From AledC: An End and a Beginning (40 points)

"All good things must come to an end"

I have really enjoyed participating in this year's Painting Challenge, for what I hope to be the first of many times. I'll admit to being VERY slack and not finding myself the time to respond to the wonderful comments made by everyone on my posts, as well as not making many comments of my own on all the other posts. Please be aware though that I did at least read them and the words of encouragement were a great help in keeping me motivated.

Prior to signing up at the last moment, after considerable insistence from friends, I would not have dreamed of painting as much as I did which is why my goal was fairly low. What joining this challenge has done is get me painting after a good 5+ year slump wherein I couldn't have painted more than a dozen or two models. For that, I will be forever grateful as it doesn't seem as though I'll be putting down the brush again anytime soon!

Now on to my final submission..... not much.

I wanted to get a bit more done, and seeing everyone's final pushes is really inspiring, but work reared its festering head and bills need a-paying.

However the silver lining is that these are a new beginning, something we can all appreciate when it comes to our model collections, both in that it is a new force for Sharpe Practice, but also a new period for me! I haven't ever done anything for the American Civil war before but the love Phill K has for it gave pause to earlier dismissals. I still don't think I'll do a force for any 'mass battle' stuff in the war but who knows.

These eight guys I actually started back before the 'West' theme round as I thought I would do them for that, but minds change and distraction appear. It feels good to finally get them off the paint table. I painted them super simple without going in for the 'ragged rebel' look as I found enough articles telling me it wasn't entirely true and that was good enough for me to be more uniform.

The models themselves are from the Perry Brothers confederate infantry plastic box set. Whilst the bits are all nicely detailed and you get a large variety to customise with, I found that too often would bits not fit where you want them because of satchels or ammo boxes on the hip that just get in the way. Solid kit apart from that frustration. (maybe it was just me unless others have had this problem)

Marching off and away!

8 x 28mm = 40 points

That'll take me over 750 which will be a good milestone to aim for next time.

So that's that, and this marks the end of my last post for the Challenge.

I hope very much to join you all next time, it's been a blast!

May your brushes never wilt and your paint pots never dry.

And despite that, may your lead piles grow ever larger!

Cheers,

Aled.


Tamsin: We've been very glad to have you with us Aled and if we've got you out of a painting slump then that's even better. You've had some great entries and we certainly hope to see you again for the next one.

These eight Rebs will net you another 40 points.

From Aled: The Curtgeld (25 points)

Here is my model for the Curtgeld, to be combined with the others from our group. Basing not done as Alan has offered to do that so that they all are consistent.

He seems to have taken his jacket off, so not as colourful as the average Landsneckt.

I really liked painting this model, so much going on. At some point whilst painting him I got it in my head that he might be somebody's dogsbody or offside man because he doesn't have any picture, or chest of gold, or woman for himself. Instead, he is stuck carrying the stolen food, important to do but without many thanks. It doesn't help he seems a bit sad.

"Gee Billy, why does your mum let you have a Roast Chook AND and Barrel of beer?"

But because of this, I kept imagining him saying silly things in the manner of Baldrick from the Blackadder series, following the others in the looting party on the inevitable "cunning plans".

A nice chunk of meat on this side.

I am quite pleased with the way he came out and I hope you like him, Curt.

Attempted Peacock Feathers, he has to have looted something of value.

Cheers,
Aled.

From Paul: An excellent addition to our growing party of looters Aled!  He does indeed look a little like King Arthur's batman Patsy, just not banging two halves of a coconut together...

25 points for you Sir!

From AledC: Arab Archers (120 points)

Hey everyone, a quick post before the deadline.

I have the archer unit for my Arab army all done, painted in a single 24 man batch. They were finished being painted last week but needed the bases done because work got in the way.

Similarly, there was going to be the 12 spearmen for my Minas Tirith Dragon Rampant army but I went to work instead of finishing the bases. I'll hopefully have those done for next week.

I doubt there will be anything else though as I'll be busy packing and moving, so don't expect much from me in the next little while.

24 archers in 28mm should bring me over my goal, time to look at greater horizons....


Cheers,
Aled.

Alan and Paul: Nice work Aled - you just managed to squeeze this entry in in time. Great looking unit, and I hope you can give us a group photo next time so we can see how the whole Arab army is progressing.

From Aled C: More Arabs and some slow armour (120 points)

For my Third submission post (including the Armour bonus round) I have for presentation the second batch of Arab Spearmen for my Deus Vult army and some Minas Tirith Swordmen that I had planned to get done for the Armour Challenge but just didn't get to them in time.

