Renaissance Flags - 30mm Flats

Let's take a look at two standard bearers which I have recently completed.  They're for my formations of mercenary reiters and later landsknechts.   I entered into this phase of the project with some trepidation as painting flags can be tricky.  My period for these is ca. 1550-1580, give or take a decade.  That aligns with the French Wars of Religion and first half of the Dutch Revolt.  And there's always the option of imagi-nations, but getting too fantastical will decrease the appeal of the figures should there be a reason to sell them later.

It seems that while the Imperialist, Spanish, Dutch, and for France the Royalist & Huguenot flags are at least somewhat known, for mercenary Germans of this period, I have found almost nothing.  Thus my avenue of approach.  One source could be the Triumph of Maximilian which illustrates a number of banners.  And while the old Dover edition of b&w woodcuts is a work of art in its own right, the colored version is absolutely glorious to behold.

 

From this illustration I copied the goat rampant, hoping to at least avoid having him turn out like a crazed rabbit.  And the red banner was used previously for the 45mm landsknechts, I got good mileage out of this page. For the infantry, this German flag card from the 1930's served as the basis for my design.

Taking on the diamonds would have been madness, but the stripes ?  Okay, let's do it !  On my figure, the flag is very close to 40mm in height where it attaches to the pole.  Thus eight stripes of 5mm each would work out. The thought of how to pull this off credibly with a flag that's tapered from the "front" side of the figure was intimidating. In the event, things went well enough but it was one of the harder things I've attempted.

So how did they turn out ?

I'm happy with the result.  On the landsknecht flag, I didn't bother with attempting full-on connoisseur ripple effects as he's meant to serve as a fighting soldier with no aspirations of  being a modelling contest entry.  And one final "action" shot.  I didn't paint all these figures, bought some already painted on eBay.  I doubt I'll bother trying to rework them, whoever painted them did a nice job.

 

In parting, I wonder about these giant banners. Perhaps the size is exaggerated for effect, but from period illustrations they do appear to be quite large.  Even though probably made of light weight silk, the effort of holding all that mass aloft one-handed with a metal spike atop, it must have taken a strong man, particularly on a windy day.  And how did they keep it from getting tangled amidst the forest of pikes ?   Perhaps a Renaissance warfare expert can weigh in.

Semi-Flat Landsknechts - 40mm

Finished painting the first group of  Italian Wars era landsknechts.  The castings are Russian, made by the Three Heroes company.  I bought three sets of 8 each from Soldatikov.net.  One "Swiss" one "Mercenary" with the third being Spaniards.  Prices were quite fair,  ~ 100 rubles a figure works out to $1.50 US, not bad at all for a hefty hunk of metal.  Shipping charges were also reasonable and proprietor Maxim Latsin, very fluent in English, was a pleasure to deal with.  There are also "extra" sets of 4 figures each for these groups, so 36 in all, but none of the latter were in stock.

So let's take a closer look.  Some of the the castings are a little on the rough side, you might even call them crude.

Nominally 40mm scale, they're a bit larger than true 40mm figures.  And you'll notice some size difference in the two figures below, but within the realm of normal human variation I'd say.

Stylistically they match up pretty well with Meisterzinn.  Unfortunately,  I have no direct comparison shots for you.  My sister-in-law was asking for some painted figures and I gave her my painted Meisterzinns. I feel rather like the guy in the insurance commercial who throws his wallet into New York harbor to emphasize a point about wasting money and then says to himself, "Wish I hadn't done that".  But the mold image below at least gives an idea.

How flat are they ?  Pretty darned flat.

"Sire, the enemy advance and we can't hit them !"

And a few more shots of the completed figures.  I painted a mixture of the Swiss and mercenary groups, as unless you take into account the rather high ratio of halbardiers, there's nothing particularly Swiss about any of these. 

Too bad there's no cavalry.  Three Heroes also produced some 30 Years War cavalry in a similar style, so perhaps something could be done there, although the visual gap of 100 years in military evolution would be a little jarring.  And I'm not entirely sure the figures are currently in production although it would be easy enough to find out.

To sum up, I'm pretty pleased with them.  I think anyone wanting to game the early 1500's in 40mm who has been relying primarily on casting and modifying Meisterzinn figures would find these a useful option to pad the ranks of infantry with more variety.

Back in the Saddle Redux

Wow, it's been nearly a year since the previous post.  A lot has happened. I retired at the end of July.  In August, we moved to a city out past Sacramento where the rent is cheaper and most of the kids & grandchildren live closer.  Nice town too, with enough hills to make the road cycling more interesting.  Haven't found much for the mountain bike yet, but sooner or later I hope to discover some good trails.

Work ?  Except for the people, don't miss it a bit !  Although I do have recurring and mildly disturbing dreams in which I'm still working the same type of job.  Hopefully, like dreaming of cigarettes after one has kicked the habit, they will eventually subside.

