More Knights From 1990

I've been painting more knights this week. As with last week, I've been using the models from WD 137 and 138 as a guide. 

The green stripey guy uses a pattern taken straight from WD 137. The chap with the blue, yellow and checkered heraldry is based on a knight in WD 138, although I've simplified the heraldry a bit because it was incongrously complex compared to the rest of the unit. As I said in the previous post, painting and building these models is a slightly awkward process, because it's easier to paint the inside of the barding and the horse's legs before sticking it together and smoothing down the joins with milliput. But it is nice when they're finished.

This last chap is wearing heraldry taken from WD 138, simplified to stop me going mad. The woven pattern is straight from the original, but I used a white cross on the red quarters instead of the complicated freehand lion heads in the GW version. I just can't paint that well. Anyhow, he was complicated enough without that, and I really like the final version.

That brings this unit up to nine knights. Pretty good! However, I want to make a leader, and I've got a model that will do the job. I just need a break from painting heraldry. Maybe the space orks can help...

Knights from the 90s

More progress on the first edition Bretonnian knights. These models date back to 1990 - I've got friends younger than them.

I've found that the best way to paint knights is in pieces. This isn't something I tend to do - I like to have the whole model made before the painting stage - but it does help as there are bits that you can't reach easily once you've stuck the model together.

There are four main pieces to each knight: horse's head, left horse side, right horse side and rider. I spray the inside of each horse side black. I also spray the rider black. I spray/paint the outside of each horse side and both sides of the head white.

First, I paint the inside of the horse's legs. They have a black undercoat on one side and a white undercoat on the other. This shouldn't really matter, since the barding would throw shadow over the legs  anyhow. I do a very small amount of highlighting on the inside of the barding but it's almost invisible. It's definitely not something that the viewer needs to see. 

Then I stick the horse bits together (head, sides and tail) and if necessary use milliput to smooth the joins. Once this is done, I do the most fun part and paint the heraldry on the outside of the caparison. 

After that, well, it's the remaining bits of horse, then the rider. I do the messier metal parts before the rider's tunic, just because it's neater. Then I do the shields.

I've used pieces of plasticard for all the shields in this unit. I traced around an old plastic shield, drilled a hole in the middle so the peg on the knight's left arm would go in, and smoothed the join down with more milliput. 

When painting the horses, I've tended to stick to two or three strong colours, to make the heraldry stand out more. I like the idea of the unit looking like a blaze of bright colour. I've also found that (to my eyes at least), the "main" colour on each knight is a mixture of what's on the rider's surcoat and what's on the shoulders and back of the neck of the horse. I try to vary these. 

I've followed the very old GW paint schemes from WD 136-138, but I've found that the two GW units look too yellow and too white respectively, so I've kept the heraldic shapes but varied the colours used. I particularly like red/blue, green/white and yellow/blue, but lots of contrasts work well.

 Anyhow, here are the first six.

More Escher Gangers

 Hi again! I've been squinting very hard this week and painting some more of Jes Goodwin's amazingly detailed House Escher models from the mid-1990s. 

Ages back, I bought two miniatures on ebay. I then lost them in my house. Annoyed, I bought the same models again from a different ebay seller, although the second ones I got were broken. One was missing its pistol hand, and the other lacked the barrel of its autogun. I then found the originals again. Oh well, more models to paint!

These are the repaired miniatures. I used a pistol from a Tempestus Scion for the missing pistol, and a leftover Genestealer Cult autogun for the other. As usual, I went for a pretty riotous colour "scheme", vaguely inspired by the old Tank Girl comics (very 90s!). Here are Daisy Chainsword and Helen Highwater.

Then I painted the other two. For variety, I used darker skin tones and tried not to repeat any of the colours on the parts of the first two miniatures. These are Bella Donna and Lou Scannon.

I've actually got quite a few Eschers now. I don't have the full range, as some of them must be rare and go for a lot on ebay (well, more than I'm prepared to pay). But I do have a fair few, some of them repaired. Here they are in batches of four.

So that's the Eschers for now! I have a couple more to go, but I think I'll have a break from all the crazy detail for now. Maybe I ought to go back to the Bretonnians. We shall see!