Wednesday 28 March 2018

Late Romans WIP

I don't usually post any WIP pictures, but these Romans are such a lengthy and complex project that I thought it would be worth showing how far I've got with them.
               
I'm not going to say too much about what is there, because I will leave that for the finished figures, but they have been quite interesting to paint. I've not done any 28mm plastics for ages, and I'd forgotten that they always look a bit crude until the shading, dry-brushing and inking stages are over. Now that I've inked them (using Windsor & Newton Peat Brown drawing ink) I think that they are coming together nicely.


Apart from on my two original test figures, I've undercoated the shields separately, white on the outer side and brown on the inner.


I've also made up 12 Dark Age Warriors as javelin-armed Levies, and made up the four command figures from my second box of Roman Infantry to offer up a bit of variation to my Roman units, two as armoured swordsmen, one unarmoured swordsman and a vexilla bearer. I have undercoated these in brown because I am thinking of painting these levies up in fairly rustic dress, using a pretty restrained palette. For the four Romans, it doesn't really matter what colour they are undercoated, because they will end up looking very different once finished.


The reason I've done the shields separately in white is so I can apply these rather lovely shield transfers from Little Big Men Studios before I glue them onto the troops. The range of different designs is pretty wonderful, and I intend to use a few different patterns over the course of the project, not least on the recently announced Late Roman plastic cavalry from Gripping Beast. I also understand, because I emailed GB and asked about it, that later this year there will be some unarmoured plastic Roman cavalry too, with the option of making some horse archers. That please me greatly.


Now that I've broken the back of the work, I can start thinking about the Dark Age cavalry and how I want to use the rest of the foot figures still on their sprues.

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