Hey all,

welcome to the first part of my project diary in which I show an actual miniature. If you're wondering what this is, please check the prologue, in which I explain the idea and goals of the diary. At the bottom of that post, you will find a link to all parts of this series (constantly updated as soon as new parts are published).

Today, I want to highlight two figures that I have shown on the blog before - and which I painted long before thinking about that whole Bornhöved-themed project series. I will not go into much detail - historical or related to the miniature, as I have shown them before. But I thought they should be shown again to make sure that the project diary is "complete".

Knight of the City of Lübeck

The first one is a knight bearing the arms of the City of Lübeck. I painted that one a long while back some time in 2020... While the City of Lübeck mostly deployed citizen troops, I read somewhere that some cities also "hired" noblemen to fight on their side. I have no idea whether those knights would actually have worn the colors of the cities, but I liked the idea and wanted to practice my freehand skills a bit, so I decided to give this knight a livery sporting the Lübeck coat of arms. If you want to read more on this mini, and see some more pics, please follow this link.

Otto I, the Child

The second mini is a portrait of one of the protagonists of the Battle of Bornhöved, Otto I, nicknamed 'the Child', the Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg. He was a nephew of King Valdemar II's and fought on the Danish side during the 1227 battle. You can actually see Otto's relationship to the Danish crown from his standard: blue lions on yellow ground with the red hearts were Valdemar's royal coat of arms. During the battle, Otto was captured and had to spend one and a half years in captivity of Heinrich, Count of Schwerin, before he was released in January 1229 for a hefty ransom. Again, please follow the link if you want to learn a bit more on Otto and the mini project.

Both projects are also on Putty & Paint if you feel like leaving a vote: Lübeck Knight and Otto the Child.

Thanks for your interest. Talk soon!

D.

Hey all,

welcome to this first article of my project diary. If you're wondering what this is, please check the prologue, in which I explain the idea and goals of the diary. At the bottom of that post, you will find a link to all parts of this series (constantly updated as soon as new parts are published).

In this post, I will kick off the actual project diary, trying to accomplish two goals:

1. I'll present a concise historical primer on the battle and its context.
2. I will outline on how I envision the miniature project to unfold.

1. Historical Primer

The Battle of Bornhöved in 1227 was a highly consequential battle that took place near the town of Bornhöved, situated in what is now Schleswig-Holstein in northern Germany. In this historical primer, I will briefly outline the events leading up the battle, summarize what we know about how the battle itself, and sketch out the implications of that encounter. There are not too many primary sources available, and since I am not a trained historian (and have a dayjob...), I will rely exclusively on secondary accounts and summaries that I could find.

Map of the Danish Kingdom under King Valdemar II Source: Wikimedia

1.1 Prelude

In the mid-12th century, the Jutland peninsula was partitioned along the Eider river between the Kingdom of Denmark to the North and the Duchy of Saxony - as part as the German Holy Roman Empire (HRE) - to the South. When Heinrich (Henry) "the Lion", Duke of Saxony, was deposed by the German Emperor Friedrich I "Barbarossa" in 1180, Adolf III, Count of Schauenburg, took control over the Holstein region. However, Adolf's position was weak and, in 1201/2, the Danish Duke, and later King, Valdemar II conquered the whole area between the Eider and Elbe rivers, and gave it as a fiefdom to his nephew, Count Albrecht II of Orlamünde, who continued to rule Holstein for the next two decades.

In May 1223, Count Heinrich (Henry) "The Black" I of Schwerin, kidnapped King Valdemar and his eldest son, Prince Valdemar, during a hunting trip. For their release, Heinrich demanded Denmark to give up the conquered lands and pledge loyalty to the Holy Roman Emperor. Count Albrecht of Orlamünde, who acted as regent in the Danish king's absence, rejected these terms and declared war on Heinrich. The war concluded in a defeat for the Danish forces in the Battle of Mölln in 1225. Consequently, to secure his release, King Valdemar had to acknowledge the loss of his German territories, pay an astronomical ransom, and promise not to seek retribution against Count Heinrich. Shortly after Valdemar's release, however, Pope Honorius III exempted the king from his coerced pledge, and Valdemar wasted no time in preparing to reclaim what he believed were rightfully his lands and to enact revenge against Count Heinrich. Supported by the troops of Valdemar's nephew, Otto I, Duke of Braunschweig-Lüneburg, called "the Child", in 1226 a Danish army marched south.

