Category: Dark Age

With Telford behind me I’m keen to establish some routine back into my modelling world.  So far it’s proven harder than I imagined, life as always simply gets in the way.  I’ll get there but it’s just taking a little longer than I’d hoped.  It helped that I had a partially started a banner man which only required a modest amount for completion which was just as well given the time I had available.

I remain keen to at least finish all the foot figures I have still to do from the Footsore Baron’s War range before the end of the year.  Unfortunately there is no way I will get all the mounted Knights done which I have to do.  Fortunately my deadlines are self imposed so whatever the prevailing circumstances I don’t intend to beat myself up about it.  Besides I have a multitude of projects swimming around on my head which I now want to get started on.

Next week I hope to make a start on a recent model I bought while still trying to chip away at the Baron’s War foot figures.  Until then I will leave you with some images of this little chap, another addition to my little army.

TIM

Another day another Knight!  My penultimate Footsore Baron’s War knight in the set of figures with two handed weapons.  They will bring out more in due course I’m sure but for now I’m nearly there with this part of the range.

This is another figure with made up heraldry, well as far as I know it is and with it a made up name taken from my family tree.  Whilst the paint work might look fiddly, and to some extent it is given the 28mm scale of the figure, the reality is I’ve gotten reasonably used to painting what amounts to little more than straight lines.  As for the colour scheme I thought I’d have another go with a blue and yellow combo as I really think they go well together.

Images of Sir William below.

TIM

Time this week has been at a premium.  As you read this I am on my way to Oxford with She Who Must Be Obeyed taking She Also Thinks She Should Be Obeyed to the start of her new life at University.  As expected anxiety levels for us all have gone through the roof in the lead up to this dramatic change in our lives and as such modelling has had to very much take a back seat.  I did however mange to just about get something together for this post and get another figure underway which hopefully I’ll get finished in time for next Wednesday.  Time will tell of course.

What I managed to get done was another foot knight and one which I kept simple on every front.  No deliberation on colour scheme, plain white was good enough.  No fancy name given to the figure and therefore no proper title for this post either, although I did indulge in a bit of basic freehand for the shield.  Not entirely sure where the idea of a castle turret came from but it works of a fashion and is different to anything else I have done. 

Next on the agenda is my dad’s 95th birthday next week which will further restrict what I can get done but hopefully, fingers crossed, things might settle down a little after that.  Then I really need to take stock of where I am and where I’m heading as right now I haven’t got a clue!

Images of the knight with no name below. 

TIM

When I first set out on my Footsore Baron’s War army project I worked out the ratio of foot figures to mounted figures with the intention of working to it so that all the figures would be completed roughly at the same time.  Doing a quick count up the other day it was clear that I had advanced far more with the foot figures than I had with the mounted knights.

There are many reasons, excuses if you prefer, as to why this has happened but time has been by far the biggest.  On occasions time has been limited and I have preferred to pick up and paint to completion a foot figure in preferance to starting a mounted figure which will require work over several days.  That said I needed to address the balance as and when and with a bit more time available just recently I have tried to focus on the mounted knights.

I rather like the yellow and blue colour combination and elected to use it once again.  I’ve yet to discover a real knight that used this combination with a white cross, not that I have researched that hard but the colour combination and the blazon, in this case the cross, do appear from what I can determine to be authentic heraldry.  In need of a name I once again delved into my family tree (so glad I thought to do this) and elected to go with my maternal Great Great Grandfather Frederick Joselyne.

The paint job on this one was pretty straightforward as were the freehand crosses as I’ve had a lot of practice on these and done quite a few now.  The only real challange was getting all the crosses to be roughly the same size.

Images of Sir Fred below.

TIM

Back in June (where did the summer go?) I painted up this Footsore Baron’s War figure with a bit of freehand painting on the shield to depict a knight by the name of Sir John De Belloows.  At the time I did it I thought I’d quite like to have another bash at the heraldry at some point and over the last week I finally got around to doing so.

I decided this time that I would have a go at applying the heraldry to a mounted knight.  I also chose to go with a different colour scheme, yellow instead of white, and a slightly different design.  As you can see there isn’t much to choose between them other than the head really.  Having done three paint jobs of the Eagle(?) – two at the back of the horse and one on the shield – I couldn’t be asked to do two at the front of the horse so I went for crosses instead.  Lazy I know.

I really have no idea if there is a real knight with anything close to this heraldry, if there is then it is purely coincidence on my part.  Accordingly the knight was in need of a name so once again I returned to my family tree for inspiration and thus settled on the name of my great grandfather, James Kimber.

Images of Sir James  below.

TIM

Another week, another Footsore Baron’s War knight and another opportunity for some freehand painting.  This weeks offering is Richard The Lionheart, King of England.  The figure comes as a twin pack, the other figure being mounted and in a slightly different pose with his helmet on.  I think I might start on the mounted version sooner rather than later but look at doing the freehand heraldry a bit different. 

