil based wash added, my only hesitation on using it is that I like acrylic varnish and prefer to stay away from solvents indoors, so the matt varnish needs to be solvent based rather than water based to go over oil.

    However, I recently noticed that my art shop was doing water-mixable oils (new fangled technology) together with a range of supporting mediums, which included varnish, so I might look into that further.

    Anyway, a really enjoyable post.

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    1. Cheers Norm, got to be honest I always use standard spray varnish, humbrol and more recently figures in comfort. I do a layer of Gloss as it protects the figures then matt it back down leaving a slight eggshell finish. Never had any problems with the oil painted horses using this.

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