Valdemar II Source: historiskerejser.dk

After conquering the "free peasants" of Dithmarschen and pressing them into military service, Valdemar turned his attention to Holstein and Schwerin. To counter that threat, Count Adolf IV, who had inherited Holstein from his father in 1225, and Heinrich built an alliance with powerful Northern German nobles, including Duke Albert of Saxony, who pledged his support in exchange for recognition as their liege lord. Additional reinforcements came from the princes of Mecklenburg, Archbishop Gerhard II of Bremen, the cities of Hamburg and Lübeck as well as the smaller hosts of a number of Low German nobles. According to some sources, HR Emperor Friedrich II might also have sent a small contingent to assist in the confrontation with the Danes - even though this is rather unlikely. In any case, the various German factions assembled in and around Lübeck, preparing to face the Danish army.

At first, both sides were cautious, hesitant to engage in a decisive battle. For several months, the conflict primarily saw skirmishes and minor battles between different segments of the armies - until, in the summer of 1227, they finlly met for a large battle on the plains of Bornhöved.

Count Adolf IV at the Battle of Bornhöved Source: Wikimedia

1.2 The Battle

The battle took place on July 22, 1227, a day marked by the feast of St. Mary Magdalene. We know relatively little for certain on how the battle was fought, how large the armies were, and what exactly happened on that day. Pretty much the only knowledge that is certain is that the battle took place on that day - and that the Danish lost, with Duke Otto being captured. A 15th-century, Lübeck-based chronicler, Hermann Korner († 1438), provides the most elaborate, colorful - and in many parts probably ficticious - account of the battle. However, as it delivers so much nice detail - which of course, is particularly relevant for my miniature rendition of the battle - I will include his descriptions in the following summary.

The Battlefield of Bornhöved 1227, painted by Julius Fürst (1895) Source: Wikimedia

The exact location where the armies clashed is not known. The area around Bornhöved was probably - as it is today - dominated by large open fields broken up by small groves of trees and small rivers. As such, it was very much suitable for a battlefield, especially for cavalry armies. According to some local traditions the battle was fought close to a Stone Age burial mound called Königsbarg, which is said to have served as a commander's hill for King Valdemar.

Korner, writing for his Lübeck audience, claims that the German coalition was led by the city's mayor, Alexander von Soltwedel. However, this is most certainly legend, not least since Alexander was probably only born in the 1230s and became member of the Lübeck City Council only around 1256. Consequently, it is most likely that the coalition forces were led by Count Adolf IV, and that his troops stood at the center of the German army. Facing them were, most likely, King Valdemar's II core Danish forces. Both leaders' respective allies stood to the left and right of the commanders' main troops, with the Slavic princes of Mecklenburg securing the rear of the German host, and the Dithmarscher levy being positioned behind the Danish lines. We do not know how many and which kinds of troops were present that day, but likely an assortment of some heavy knights - mainly the princes and a number of local knights and lesser nobles -, some lighter cavalry, and numerous contingents of infantry, including spearman, archers and crossbowmen.

The Battle of Bornhöved, 13th century painting Source: Wikimedia

The battle is reported to have been bloody and exhaustingly long with neither armies making much success, and the men must have suffered greatly on that hot, summer day. The tide only turned when the Dithmarscher levy defected from King Valdemar and attacked the Danish rear. Now attacked from two sides, the Danes suffered a heavy defeat, losing thousands of men as casualties and prisoners. Among those taken hostage were Bishop Tuve of Ribe and Duke Otto of Lüneburg. Valdemar himself only barely managed to escape the carnage, having had his eye gouged out in combat.

Illustration of the Battle of Bornhöved from Heinrich Rehbein's Lübecker Chronik (1619). Source: Wikimedia

1.3 Aftermath

Following the German coalition's victory, Count Adolf IV successfully reclaimed the County of Holstein, while Duke Albert I reaffirmed his position as the liege-lord of the Counts of Schwerin and Holstein. Dithmarschen remained an independent peasant republic formally under the Prince-Archbishopric of Bremen. Lübeck was recognized with all rights as a Free Imperial City, while Hamburg returned under the rule of the Counts of Holstein. Duke Otto remained in captivity until January 1229, when he was released for a hefty ransom. In Denmark, King Valdemar II focused on domestic politics and made peace with his former enemies, marrying his third son Abel to Adolf IV's daughter Mechthild.

