Showing posts with label Numidians. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Numidians. Show all posts

Saturday, 14 November 2009

Almost the last of the Numidians...



Greg has finished the last couple of dozen Numidians, which look great! I asked him to do these a little lighter in skintone as I wanted some with lighter skins within the unit.

Here's a link to Greg's Blog. I highly recommend it; worth visiting for the Zombie Hampster, alone!

http://gloarmy.blogspot.com/2009/11/pour-simon.html

Thursday, 12 November 2009

Always look on the bright side of life...


These are the completed Numidian riders for 21 of the horses in the earlier pic. They rather remind me of a notorious scene in a Monty Python film. 

I now just have 6 or 7 horses and riders left to paint....

Monday, 9 November 2009

Not my Numidians!


These photos are are of a Numidian army painted by Gordon Smith, whose photos I'm helping to put up on the Web.  Most of the minis are Crusader, although some of the cavalry must be Foundry.

The above/below elephant is an Empire Models African painted by Tim (AKA Aargh) from the WAB Forum, and now owned my Gordon, I believe.  It is rather fanciful IMHO, what with the armour and it's heavy build, but what a lovely modelling job!  Tim owns a similar-sized Numidian army, which is also a fine sight.



Some of many Numidian skirmishers...


More...


Even more...


Big units!


Trained Infantry...


Imitation Legionaries and more trained infantry...


More Numidian light cavalry than I have at the moment...


What a nice army!   It has struck me that these two armies, together, would sort most of the Carthaginian and Roman Numidian allied minis required for Zama.  If they could tie up with a gamer with a big Roman army, they could put on a most impressive game.

Thursday, 5 November 2009

... and here are some that I prepared earlier.



The 30 Numidians I'm working on at the moment are taking forever to paint, so in the meanwhile I thought I'd show the wing of 36 Numidian cavalry I painted last year (the pic is clickable).  These are just painted to a good tabletop standard; I'm more concerned with getting an impression of mass, than a perfect paint job.


The closeup above shows the 12cm wide base I've adopted for light cavalry, so that I can get a better impression of movement.  The idea is that the riders are coming forward on the right, presenting their shielded side to the enemy and then turning away on the left.

The figures are a mix of Foundry, Crusader and A&A.  Just after I finished them last year, I dropped a box of 30 on the stairs; I was rather cross!  I managed to get them looking OK, again, in the end.

Friday, 30 October 2009

Numidian Horse III


I thought people might be interested to read how I paint horses.

Essentially, I paint them with acrylics as described in the previous post, then lighly varnish them to protect the paint.  Over the varnish I paint a mixture of oil paints (brown and Paynes's grey) and Linseed oil.  I then selectively rub this off with the little foam sqaures that come as packing with miniatures; I have plenty of them!  This is similar to the method described in the Foundry Painting and Modelling Guide, except I do more painting of detail up front, and use acrylics rather than enamels.

The oil paint settles into the lower areas of the horses.  It takes a week or so for the linseed to evaporate.



When thoroughly dry, I'll return to the horses to add white socks, on some, and paint in the metal bits.

The observant will note that quite a few of my Numidian horses have bridles; this is because I have rather more riders than horses, and had to steal a bunch of Native American horses.  Bridles and feathers aside, they look great!

Above are the riders, primed red.  The figures are a mix of Foundry, Crusader, A&A, Gripping Beast, a Renegade mahout and a couple of Foundry Greeks.  It is safe to say that I am scraping the bottom of the barrel of suitable miniatures in my lead pile.  The pins on which they are currently impaled, will eventually be cut done to 2mm length, and located in the holes on the backs of the horses; the shields will be added at the very end.

Monday, 26 October 2009

Numidian Horse II


A quick in-progress shot of these, after the 3rd painting session, blocking in the colours. 

I'm trying a different technique on these, compared to my last batch.  This time I want the horses' legs to be almost black, so I've painted them a mix of black and tan.  Once I have painted the horses eyes in (a dark brown), and retouched the bay colour, I'm going to hit these with an oil paint/linseed wash...

Saturday, 24 October 2009

Masinissa's Numidian horse


These are the second half of my Numidian light horse for Zama; this week I have prepped 21 minis to go with 9 that I bought already part-painted.  Most of the horses are going to be bays, with black lower legs and some sock.  The dead horses at the front are Crusader eBob mounts.  These were spare because I find them a tad too long in the leg compared to most of the Foundry horses I've used, but the slim, bendable legs makes them great casualty figures.  I'm planning to do a basic paint job in acrylics, and them add some arty oil washes over the top.