And after a long hiatus, I have resumed painting.  Finally all the paints and supplies are out of storage.  I've set up a nice workspace in the garage which fortunately has a window which lets in a good amount of natural light.  Getting somewhat cold out there now but still tolerable.


So what do we have here ?  This is a 40mm Renaissance knight ca. 1500 from Heinrichsen Zinnfiguren.  Nice old flat, the original set of landsknechts were issued in 1885.  He is casting # 46 in the series and about the only suitable mounted figure in the set. I bought the casting as a one off from Jim Horan a few years back and just got around to painting him.  I understand from Dr. Grobe of Heinrichsen that the mold is damaged, so for better or worse my paint job will have to suffice.  Here are a couple more close-ups.

What next ?   I recently stumbled across some interesting 40-45mm semi-flats (with emphasis on the flat) made in Russia.  All told they are 32 different for the Italian Wars.  They're somewhat crude, but still appealing and match well for size with Meisterzinn.  I got 24 and will post in groups of 8.  But here's a taste.

Later Renaissance - 30mm Flats

Got around to painting some examples of the Wohlmann figures which I bought from Alexander Wilken a while back.  Here are the two main cavalry poses. Actually there was another but he did not seem to survive getting lost in the mail.  Alexander was went to a lot of trouble to replace the lost shipment so I didn't pester him about it.

And the three types of Landsknecht pikemen.  I won't quite say that I'm intimidated by painting landsknechts, but perhaps due to some lack of imagination, I tend towards feeling somewhat overwhelmed by the wild freedom of choice in the color schemes.  So it's a matter of just painting something, anything on the figures and if you paint a few duds, well there's always relegation to the inside of the formation for them. ;-)   

And a group shot, same as above without the camera's "watercolor" filter.

Next up, working on the 40mm general from the Heinrichsen Rossbach set. He's coming along pretty nicely, I think.

Status Report

Wow.  I've seriously neglected the blog.  Time has slipped by and I'm a bit taken aback to realized that it's been nearly two months since I've posted anything.  It's been a combination of things really.  My wife's medical situation and my job search have been distractions, and certainly essential ones considering the priorities. However, it would be grossly overstating the case to offer those as excuses.

The truth is, I'm unemployed and have had ample time. I just flat out hit the wall, ran out of motivation to continue painting - or at least the ethusiasm to work on whatever things I had in the pipeline.  So I took a break, dabbled in building a couple of plastic models, played computer wargames, spent more riding the bikes, etc.

This is about the last thing I painted before this fallow period, a few Conquistadors.  The foot are old figures from Kieler and Loy, the rider from Scholtz.

What now ?  Taking a somewhat different tack, I have in mind a new project which has really rekindled my enthusiasm.  And I promise not to wait another two months to reveal the details. 

More Flats

Glorious Empires - 54mm

Something of a mixed bag in this post, finishing up odds and ends in the painting queue. First, Fechner 30mm Renaissance cavalry.  Most of them have shown up in one post or another, but now combined.  Good engravings but not great ones.  To my eyes the lancer is the weakest of the bunch with the strange helmet and the horse's smallish hindquarters.  Nicely animated though.

The TYW musketeer is from Glorious Empires. I liked the look of these and bought of few samples from The Little Tin Soldier. These are 54mm, designs originally 30mm and scaled up.  I have no real aspirations of switching to flats in this larger scale but was curious to see if I could pull off a passable paint job, as the shading comes in for closer scrutiny than what you can get away with in 30mm.  He came out well enough I think and I somewhat regret choosing the faceless guy here for the test paint as the personality is definitely lacking.

Upcoming posts, I've finished a Peipp 45mm general which has been primer coated and ready to go for many months. Just waiting to apply the varnish.  The real exciting thing for me is a set of classic old Heinrichsen Thirty Years War set in 40mm.  These designs date to 1883 !  They arrived from Nürnberg a few days ago and I've started painting some. I really look forward to sharing these with you, masterful designs for the most part with a number of mounted generals and leaders of the TYW.

Hinsch Arquebusiers - 30mm Flats

Factory Painted

Sorry I've been somewhat dilatory with the posts of late.  Here's a smallish set of latter 16th Century arquebusiers I bought on eBay.  Ten gunners come in the three poses shown plus the group contained one NCO figure.  I'm not certain, but I think they belong to to Keiler's  Bruno Hinsch: Serie 29 - Religionskriege.  Flats experts, please advise if I've got that wrong.

I stripped the factory paint to see what the castings looked like underneath. Not bad at all really, rather small for 30mm and very thin castings, bordering on toylike in style but appealing in their own way. Repainted with acrylics.