Beyond these personal and immediate effects on the warring parties, the Battle of Bornhöved had a lasting impact on the political and territorial landscape of the Baltic Sea region. It solidified the loss of Denmark's northern German territories and meant the end of Danish hegemony in the north. The border between Denmark and the HRE was firmly established at the Eider River, aligning with the southern border of the Danish Duchy of Schleswig. This border configuration remained in place until 1806, when the HRE was dissolved. On the other hand, the victory enabled the North German princes and cities to expand their sphere of influence, trade, and power: it created the conditions for the rise of Lübeck as the leading Hanseatic city, the formation of the German Order State, and later the unification of Schleswig and Holstein under state law (1460).

The borders after the Battle of Bornhöved 1227 Source: Pinterest

2. The Miniature Project

Over the coming months, my goal is to learn more about the history of Northern Germany in the 13th century, and especially the people who participated in the political and military events around the Battle of Bornhöved - and to visualize that history through vignettes and small dioramas. These scenes will include miniature versions of the main commanders and political and military leaders such as Count Adolf, Archbishop Gerhard of Bremen, King Valdemar II of Denmark, and Duke Otto of Braunschweig - but also attempts at portraying less prominent participants such as local nobles and rural levies. In that, I will try my best to be true to the historical sources as much as possible, but will need to make educated guesses from time to time. When in doubt, I will invoke the principle of artistic license :-)

2.1 Upcoming posts

I do not know yet how many individual miniatures or vignettes this project will entail, nor how long it will go, or how often I will post on it. My current guess is: as long as I remain interested in the topic, feel motivated to do a bit of research on the characters, and feel challenged by painting chainmail NMM and more or less elaborate coats of arms, I will continue on. There might be weeks or months in which I do not do anything related to the Bornhöved project, and there definitely will be other projects in between that will keep me distracted... But for now, I am super-excited to embark on that multi-media deep-dive into a fascinating period of Northern European medieval history.

Thanks for being a part of this. Talk to you soon!

Best, D.

Hey all,

this is David with a small teaser for an upcoming, larger series of individual but interconnected posts. I call this collection of posts a project diary. Different than the diary on 1177 B.C. I wrote a while back, this is not so much intended as a sequential series of WIP-shots and explanations of how I created a single miniature. Instead, this diary will mainly feature pictures of finished miniatures, together with some accompanying thoughts and bits of information, that are part of a larger project of multiple individual miniatures and multi-figure vignettes.

The project

The title of the larger project is Bornhöved, 1227 A.D.. Bornhöved is the name of a small town in the middle of nowhere in the northern German region of Holstein. In 1227 A.D., a battle took place there, in which the troops of German princes and cities fought the invading army of King Valdemar II of Denmark and his German allies - and which had great consequences for the further development of (Northwestern) European history. The goal of the project is for me to learn more about this period in medieval European history - by recreating (some of) the people who participated in that battle in 1/72 scale.

What lies ahead

Over the coming months, I will use the diary to document what I learn about some of the people who (possibly...) participated in that medieval battle. And, of course, to show off the miniatures I created while doing so. In the first article in this series, however, I will start out with a little historical primer about the Battle of Bornhöved. So, stay tuned for a little history lesson dropping in next month!

I'd be happy if you followed along - let me know, in the comments or through my email (david [at] massivevoodo [dot] com), if you have questions. Thanks so far - and see you in a bit!

Best, D.

p.s.: A big, chunky thank you! to my jungle-brother Roman for creating the wonderful header pic for my diary!

Links to all published diary entries

1. Prologue
2. A Little History Lesson
3. Two Older Minis

Hello everyone,

It's Andy, again. Today, I want to show to you my finished project “Tokyo rain”.

First ideas - Street fashion

The miniature is from NutsPlanet called Agent Aida (1/35). As soon as I saw her, I had a scene of street fashion walking on the pavement in mind. Of course, the pistol in her right hand was too much, so I decided to cut it away and did a slight repositioning of the fingers of the right hand.

I started the project with priming black and white and some Grisaille underpainting. To get the first impression of my idea, I tinted the different parts with GW Contrast paints. 

Refining the idea – Tokyo by night

The plan was to finish the lady at the MV-Family-Meeting from this point on in a cool comic style with bold black shadows.

At some point during the Meeting, Roman came up with the idea of a strong atmospheric light to create an additional punch and I really appreciated the input. The idea of rainy Tokyo with all the neon lights arose. Just google „Tokyo rain“ and you’ll see it :)

To paint such strong athmospheric OSL effect, I usually start with a darker tone and continuously define the effect with increasingly brighter tones the closer I get to my imagined light source.

The easiest way to do that is with an airbrush. Grab your color of choice, dilute it to have more control about the opacity and shoot it from your preferred angle, just as simple as that. 

