After I started my Saga Vikings, but before I had finished
them, I painted a blister of Gripping Beast’s Sons of Death. I’ve put them in
this article partly because as Swords for Hire they aren’t strictly a part of
the Viking army, and partly the sequence in which I painted them demonstrates my
learning process in painting 28mm figures.
Along with the Vikings of my previous blog post these were
the first 28mm figures I have painted in years, the last being a handful of
fantasy figures for role-playing, ages ago. I’ve painted quite a few 15mm
armies since that time but there’s a massive difference between painting 28mm
and 15mm. With 15mm you can get away with a lot, especially when it comes to
doing the detail – the increased size and better casting detail at 28mm means many
of the same tricks just don’t work, so it was time for me to learn again.
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| Sons of Death |
The Gripping Beast Sons of Death are eight distinctly
different and very characterful figures dressed in different ways and armed
with a variety of different weapons. Overall they’re a group of very good
looking figures in active poses. The figures were well cast with negligible
flash and mould lines, certainly nothing that a sharp scalpel and a file
couldn’t deal with quickly.
The Sons of Death are Swords for Hire that can be added to
your Saga warband for two points. They’re quite expensive but they are tough
fighters, there are eight of them, and they don’t eat up your Saga dice at all.
I’m not going to repeat the rules for these chaps here but if you want to read
them you can find them on
the Saga Tapestry website.
Incidentally, Gall-Gaedhil actually means “Norse Gaels”, so
you ought to be able to use these chaps in a Norse Gael Saga force without
objection.
I painted these figures individually, in sequence. This is
very unusual for me – usually I set out a batch of figures (more than most
people would fine sensible) to paint at the same time and get on with them all
at once. I’m getting there now with 28mm but at the time of painting these I
had no idea whether that would be practical or not, and I wanted to convince
myself that I could do a reasonable paint job first before giving myself a lot
of work.
Once the figures were cleaned up, washed and dried (this is
often a good idea as it removes grease that is sometimes present after the
casting process), I assembled each one as I saw fit - the variety of weapons and shields provided means you can mix things up quite a bit - and glued each figure to a Renedra 20mm circular base. When dry, I added the base texture. I prefer to
base figures before they are painted, because I’m going to paint the base
anyway, and because if I do it that way round the base texture can be arranged
nicely against the feet of the figure with no chance of the metal base showing
through. The base texture is a mixture of polyfilla, water, PVA glue and builder’s
sand. I mix it all together to what I consider to be the right consistency and
spread it over the base. I immediately add a fraction of a pinch of gravel
(simulating small rocks) and then a more generous pinch of Chinchilla dust (for
fine texture). The gravel I use was very fine – almost dust - collected from the
side of an unpaved road; Chinchilla dust is finer than sand, and can be
obtained from pet shops in absurdly large quantities (for the wargamer’s use,
at least) for negligible cost. I believe my lifetime’s supply of this cost me
50p about twenty years ago.
Before the base sets I gently wash down the model’s feet
with clean water using a paintbrush so that none of the filler sets on the
figure. Then leave it to set. Once the base texture is dry, I paint the base entirely in a
dark brown colour, and when that’s dry, dry brush highlight with a lighter
colour. Then undercoat the actual figure in a light grey. Because I don’t
believe in spending a lot of money on undercoats, and I like to be consistent,
the base colours I use are Crown Matt Emulsion Cafetiere (dark) and Crown Matt
Emulsion Brown Sugar (dry brush). The grey is whatever grey I have to hand and
is not important. So, figures based and undercoated and ready to go.
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| Armoured axeman |
The first of the Sons of Death that I painted was an
armoured chap with an axe and no shield and not a lot of scope for fine detail
painting compared to the others. Ideal to get my hand in. Because he is wearing a helmet and has
little face visible, I didn’t put a lot of effort into facial detail and it
doesn’t stand out. I've improved my technique with armour since, now doing a much finer dry brush of gunmetal over a black basecoat - this chap's armour was painted gunmetal and then shaded with a wash. Nothing special overall but good enough to give me the
confidence to get on with the next figure.
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| Bald warrior with sword and shield |
A bald chap with sword and shield wearing a chain shirt.
