Late 2019 hobby resurgence

2019 was a busy year.  Lots of full on activity in the first quarter and then things slowed down due to family and work commitments.  So the hobby suffered over the southern winter.

But spring came and I got a new sense of hobby life.  It was time to pull out the painting gear and see if I could still use a brush.

Getting back into painting 1

Having sat in my pile of unpainted miniatures for around a year I decided to pull out the S-Culture Barbarian.  This was a figure I had collected for my old WHFB Chaos Warriors army, but had never got done.  So I thought it would be a great addition to my Saga as an Age of Magic hero or The Brute in the old feud scenario in the Book of Battles.

This figure was really enjoyable to paint.  It had a number of head and weapon options but I thought the combination of a bare head and huge heavy weapon suited my image of The Brute, especially since he would be close to 7' tall.

It was also a good excuse for me to get out the homemade static grass generator and make some more grass tufts.

Pleasantly surprised at the result I was motivated to pull out another miniature and paint away.

Getting back into painting 2

The second miniature I decided to do was the Robert Dux model from Conquest Games.  I got this miniature from Mike at Salute 2019. I was really taken with the miniature on the Conquest Games website and decided that it would be a good addition to my plastic Norman warband.  So I put it on a 60mm round base (this is my new go to for mounted Warlords) and started painting.  

Now painting horses has never been my favourite thing and historically I have painted horse and rider separately. So this time I decided to break the mould and glue the rider on first. Great decision as it allowed me to get a really good bond and fill out some of the gaps. I also decided to use a grey undercoat and Plastikote grey primer.  Normally I have no problems with this primer but I used it on a too hot day and ended up dusting the model and needed to sand some of it back.  No worries, all's well that ends well.

I really like this figure.  The horse is just brilliant, full of character and I found it easy to paint.  It was also plain with simple detail, which was great to get back into painting with.

The rider was also a simple sculpt but just looks right.  So I was very happy with the outcome.

Basing used my homemade tufts and some bark from my local park outside my back door.

The shield just sort of evolved and was happy at the time.  But I am going to repaint it now that I have built a new Crusader / Norman warband.  But more of that later.

Getting back into painting 3

After some gaming with friends we decided that Melbourne needed to be represented in the Australian Saga Grand Melee in Brisbane.  I thought that Anglo Saxons would be fun and 5 points of levy warriors could be accrued from my own collection and friends.  However to really make the warband mine I need to paint a Anglo Saxon warlord and Priest.

 The Priest is from Wind Wind's Burning a Druid at the Stake pack. It comes with a choice of heads and I think that the figure looked very suitable for a Priest accompanying the great fryd into battle.

Holding the cross and pointing made the figure suitably dramatic and painting a brown cassock was a new change.  I also found that I was replicating the techniques I had used on Robert Dux's horse which seemed both weird and satisfying at the same time.

I wanted the warlord to be suitably dramatic on the gaming table and given the amount of levy the idea of the warlord being accompanied by his war banner and bearer just seemed right.

The warlord is Gripping Beast's Alfred the Great figure and the banner bearer is Warlord Games' Eric the Red from the Viking range the purchased from Colin Patton.

The choose a white Saxon dragon for the banner and carried the red and white theme onto the shield.  

Because I won't always want the warlord to have a banner he is mounted on a 40mm base which inserts into a cut out on a 60mm base.

So these are the figures that got be back into the swing of things and motivated me to keep painting. So stay tuned to see the next project.