With a brush it’s a bit more challenging but also doable – paint a small mark at your base in the preferred angle to save the perspective and touch every surface visible from this angle with the color of your choice.

Tokyo Nights – in the rain

Working on the OSL and neon atmosphere I had another idea to make the project a bit more interesting. How about adding rain to the scene? The effect of raindrops was on my bucket list of things to try for years and this was the perfect project for it. I painted some circles on the ground and used the icicles tutorial to create the water-drops. 

Final results

And here are the pictures of the final results.

Thanks for reading and your interest. Feel invited to comment in the section below.

Andy

Hey all,

welcome to the final instalment of my project diary. If you're wondering what this is, please check the announcement post, in which I explain the motivation and general goals of the diary. At the bottom of that post, you will find a link to all parts of this series.

Wow - What a ride! When I had the idea to write this diary to document the progress of my first project in 2021, after a six-month hiatus and absence of painting mood and inspiration, I had no idea that it would be almost four months before I would be finished. I thought: this is gonna be a quick and fun project to get back into the groove. Similarly, I thought that the diary would consist of quick-and-dirty notes to document the project's progress. Well, it turned out quite a bit differently.

In fact: while the project turned out to be much more extensive, both in time and in scope, than I thought, it did rekindle my painting energies and motivation. Similarly, the diary turned out to be as much a way to collect my thoughts during the project as it came to be an accountability tool to track my progress. The feedback I got from my jungle brothers and some of our readers also greatly encouraged me to keep on going writing the diary.

So, and in the spirit of documenting my thoughts, before I leave the diary behind me I want to put together a few notes on what I want to take away from this little exercise:

• Writing a project diary is fun and greatly helps documenting the different steps of a project.
• Writing a project diary in a way that other people can read and, hopefully, understand the different steps of a project is lots of work; but if you do it for yourself, it will be quick and easy, and could be done in just a few hastily scribbled lines and observations after a painting session.
• Painting skintones in 1/72 is great fun.
• I still have not really grasped NMM - more studies to come.
• I still have much to learn when it comes to recreating water - more studies to come.
• It's great to be patient and to try different approaches and multiple times when I'm not super-satisfied with a part of the mini.
• But then again, it's also fine not being super-satisfied with that part of the mini and leaving it the way it is, if continuing on would sap motivation. I can always come back to it - if I really want - later, when inspiration and motivation is back.

So, thanks for having joined me on this journey. As always, feel invited to drop me a line in the comments to let me know if you found this format interesting and if you'd like to see something like it again, sometime in the future. In the meantime, take care!

Best, D.

Hey all,

welcome to Page Ten of my project diary. If you're wondering what this is, please check the announcement post, in which I explain the motivation and general goals of the diary. At the bottom of that post, you will find a link to all parts of this series (constantly updated as soon as new articles are published).

We're on the finish-line, folks. This will be the penultimate installment of the project diary, and today, I will talk about finishing the base. This included three main steps:

1. painting the base
2. adding the "deep water"
3. finalizing the water effect

But before we start, let's take another look at the project when we left it in Part Nine:

The first thing I did was painting the base. This included three parts: first, to finish the sand, giving it a little "depth". For that, I simply gave the sand a slight wash with a very diluted brown (VMC Smoke). Once that was dry, I drybrushed the sandy surface with the basecolor (VMC Dark Sand) and, finally, some Ivory to bring out the highlights a little. Second, I treated the parts of the base where I envisioned slightly "deeper" water with a diluted wash of VMC Emerald and, where the deepest part would be, a little VMC Turquoise. This, later, will simulate some depth in the water. Finally, I also painted the cast shadow of the miniature, taking into account the zenithal lighting situation and the idea that the Mediterranean sun is standing high and glaring in the sky. I didn't worry too much about getting the shadow totally and exactly right as the water, which will flow around the raider's legs would distort the shadow and lighting a bit.

Some turquoise to imitate the depth of water...

... and a little grey for the cast shadow.

The next step was all about that deep water-fun! As will all my water-works, I followed my MV jungle brother Josua's fantabulous 2K Water Tutorial. So, I started constructing the borders into which I would be pouring the resin water, using some cut-up transparent plastic sheet, which I then glued to the plinth.

Before...

... and after.

Once the borders had been put in place, I prepared everything for pouring the 2K resin. As noted, I follow the commandments laid down by Josua for all times in his excellent tutorial. But as described in a previous tutorial of mine, in addition I like to stir the resin while bathing the container in a mug of hot water. This makes the resin "runnier", i.e., more liquid and like water - it becomes easier to pour and there will be fewer air bubbles. And that's exactly what I did with this base as well. Once the 2K resin was nicely mixed, I used a single-use plastic pipette and carefully let the liquid run into the area. I used a toothpick to make sure it spread everywhere I wanted and to remove the two or three tiny air bubbles that occured at the edges. And with this, I left the project to rest for about 24 hours.

