A painting method.

Andy describes how he goes about painting his irregular figures.

I don’t claim to be a great painter, I’m certainly unlikely to win any painting competitions, my aim is to get figures to a reasonable standard for the table top in a reasonable time.

When painting irregular, or at least non-uniformed, troops I still try to have a systematic method of painting, so I thought I’d share how I go about it.

For this example, I have 16 Gripping Beast Plastic Saxon Thegns to paint.

I start off by washing the figures in warm soapy water, to remove any mould release agent, then rinse and dry them.

For 28mm infantry I standardise on 2p coins for the bases. I can then use them individually for games like SAGA or Lion Rampant, or on sabot trays for games like Dux Bellorum.

So once cut from the sprues and any mould lined removed with a scalpel and file the figures were stuck to their bases using a general-purpose adhesive, like Bostick.

Some of the figures have their left arms as part of the torso, others have them as separate pieces. I then assembled the figures using liquid polystyrene cement, except for the shields. I leave the shields off to make it easier to paint the left arm and chest. I do keep a shield handy to check the position of the left arm against the position of the right arm and spear during assembly.

I didn’t have quite enough heads with helmets for the 16 (I had previously used some on some unarmoured bodies) so a couple of the figures had bare heads from the Dark Ages Warriors box. The bases were then built up with Polyfilla.

I then undercoated the figures with grey car primer spray.

Most of the paints I use are Vallejo Model Colour, exceptions are mainly Army Painter (AP) washes and inks.

First off, I painted any areas of mail matt black, followed by dry-brushed Gunmetal Grey. Spear tips and helmets were painted the same colour. Next the faces, necks and hands were base coated Brown Sand.

Skin was the painted Medium Flesh Tone.

Now to start with the systematic randomisation of colours for the clothing. I arranged the figures into as near a rectangular formation as possible, in this case the 16 figures simply went into four ranks of four files.

I then painted the figure’s trousers by file:

• • Light Brown (A, E, I, M)
  • Chocolate Brown (B, F, J, N)
  • AP Dark Stone (C, G, K, O)
  • Basalt Grey (D, H, L, P)

Then the tunics by rank:

• • Grey Blue (A, B, C, D)
  • Deep Green (E, F, G, H)
  • Red (I, J, K, L)
  • Mahogany Brown (M, N, O, P)

If I had been painting lower status troops, I would have used the same colours overall for tunic and trousers, but added an additional colour to the tunic mix to avoid having the tunic and trousers the same colour on any individual figure.

Next were the leggings, in diagonal lines top left to bottom right

• • Buff (A, F, K, P)
  • Pale Sand (B, G, L, M)
  • Beige (C, H, I, N)
  • Deck Tan (D, E, J, O)

Next is the leatherwork. Belts, pouches and scabbard in diagonal lines from top right to bottom left, I used the same colours for the figure’s boots in a semi random order.

• • Chocolate Brown.                         Belts etc: (D, G, J, M)      Boots: (A, H, K, N)
  • Red Leather.                                   Belts etc: (C, F, I, P)         Boots: (B, G, L, M)
  • Saddle Brown.                               Belts etc: (B, E, L, O)        Boots: (C, E, J, P)
  • German Cam Black Brown.     Belts etc: (A, H, K, N)       Boots: (D, F, I, O)

Sword and knife hilts were painted in the same colours, plus black, at random.

Next was the hair, again four colours were used, with a semi-random selection of figures, making sure I didn’t use the same colour twice in any row or column of the 16 figures.

• • Black: C, E, L, N
  • Tan Yellow: A, G, J, P
  • Flat Brown: B, H, K, M
  • Brown Sand: D, F, I O

Belt buckles and scabbard metalwork were painted either Gunmetal Grey or Bronze.

The spear shafts and wooden crosses were painted Beige Brown and the cords of the crosses painted AP Hemp Rope.

As always when I paint, I have to do some corrections, reworking any colours that had accidentally been painted over.

Once all the main colours had been finished, I proceeded to the washes.

All skin was given a wash with AP Flesh wash.

The tunics were washed as follows:

• • Blue Wash (A, B, C, D)
  • Green Wash (E, F, G, H)
  • Red Wash (I, J, K, L)
  • Soft tone Wash (M, N, O, P)

Soft Tone was also used for all spears and figures with Red Leather or Saddle Brown Belts, Scabbards and Boots.

• • Red Leather. Belts etc: (C, F, I, P)          Boots: (B, G, L, M)
  • Saddle Brown Belts etc: (B, E, L, O)      Boots: (C, E, J, P)

Dark tone was used for figures with Chocolate Brown or German Cam Black Brown Belts, Scabbards and Boots:

• • Chocolate Brown.                    Belts etc: (D, G, J, M)        Boots: (A, H, K, N)
  • German Cam Black Brown. Belts etc: (A, H, K, N)       Boots: (D, F, I, O)

All leggings and figures with Tan Yellow or Brown Sand hair was washed with AP Light Tone wash.

The bases were then finished with green basetex.

Having finished the figures, I moved on to the shields.

These were cleaned up in the same way as the figures, then undercoated black on the backs and white on the front. I use white on the fronts as I was going to use shield transfers rather than painting the designs.

I then drybrushed the back of the shields with Beige Brown and painted the shield bosses Gunmetal Grey while still on the sprues.

I then applied the shield transfers to the front. These came from Little Big Men Studios or Battle Flag decals.

Little Big Men Studios decals have a hole for the shield boss already cut out, but the Battle Flag decals don’t, you have to cut those yourself.

I did have some issues with some of the LBMS decals, I couldn’t peel the plastic cover off to expose the self-adhesive surface. After ruining a few of the decals I ended up gluing them to the shield complete with the plastic layer using PVA glue. I haven’t had that problem before, so I wonder if it’s because these are fairly old, 3-4 years maybe? I didn’t have any problems with the Battle Flag decals.

Once the decals had dried, I painted the shield rims with Japanese Uniform to represent the leather edging. Once this was dry, I then cut the shields from the sprues, tidied up the edges with more Japanese Uniform.

The astute among you will notice there are 20 shields, but only 16 figures, the extras will be used as battlefield markers: Fatigue in SAGA, Battered in Lion Rampant, or Leadership Points in Dux Bellorum.

It’s never a good idea to glue painted articles together, paint to paint bonds aren’t strong, so I used a file to remove the paint from the contact points and then used liquid polystyrene cement to glue the shields in place.

The figures were then given a coat of spray matt varnish.

Here they are, 16 figures, making up 4 points of SAGA Hearthguard, a unit of Lion Rampant Sergeants with four figures left over or 2 units of Dux Bellorum Noble Shieldwall:

The guy on the left of the front rank has a painted shield (Green and Light Blue) from my stash of spare shields rather than one of the shields I did in this session.

So, that’s my method for painting irregulars in a systematic way.

I hope it was of interest.