As I said in the Armour Challenge post I forgot to go through my painting method for the Arab spearmen and promised to correct that in this post. As I think I said before I am a big fan of using washes to speed my slow painting of models. To that end, I have been using the Army Painter 'Quick-shade' dip on these Arabs to give that 'dirty' look and bring out the details of the Gripping Beast figures.

I have started these by priming them with the Army Painter 'Skeleton Bone' colour, which gives that nice cloth colour. I then go through them with various browns(leather, fur and monster from the army painter range) as well as a black and red (AP again, matt and dragon respectively) picking out the odd pant cuff and shoes etc. as well as doing their belts with the leather brown. I also did some of their shields with these colours. Next, I make a 50/50 mix of leather brown (AP) and Yellow Ochre (Vallejo) which give a nice pale wood colour to use on the spear shafts and the backs of the shields. I then paint the metal of shield boss and their spear tips, as well as any helmets that poke out from their headgear (Plate Mail, AP). The flesh is one of the last steps I do, not for any particular reason but probably so I can be a bit messier in my painting up until this point. For this, I use Tanned Flesh (AP again). The next step in my process is painting the daggers at their belts, done in gold and silver (Old Gold by Vallejo and Shining Silver from GW) in as much variety as the models allow. I finish them by painting on the patterns for the shields. Whilst I admit to not going to deep in my research of Early Crusade period shield design for the Muslim armies, I did look through some ospreys to get a general gist of what I should and what I could do know my freehand isn't great. Stripes are always good and easy to do but there are only so many ways they can be done, that goes for the dots too! (I know Stephen Sheridan has been saying much the same thing about crosses on his shields). I have been doing this unit with a 'Blue Theme' to their shields and plan to have the other units in other colours to differentiate them, probably yellow and green depending on how they look.

I then give the cloth a going over with the Skeleton Bone again (this time with a brush :P) to fix any mess ups and make it a bit brighter. Finally, I give them a 'dip' (also using a brush) with the 'Quickshade - Strong' to bring out the details and give them a general unwashed look.

A coating with a matt varnish and they are good for basing. I stick them down with a good deal of liquid nails to give a bit of texture to the base and help mask the foot tabs. Sand stuck down with PVA, gets painted Fur Brown for a nice reddy brown, inked with GW's Agrax Earthshade, and dry brushed a 50/50 of Fur Brown and the Yellow Ochre which makes it a good bright colour. Then a few patches of flock to make it pretty.

That seems really long winded as I look back over it. :/

Sorry....

Alongside batch one

That done I also painted up a unit of Minas Tirith Swordsmen to go alongside my Archer for Dragon Rampant. I had hoped to get them done for armour but time got away from me. They are painted up in much the same manner ar the archers. The biggest difference being the shields which were done by drybrushing Plate Mail over the Black on the face of the shield, then drybrushed black again (avoiding the tree) to dull it down, and after the Nuln Oil a final drybrush again of the Plate Mail.

So, 24 more figures done, plenty more to go!

Cheers,

Aled.

Alan and Paul: Having seen these figures today up close (while Aled was crushing me in two different wargames), I can confirm that they look even better 'in the flesh'. The shields of the Minas Tirith swordsmen look especially good, the subtle contrast between the black and the silver looking very realistic. Thanks for sharing how you went about painting your Arabs - this is going to be a great looking army.

From AledC: Inshallah - Crusader Muslims for Deus Vult (60 Points)

Hey everyone, here goes my first steps into the Challenge. Thanks everyone for having me!

My main aim for the challenge is to get my Crusades period Muslim army up and going for Deus Vult. So, for my first submission, I present 12 Spearmen (Gripping Beast Plastics). I'll have 96 (hopefully) by the end, as well as 24 Archers and somewhere between 24 and 48 Cavalry or various sorts. I like the way this first batch turned out, I was getting nervous just before we started because I hadn't done any test models.

On top of that, there is a nice selection of casualty figures that I have to paint up and some Commanders. That has me set for my goal points (and some) but, I also plan on painting up the beginnings of a Men of Minas Tirith force for Dragon Rampant and a few other bits and bobs I have about the place.

Or at least, that's what I hope I can get around to painting. First 60 points down, more to go!

Once again Thanks for having me I hope I can post regularly. 

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Another newcomer, excellent! Welcome to the Painting Challenge Aled!

These spearmen look very nice. I like the counterpoint of the coloured headgear and shields against the drab clothing. I also admire your grouped basing - it gives a nice diorama feel to the unit.

I look forward to seeing more of this army emerge from your paint desk Aled!