Mo’vember “It’s all birds and beards” (week 1)

It’s Mo’vember! Week one of our “Fuzzy faced” painting challenge, where each week we have to paint up at least one figure with facial hair be it moustache or full beard, joining me on this razor dodging voyage are “Blax the Cleric” who’s exploits with the paintbrush can be followed here…

http://fantorical.blogspot.co.uk/

And “Jon Lundberg” who’s blog “Henrietta games” I must admit is new to me, but appears to have some cracking stuff on it (go and check out the size of the skyscraper in his lounge!!), and I can see I’ll be having a good nose about there while checking out his Mo’ember postings. You can see what he’s up to here…

http://henriettagames.blogspot.com/

So for my first foray into this exploit I picked out a chap from my collection of knights with a rather big bird on his hand (I hope know one suggests a bird painting challenge now!) as he was languishing in one of my random paint generator boxes anyway I decided to pull out two more of the armoured blighters to kill two birds (pardon the pun!) with one stone as it were, and while I was at it I rolled the trusty D30 to pick something else to complete my weeks work and lo’ and behold up popped a unit of 15mm fantasy guards (this means ten figures of my choice), but I’ll get to them in a while. As usual I started by undercoating everything in black.

My three knights actually come from three different manufacturers; first off I had my bird wielding chap with the “tash”. He came from the “Mega Miniatures”, knights pack, similar to the fantasy townsfolk pack I’m also working my way through (see a couple of weeks back) but with knights. Clad in a studded leather jerking I decided to leave black along with his boots, his long cape I painted deep purple and highlighted in plum and edged in coffee highlighted with cream fur, grey trousers, chain mail hood, brown leather glove and a blond beard finished off the figure himself. Now the Hawk on his hand I looked up the colours for on the net, so chocolate brown served as a base over which I dry-brushed butternut, and chestnut, then butternut and coffee were mixed on his chest and legs before dots of black were stippled there. Then I added his feet and beak in citrus orange highlighted with lemon yellow and finally the tip of his beak, claws and eyes were added in black.

Next up came a very simple paintjob on a very detailed miniature, this chap came from a limited edition (999 I think) pack of six fantasy adventurers by “Rafm”, I still have another “dark” knight to paint up one day, but anyway after his black undercoat he was heavily dry-brushed in chain mail and his “big bird” (it’s all birds this week!) helmet crest and other gold bits were painted first shining gold and highlighted with pale gold. Simple but I hope effective.

Lastly in this section I had this rather nice figure from “Bend Sinister” I got a while back. I decided to add a shield from my collection of GW plastic ones with a suitably heraldic device before dry-brushing him all over with chain-mail. I then painted up the “beastie” on his shield, the circlet around his head and the hilts of his weapons dark gold highlighted in shining gold, next half his shield background and half his jupon was painted maroon and the other halves in coffee before being highlighted in red and cream respectively. Then it was just a case of adding any leather bits in chocolate brown/ leather and his flesh and he too was finished. All three were then given a coat of “Quickshade” before their bases were painted and flocked to match my fantasy townsfolk. A coat of matt varnish topped this off.

My 15mm fantasy figures are by “Warrior Miniatures”, and if I’m brutally honest are not anywhere near the quality of the “Demonworld” figures I’ve painted before, but I have based them up to fit in with the knights and such I have from that company. After the matt black undercoat they were dry-brushed with chain mail then dark blue was applied on jupons, shields and standard this was then highlighted with bright blue. All the wood and leather pieces were painted chocolate brown and highlighted with butternut and leather respectively, next flesh was applied to their faces and coffee/cream added to their shields and the tassel at the top of the standard. The picture on the standard was painted in gold and red, orange and yellow (I wanted something simple to paint and quite frankly this was all that came to mind!). They were then attached to cardboard hexagonal bases (still can’t find the plastic ones!!) and the bases were painted and flocked to match the rest of my “Demonworld” collection. They were then given a coat of matt varnish too complete them.

Well one week down four more to go (there are five Saturdays in November it seems).

Till then… Cheers Roger.