Painting By Numbers - Arab Bowmen
(Inspired to paint more figures? This site carries all of ebays 15mm, 25mm and 28mm ancients auction listings)
| 1 | I now as a rule base all infantry before painting them -
it took me a while to get round to the idea that it is possible to paint
them like this, rather than as individual figures. However it speeds up
the process so much, and using ink washes (as you will see later) does a
great job of disguising any imperfections in the final finish. And in
any case, they are 15mm high figures, usually viewed en-mass from a
distance of at least 2 feet !!! These are a mixture of various Essex ranges, with a few Grumpys Miniatures (from East Riding Miniatures, drawn from Grumpys Persian/Afghan/Moghul range) like this one in the foreground. The undercoat is a standard car undercoat spray, from Halfords - cheap, big, and provides a very fine, even and adhesive coating - which is probably not surprising, as it is an undercoat for car paintwork. |
All images on this page are thumbnails - click on any of them to get the "bigger picture" ! |
| 2 | My first task is to do a series of major colours - for
irregular figures such as these I started with 3-6 initially, so that you can mix and match across the
entire set of figures without too much repetition. I prefer starting
with the boring colours, and then moving onto the brighter ones - as then you have something to look forwards
to!!
The paints used here are acrylics: Fawn (1728) from the Inscribe range - foreground Raw Siena from Liquitex (used "neat") - middle figures turban, plus the far figures coat Others used included Terra Cotta (1736 - Inscribe), Coffee, & Sand, from Miniature Paints and Bubonic Brown from Citadel |
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| 3 | This is the next stage - some more colours added. |  |
| 4 | And now some of the brighter colours are added as well |  |
| 5 | Purple and bright green (this green may be a bit too bright actually, but a wash later will tone it down. It also will add great depth to the lilac) |  |
| 6 | Right about now I got a bit bored with the thankless task
of mainstream colours, and decided to do part of the basing procedure
for a psychologically rewarding "quick-win". It all gets done
in the end anyway, so there is no harm in doing bits of it a bit early
provided it doesn't interfere with the end result!
This is just a covering of the facing edges of the bases (hardback/photo envelope cardboard plus self-adhesive thin magnabase) with Miniature paints "Sand". |
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| 7 | One of the key parts of any "crap painter in disguise" is getting good basing. This is how I apply straightforward "Natural Wood" wood filler (from any DIY shop) to my bases - it blends in almost perfectly with the sand coloured edging, and requires very little extra effort. |  |
| 8 | The Natural Wood sand colour is used for all my ancient
armies, to allow maximum interoperability. European Mediavals have a
darker earth colour painted over the base texture.
It also has - if applied roughly -a great "natural" texture |
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| 9 | This is the finished article - before dry-brushing and addition of grass of course!. |  |
| 10 | Next , the inking !!!! | click here to get to the next page |
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