9 of the minis have been painted or partially painted by Alec at BillyBonesWorkshop.  I really like what he's done with the skin tones, and will try to copy them on the riders I will be painting.

I'm getting tight for time; going to have to move fast with these!  When they are all complete, I'll be able to field 66 Numidian light horse, a good proportion of what we need.

Wednesday, 21 October 2009

The Eye's have it


I've completed finishing and basing the second unit of Carthaginian Levy (above), these are minis mass-painted by Greg, and detailed and based by myself.  This time I spent an extra 15 minutes on painting in the eyes.


After listening to the comments on the previous unit, I decided to go with as small a white dot as I could manage, and then to apply a dark ink in the eye socket and up to the brim of the helmet.  The left element (above) is from the new unit; the right is from the the original.  I'm pleased with the effect when viewed from a distance.  I feel that the "new" eyes are quite effective, from a distance; so I gave the unit an appropriate stantard!


I'm going to leave the remaining Numidian foot until reinforcements arrive from Paris, and sort the cavalry.  The above 24 minis will roughly double the size of my Numidian horse.  I was lucky enough to purchase 9 part-painted on eBay which has given me a head start!

Tuesday, 13 October 2009

Newer Numidians


Here is the latest unit of my burgeoning Numidian army.  This is one of two projected units of Numidian "Auxilia"; troops in a slightly denser formation than the previous light infantry.

14 of the 18 minis were painted by Greg and retouched by me, I painted the other four.  The minis are a mixture of Foundry, A&A and Crusader (the eagle-eyed will spot that a couple of Foundry Spartans and Greeks have crept in; the Greeks were nekkid so I gave them greenstuff robes). 

I've now finished 68 of the 200-ish Numidian/Carthaginian foot.  I'm managing about 30 a week, so there must be at least another month's retouching/basing to go...


Thursday, 1 October 2009

New Numidians


Here are the first units of Numidians for the Zama project.  Of the first 50 shown here, 30 are finished and 20 need snagging and basing.  Roughly 40 of the 50 were painted by Greg (Merci beaucoup!) but I did highlighting, retouching and the basing.




I'm really pleased with them!  There are still the better part of 150 foot remaining to retouch and base though.   Fortunately Greg's hard work means that they roll of the production line pretty rapidly!

I've completed my Dissertation, and hope to be able to get back to paitning and posting daily, now.

Sunday, 20 September 2009

Just a few Numidians..


These are the majority of the Numidian and Carthaginian levies  I am painting for Zama.

Greg has very kindly painted 160 (!) minis (the ones on the tray), but unfortunately they took a bit of a pasting in the post and will need a little tender working care to get them into the field.  I retouched a dozen last night, though, and I think it'll be relatively quick; hopefully I should be able to finish about a dozen a night.  As well as these, I have 28 more unpainted infantry and 24 mostly unpainted cavalry.  Plenty to do...

BTW this is my 100th blog post- thanks very much to my readers!

Wednesday, 2 September 2009

Numidians- hordes of them!

http://gloarmy.blogspot.com/2009/09/peau-de-vache.html

Greg (above) has finished the second lot of 80 Numidians which look splendid! The photo is clickable, and well worth a click, too. Together with the 80 city militia he painted before, and my own cavalry and elephants (links to a few, below) they will give us the majority of the Numidian minis we need for Zama, next year.

http://www.displacedminiatures.com/BigRedBat/image/2331/21989/
http://www.displacedminiatures.com/BigRedBat/image/2331/22808/

Meanwhile I'm painting my Aventines. Over the last 2 nights I painted the flesh tones; no photo today. I'm trying to simplify my painting technique because I have so many figures to paint. I'm 5 days in and estimate the unit will take about 15 days overall to paint and base, which is pretty good, at around half the time I spent on the earlier Triarii.

Tuesday, 19 May 2009

King Masinissa


This is the Numidian King Masinissa, who changed sides before Zama and thus sealed the fate of Carthage. He's based on a Connolly reconstruction, which I think was sent to me by Allen around a year ago. I think he is a more historically correct figure to lead my Numidians than the Juba model.

The mini is a converted A&A rider on an eBob Crusader horse. The hornblower is Crusader.