All prepared for the resin pour...

... and done. The cent piece under the plinth ensures that the resin will remain mostly at the left side of the base.

Once the resin was hardened, I returned to the project and - as always when working with 2K water - was a little anxious about what would await me when I would remove the barriers. Well... Overall, I was happy with the result. BUT: there were two issues that needed work before I could finish the water. First: When I super-glued the barriers onto the plinth, a little bit of glue had snuck up and laid itself on top of the already painted sand area. Once I removed the barriers, the superglue stuck to the barriers, and I removed it along with the barriers, leaving a little hole or tunnel at the bottom of the 2K water.

There's a hole in the resin...

The second issue was that, despite the "genious" trick of positioning the plinth on a one-cent piece, a little bit of resin had run along the edges and now there was water where none should be:

... and some superfluous resin.

I first addressed the second issue, cutting away the superfluous resin that had run along the edges of the barrier. Along with the resin, I of course removed some of the "sand", so I had to recreate it with a little bit of Milliput, which was then painted. Then, I took on the first problem - simply by painting the sandy surface below the "deep" water and then adding a little UV-hardening resin into the "tunnel". When that was cured, I gave everything a nice little sanding to even the surfaces.

Then, it was time to add the waves. For that, I used Vallejo Water Texture, a thick, gooey acrylic gel that is white-opaque when it comes out of the container, but becomes transparent when it cures. With this, I did two rounds of adding waves, trying to recreate the look of surf at the beach, and letting the first layer cure before adding a second one.

Adding waves.

Layer one...

... cured and transparen.

Once the second "wave-layer" was cured, I added a bit more acrylic gel here and there, and added a tiny bit of Vallejo Still Water on the beach, where no waves would be. I did this, first, to give the sand the impression of wetness and, second, to smoothen the transition between "waves" and "sand".

And a second layer.

However, when I looked at the scene with a fresh set of eyes before starting to put the whitewater on the waves, I was not really happy with the look and "feel" of the waves. I was not really sure what it was, but when I compared the waves with images of "the real thing", something was off. So, and as so often with my projects, I decided to take a radical step - and put a sharp scalpel blades to the waves, which allowed me to start from scratch with modeling the waves...

Off to a fresh start

Thankfully, I remembered that I had seen a tutorial on modelling a beach scene some time ago, over on YouTube. This I decided to follow slavishly. So, I started out with carefully making the waves again, in a more realistic fashion. For the whitewater, I mixed the acrylic gel with a tiny bit of acrylic white color and some microballoons, usually used for recreating snow, and carefully added it to the waves. Finally, when all was dried and hardened, I gave the whole surface a slapping of some Still Water effect to restore the shininess. The last bit of work was some light and careful sanding, polishing, and gloss-coating of the sides of the hardened 2K-resin to make it nice and smooth.

Adding the waves...

... take two.

Looking back, to be honest, I was not super-satisfied with the result of my second water experiment, as I find the waves a bit too shallow and I dit not manage to recreate those little foamy crests. I also do not find the water lapping up the raider's hind-legs particularly convincing. But I decided to call it a day and leave it as is.

For the absolute final step, I checked the figure for some last-minute corrections. The only thing that I decided to do was to repair two little specks at the mini's sword-hand where I accidentally removed some paint during the sanding, and on the lower side of the shield, which had mistakenly been hit with some water texture. I also made my peace with the sword, deciding to leave it as it was. Then I painted the plinth black. I really like the effect of a deep-black painted plinth, which, in my eyes, serves as a nice and strongly contrasted "frame" to the scene, driving home the idea that the mini-and-base combination is a small sliver "taken out of some larger environment". I painted two layers, using cheap acrylic black color, and in between I carefully sanded the surface with fine-grit sandpaper. This makes the paint really nice and smooth. As a last thing, I added my signature at the base of the plinth - for me, this always signals a project's completion.

The final thing.

And that's that. For the final presentation, I will put a small, plaque on the plinth, which I'll have custom-made for this project by my friend Conny over at Fredericus Rex! I will post some final, good pictures at the blog once I have made them. In the meantime, and as always, feel invited to drop me a line in the comments? I hope to see you soon in the Epilogue for a quick debriefing!!

Best, D.