“An Elven Quickie!”

No, this is not going to be me regaling you with the tale of my brief “dalliance” with Liv Tyler, firstly because I’m not one to “kiss and tell” and secondly because I would have to make the whole thing up and it would be complete bo**ocks anyway! No instead it’s another post about painting figures (who said shame!!). My next post (not counting “What if…Wednesday) will hopefully mark the start of “Forgotten Heroes” month, a yearly event run by my good pal “Jez” over at “Carrion Crow’s Buffet”* I already know what I’m hopefully going to produce for this, but more on that when the time is right. So as I had a week or so to kill before this I thought I’d start another “Hott” army in 15mm. I don’t however have another complete army to do, but I do have a load of Elven spearmen I got as review samples from “Demonworld” and some gorgeous Elven archers that I bought from a show many years ago that I sadly have no idea who the manufacturer of is. So out came the old Rulebook and from the army list I was able to ascertain that I had than enough spearmen to make up three stands, I also had just enough archers to make up the same amount of those and I had three nice figures to make a command stand, that would just leave me to get figures for two stands of riders (cavalry) and a battle wizard to meet the 24 points needed for a standard army at some point in the near future.

So I thought I’d paint up what I’ve got, and finish it off once I get the missing figures. To this end I trial fitted the figures to the relevant sized bases, now these are a bit bigger than the “Peter Pig” figures I used to create my “Barsoom” army and as such they only just fit on the standard “Hott” bases, Hence I decided to glue the two outer fig’s to each base and paint them “in-situ” and the others I glued to various “strip” bases with PVA (wood glue) and then once painted add then to the proper bases. Once this was done they were undercoated with matt black (still no spray paint!), and batch painting could commence (boo!!).

As usual I started by dry-brushing all the armour and weapons with chainmail, then as green would be the predominant colour on my elves I painted in their hoe’s and undershirts with deep bronze green, chocolate brown next and this was used as the undercoat on all the leather and wooden parts. I wanted a cohesive colour to tie them all together as one army, so I took the olive and painted the capes and over-shirts in this highlighted with some lime, some of the archers don’t have either of these items of apparel, so I hope the fact that some of the figures on the bases do will be enough to tie them in, I mixed European flesh with pale flesh for the skin, there is such a small amount on show I decided not to highlight this in the hope the Quickshade will do its magic and be enough. The (very) large plumes some of the archers are wearing were then added in coffee and cream and I added a little edge detail to the spearmen’s shirts in the same again to tie them together. Leather was applied as the highlight on the leather bits (you didn’t see that coming now did you!), and butternut to the wooden bits. The sword hilts and the odd bit of jewelry was then added with an undercoat of bronze topped off with a highlight of shinning gold, and metallic green was used to add the odd gem here and there. After much internal wrangling I decided to go with shamrock for the banners and shields with a simple slash of coffee and cream across the shields and similar with a tree (sorry couldn’t think of anything more original than that!) on the banners. A highlight of more shamrock with a little cream was also added to the banners. Hair was next and lemon yellow, citrus orange, chestnut, chocolate brown and orange (un-highlighted) was used here. I added a dot of black for the eyes and they were done, well they do of course still need “Quickshading” and their bases painting, but I’ll do all that once the other elements of the army are added.

Lastly this week I am posting the promised pictures of the now finished “Barsoom” army (see right), and that will just about do for now, so I’ll hopefully see you on Wednesday for a “What if…” and back here next weekend for the start of “Forgotten Heroes”.

Stay safe, cheers Roger.

• https://carrioncrowsbuffet.wordpress.com/