Decebalus and his Shaman Advisor

May 4, 2013

Time for another blog update, methinks! The sun is out today so I managed to take some pictures with which I’m satisfied for a change. Without further ado, let us examine them.

Two great models by Warlord Games.

These two models were a blast to paint – apart from the basing I finished them in one work day (Thursday) and that’s a good indication of the joy I had. They’re both single part models yet with interesting poses, and as usual with Warlord Games models they’re also very affordable. Even if I hadn’t set out to collect a Dacian army, I would still have bought these models just to paint them.

 

The back of these two fellows. Note the quality sculpting of their cloaks.

I originally planned to have both models on the same base as a small vignette in itself, but then I thought of needing multiple commander models – I do plan to have a sizeable Dacian force for Hail Caesar, so at least two Dacian (and one Sarmatian) divisions are in the works, which means multiple commanders. For this reason, I decided to base them seperately but on square bases, so the two can still ‘rank up’ when I’m playing with a single division. I used the Renedra 40x40mm bases that came with my Gripping Beast plastics, and added a little extra height with smaller bases.

Close up you can see I didn’t paint the eyes – didn’t want to risk botching it.

Much of the techniques I used on my Sarmatians were, of course, replicated here. I shied away from using too much of the pink hues as, well, pink isn’t exactly the ‘new black’ everyone goes on about these days. The highlights were also applied with a little more care than with the Sarmatians. For example, I highlighted the scales of the armour individually, rather than drybrushing it. Thank Thor that most of it is hidden by his cloak! Speaking of the cloak, I’m mightily satisfied with how it ended up looking. I’ve always found large areas of cloth with folds one of the most difficult things to paint well, but I think I hit the right mark on this one.

Not exactly the most handsome chap I’ve painted – even those Gripping Beast neanderthals are better looking.

With most of the figure being swathed in a heavy cloak, this shaman was of course very straightforward to paint. I wanted to choose the more subdued colours from the exotic palette I’ve chosen for the army, so I used mostly the brownish orange tone with a few accents of lilac and dark blue-green on the hem of his cloak – no red or gold for this guy. In fact, much of the time devoted to this guy involved getting the beard right. I ended up basecoating it shadow grey, washing with agrax earthshade then highlighting it with again shadow grey and finally celestra grey. I think I might have gone a bit too far with highlighting and shading the massive scar on his face, so I might tone that down a bit.

This concludes my work on models from the Classical Era for now – everything I own of that era has now been painted, based and reported on, and hopefully enjoyed by you, my faithful readers! I’ve promised myself (and my girlfriend, obviously) that I won’t be buying any new stuff until Crisis ’13, which means I have six months in which to reduce my massive overstock of napoleonics, vikings, normans, crusaders, warhammer and 40k stuff, not to mention some potential commission projects I might do over the summer. Speaking of which, I’ve finally mustered the courage to continue work on those French dragoons for a friend. More on those next week, although in the meantime, yet more Vikings are inbound. Haldebra!

 

Written by laurensvannijvel Posted in Classical era Tagged with dacian, decebalus, hail caesar, painted, warlord games