Period Engravings: Dutch Revolt

Taking a rather different tack here, this thread contains no painting updates. I am still painting, of course. No day feels complete without doing some. However, I've embarked upon a new tack with the flats, testing out artist's acyrilic paints, Chroma Atelier Interactive. Thanks go to Mike Siggins for the tip on these.  More to follow, but suffice it to say now that the normal fast rate of drying can be retarded by means of adding more water or the drying slowed even further by various mediums.  They do indeed blend better but the drawback is a recommended cure time of 7 days before varnishing.  Meaning I have figures done but still in the drying queue.

To the images.  I've stumbled upon a source of inspiration for the Renaissance era, namely the Frederik Muller Historieplaten digital collection from the Dutch Rijksmuseum.

http://www.geheugenvannederland.nl/?/nl/collecties/frederik_muller_historieplaten

Here we have a collection of some 4966 historical engravings, mainly illustrating scenes from the Dutch Revolt/80 Years War. To a lesser degree, the War of the Spanish Succession also gets some coverage.  The images are of a generally high quality, perhaps not as uniformly excellent as Merian's Theatrum Europeaum splendid images of the 30 Years War, but quite a few of these Dutch illustrations are fine examples of the engraver's art.  Just a few examples:

Last but not least, the WSS:

I do enjoy printing out a batch, pouring a glass of port and retiring to the man cave, there to transport myself to bygone centuries.

Spanish Tercio - 30mm Flats

"Watercolor" camera setting

Well, at least a portion of it.  I ran out of men with angled pikes for the 2nd rank but the idea is eventually to at least double this formation.   Most of the flats are from Alexander Wilken's Landsknechte series, with a few Scholtz Conquistadors and misc. pikemen added to the mix. Painted with acrylics, as usual.

At the moment, I'm painting more flats, a few Hinsch arquebusiers suitable for the Wars of Religion / 80 Years War.  I've also got a few 54mm Thirty Years War infantry flats, trying to work up the courage to paint flats that size. The order of later landsknechts & reiters has gone missing, I'm afraid.  Either between the Deutsche Post and USPS somebody fumbled the handoff, or worse - the package was stolen from my mailbox. Hoping it was the former as there's a chance they'll eventually turn up.

Meisterzinn - 40mm Home Casts

Readers of this blog will well recognize these familiar Nurnberger Meisterzinn figures.  I have most of the molds for the Renaissance range, although my collection is lacking a few: the sword-wielding knight,  the foot cavalier (sword or pistol), the wagon set and the nice artillery pieces. But this is most of them.  Yes, they're a pain to cast but the figures do have an appealing toy soldier look.  I also have the color pamphlet Zinnfiguren aus Meisterzinn which shows painted examples of all the castings.

Armored men. I rather wish the tournament knight had come with a detachable shield, making him more useful as an early 16th century man-at-arms, but still it's a good figure.

Classic landsknechte although the standard-bearer is more of a hybrid figure to my eyes.  According to Ross MacFarlane the trumpeter can be converted to a pikeman and I can see where that would be an excellent way to get more mileage out of this mold. 

The halbardier is more of a "tweener" who can bridge the gap between the early 16th Century and later, but the musketeer and mounted figure look like 30 Years War, hence the Matthaus Merian backdrop.  The musketeer comes with mold cavities for two heads but he's somewhat oversized relative to the others.  The rider cuts a dashing figure.  Although so far as I know of the 30 Years War, figures bearing lances are usually depicted in 3/4 armor, he appears to have some conversion possibilites. He could be easily become a standard-bearer,  or replace the lance with a musket and you could have a nice dragoon.

Lastly, although it has nothing to do with Meisterzinn, here's a quick shot of what's in the painting queue.

Back in the Saddle

Picked up a new camera.  Haha, at Costco - one of my least favorite places to spend an hour or so.  I stifled the impulse to abandon my wife with the cart amidst the warehouse-roaming hordes in favor of watching the 49ers game in the TV section. The camera is a Sony Cybershot DSC-WX150.  Very strange that the insurance company allowed nearly triple the coverage (and not much at that) for replacing the old obsolete Sony than they did for the Nikon.  There's no Macro function which concerned me somewhat, but all the shots here were taken with it, so I think we can surmise that it's at least competent with the closeups.  The blame for any bad shots can be attributed to my indifferent photography skills.

Here's a couple WIP shots of the custom 40mm semi-rounds, designs from the talented hand of amateur scupltor John Bertolini.  John has kindly given me permission to cast my own.  I like these for the French on account of the full coats without turnbacks. I did a few things such as filing off the moustaches and adding the bayonet scabbard, but essentially they're faithful to the original design.  The figures are good match in scale and "semi-roundness" for the Prince August Karoliners and the NCO carries a Prince August pole arm.

Here's a nice feature of the camera, creating photos using a Picture Effect mode.  The Renaissance flats in this post were shots taken in Watercolor mode.  The effect is kind of cool, like artist's illustrations from a book.  It  might make for an interesting excercise experimenting with painting them that way from the get-go.