This was my first serious attempt at painting facial features – not something I
would even attempt at 15mm, and a bit of a cheat as he has no hair. The first thing was to get his eyes right - very unfamiliar territory indeed. I
started with a couple of blobs of white with black pupil blobs in, and shaped
the eye outline with a dark flesh colour. This is the method used for all the Sons
of Death and to be honest it's given them a bit of a cartoony look. I have since changed my approach to define the eye outline using
Leather Brown, then applying flesh colours to the face around that. This works
a lot better, but as I said this article is about showing my learning practice.
I wasn’t sure what I was doing with this chap’s shield at all, so made it up as I went along, and I think it
shows (though it’s not bad enough to warrant starting again). Shading and highlighting the folds on his cloak also involved a lot of guesswork (and repainting) but worked out OK in the end.
Since finishing the
Sons of Death I have found that you end up with a better finish if certain things are planned beforehand. This is particularly the case with shield designs which I now set out basic designs for at the unit
level before I start painting them. I now sketch all the shields of a unit on
paper to get an idea of what I am trying to achieve before I start any of them and this definitely produces better results in the end.
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| Bald spearman |
With added confidence about painting facial details on bald warriors I moved on to
this spear-armed chap. His armour worked out a lot better than before and his shield design, whike simple, works well because of the contrasting colours used, though again, the overall impression would have been improved considerably if I had
planned the design in advance rather than done it on the hoof.
The spear used on this chap is the one provided with the figure. I have since decided that I don't like these and if I was doing this figure now would have replaced it with one made from brass rod. I'll come back to that in a future post about my Anglo-Danes.
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| Unarmoured swordsman |
The fourth of the Sons of Death to get my attention was this
chap with no armour, armed with a sword and shield held high. This gave me a real challenge at highlighting (hair and clothing) at this scale and while it
turned out OK in the end was a bit of a painful learning process. Shadow and highlight
colours need to be distinctly different to the main colour to achieve the right
effect, although they can be blended in in places to avoid lines of contrast. Needless to say a lot of repainting was required, but I think I was reasonably successful here. I was happy with the shields of the previous figures so tried to be a bit more ambitious with this one, which
I just about got away with but the knotwork design I cobbled together (another case for planning ahead) doesn’t stand out as
well as it might because there isn’t enough contrast between the base colour of
the shield and the background colour to the design – I make sure I get this
right with the shield designs I do now.
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| Helmeted swordsman |
Starting to get a bit more ambitious now, paying more attention to facial hear and cloth folds, and attempting a very simple border to his tunic. The sort of wicker-work design on his shield is a lot easier than it looks and is a great effect which I have used a lot since. It's a base colour with a simple grid painted on top in black, then with the criss-cross work added last, and touched up to correct errors afterwards. The snakes on the shield look a bit silly but increased my confidence in doing very fine detail a lot more.
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| Twin beweaponed axeman |
This chap, without a shield, and with a helmet that hid his facial features, posed a challenge. I wanted to attempt as much detail as some of the
other figures, so rather rashly decided to paint the hem of his cloak with an appropriate
design. In the event this was nothing like as hard as I had expected – just required a
steady hand and a good quality fine brush (I had a 10 0 Windsor & Newton
handy and this proved perfect for the job). With this sort of detail you don’t
get it perfect first time round. You do the best you can, then when it’s dry
you come back with the same colours in turn to correct minor errors, and the
whole thing improves immeasurably. I like this figure a lot.
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| Hairy spearman |
So after feeling very confident about achieving detailed work I went to town on the next figure, giving him a hem to his cloak, a fairly complicated shield design, and a lot of unnecessary detail on his tunic. This was my first attempt at painting plaid, ever, and may
well be my last, for the sake of my eyesight if nothing else. It definitely worked, but has convinced me never to attempt to paint 28mm Gauls.
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| And finally... |
Finally, and pleased that this was the last figure, Son of
Death no.8 got special treatment with a much more challenging hem on his tunic and a slightly overambitious shield (though I have got better at this sort of thing since). The Sons of Death are essentially Celtic so I
had to attempt some actual Celtic knotwork on one of them, didn't I. Anyway, the finished shield
of this chap ended up much better than I had expected while I was painting it
– repeatedly going back with detail in the background colour correcting mistakes and
giving the knotwork its three-dimensional appearance was essential, but did work. The main lesson here is to
have a plan, persist with it, and correct errors over and again until they
disappear, and the end result is definitely worth it.