For some reason I couldn’t get the shield to photograph as well as I’d like.  Not enough of a photographer to understand why but the end result is reflective light so the three lions do not show up as well as they look in the flesh.  My best guess is that it is down to the metallic paint.  Gold was appropriate to use but maybe a yellow would have photographed better?  It is what it is.

Images below.

TIM

 

Mounted knights are a bit like buses, you wait ages for one and then along comes another one soon after.  This mounted knight is another with made up heraldry and name.

This particular one takes its name from my dad, Aubrey Green.  Unfortunatley my dad who’s 94 years of age, 95 in October, went into hospital last week having had a heart attack.  He was sent home earlier this week but yesterday was readmitted as he had had further chest pains.  He hasn’t seen this knight yet but I’ll let him see it when he’s fit and well.  Verde if you weren’t aware is the Spanish word for green.  There is no family connection to Spain that I am aware of other than holidays which have been spent there.

The colours of green and white pretty much chose themselves and the “Howling Wolf” heraldry was based on a YouTube video I found searching for an easy to draw wolf.  Credit here must go to “Art Ala Carte” for her simple drawing method which I was able to replicate reasonably well at the first time of asking.

Images below.

TIM

I thought I’d try something new this week in respect of heraldry and decide to have a go at painting a stags head on one of my Footsore Baron’s War knights shields.  I wasn’t sure how authentic it would be in an historical sense but I figured it might look quite cool.  The thing is I’m not a natural artist, I can’t just do something like a stags head without the need for some very easy reference material to copy from.

My default position is to revert to YouTube and see what I can find.  A search under “easy animal drawings” threw up several ideas aimed at five year olds and I settled on a combination of two very short but very good video’s.  The first video showed how to draw the head of a Doe, a deer, a female deer (there’s a song in there somewhere) and the second gave me the idea for the antlers.  Essentially all I had to do was draw a basic triangle and flesh things out from there.  Simples!  And as it turned out it did prove pretty simple much to my surprise and on top of that I was pleased with the end result too.

As this was another made up knight I needed to give the little chap a name.  My uncles christian name is Edgar and a good friend of mine has the surname Edgar and as I felt it had a certain medieval feel to it I settled on that with the Grun being a germanic play on Green.

Black over white is always a good combination in my book for easier touching up so I went with that colour combination and added a couple of white lines at the bottom of his surcoat to break things up a bit.

lmages of Sir Edgar De Grun below.

TIM

 

After allowing myself to get side tracked by painting “Hubert de Burgh” last week I was determined that this week would see another 28mm mounted Baron’s War knight completed.  This little chap is a made up knight, which is to say the heraldry is not one I have come across but one I have made up.   If it does exist out there then it is purely a coincidence as far as I am concerned. 

Although it was made up it was inspired by other images I have seen.  The light blue and yellow colour combination I have seen used before and rather like it and the cross hatching, albeit in a different way, I have also seen used a good many times.  From a painting perspective it represented a nice challenge and overall I’m pleased with it even though some of the squares aren’t quite as even as I would like but that’s something I can work on when I next undertake a square pattern. 

As already mentioned this is a made up knight and therefore in need of a made up name.  On a previous figure I referred to my family tree for inspiration and decided I would do this once again.  In this instance I elected to go with my maternal great grandfather’s name, James Newton Langley.

Images of Sir James below.

TIM

 

 

The good news for me this week is I’ve started work on my next mounted knight.  The Bad news is I digressed and decided to paint this guy instead!

What we have here is “Hubert de Burgh”, a real life knight whose heraldry is shown in the below downloaded Google image.  As you can see it represents a painting challenge and it is that which led me to setting aside my mounted knight.

 

The opening paragraph on Wikipedia for this knight reads:

“Hubert de Burgh, 1st Earl of Kent (c. 1170 – before 5 May 1243) was an English nobleman who served as Chief Justiciar of England and Ireland during the reigns of King John and of his infant son and successor King Henry III and, as a consequence, was one of the most influential and powerful men in English politics”.

There is however much more written about this chap and if you would like to read more then follow the link below.  I was particularly interested to learn that he was once the custodian of Launceston castle in Cornwall which is only a few miles from me and is where my parents both live.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubert_de_Burgh,_1st_Earl_of_Kent

All in all an interesting guy and one which deserved the best I could offer in terms of a paint job.  I’m not going to pretend the diamond pattern was easy to do on a 28mm figure, it wasn’t.  I also used a little poetic license on the shield too.  It was simply far to small for me to even attempt to replicate the exact design. Maybe next time I’ll give it ago if I ever paint him again.

Images of “Hubert” below.

TIM