28mm Venetian army

Here is a picture of the beginnings of my Venetian force, which is going to be this years project for my personal collection. All the figures above are from perry miniatures European armies range. A mix of plastic and metals miniatures, With the odd metal Italian head on a plastic body. I had great fun painting these and they make a refreshing change from all the black powder era goodness I have been painting lately. The flags are from Petes flags , are printed on cotton and I can highly recommend them. I have around 60 more troops all prepped up and waiting in the line. 

I'm also eagerly awaiting the release of the perry miniatures light cavalry box set, which i will definitely be picking up at Salute along with a few Stradiots.

picture taken from perry miniatures website

hopefuly my collection will resemble these fantastic pictures at some point.

 Great inspiration if you are into your medievals!

Perry Miniatures Foot Knights

I painted these up at the weekend. My first base for my late 15th century Venetian army.  

 All the figures are from the latest Perry miniatures plastic box set, with a couple of slight conversions and some extra bits taken out of the previous medieval boxes.

I have to say these were a real joy to paint and a welcome break from all the Napoleonic miniatures I have been painting lately. The men at arms go together real easy with lots of variety and options. One point I need to remember on the next batch, is to make sure I have cleaned up the mould lines properly. There are very few and the casting is excellent, but due to me being impatient and rushing I missed some obvious ones that didn't stand out until I had started the highlights on the armour.
 I have varied the metal quite a bit from dark unpolished to bright silver to add variety and show the more successful condottiero. Although i'm not sure you can tell in the photo.

 I have also tried to show a lot of movement on the base, something basing for Impetus allows you to do. The base is 120mm by 60mm. With the charge being lead by the chap without a helmet. Whilst the knight wearing the tall plumed helmet points out a worthy adversary in the enemy ranks and calls out a (somewhat muffled) challenge.

chap on the right has blued armour. 

 I have painted 14 altogether so far, as that was what I was planning would look right and give the base some weight. In the end I decided to stick with the 11 you can see in the photo, which means I now have 3 finished for the next base!

 But first I have hundreds of LotR dwarves to varnish and some GB Mongols to finish off.

I will post more on my thoughts of my new collection over the weekend. Just need to decide whether to do it in its own blog or keep altogether here...