From Aled C: More Arabs and some slow armour (120 points)

For my Third submission post (including the Armour bonus round) I have for presentation the second batch of Arab Spearmen for my Deus Vult army and some Minas Tirith Swordmen that I had planned to get done for the Armour Challenge but just didn't get to them in time.

As I said in the Armour Challenge post I forgot to go through my painting method for the Arab spearmen and promised to correct that in this post. As I think I said before I am a big fan of using washes to speed my slow painting of models. To that end, I have been using the Army Painter 'Quick-shade' dip on these Arabs to give that 'dirty' look and bring out the details of the Gripping Beast figures.

I have started these by priming them with the Army Painter 'Skeleton Bone' colour, which gives that nice cloth colour. I then go through them with various browns(leather, fur and monster from the army painter range) as well as a black and red (AP again, matt and dragon respectively) picking out the odd pant cuff and shoes etc. as well as doing their belts with the leather brown. I also did some of their shields with these colours. Next, I make a 50/50 mix of leather brown (AP) and Yellow Ochre (Vallejo) which give a nice pale wood colour to use on the spear shafts and the backs of the shields. I then paint the metal of shield boss and their spear tips, as well as any helmets that poke out from their headgear (Plate Mail, AP). The flesh is one of the last steps I do, not for any particular reason but probably so I can be a bit messier in my painting up until this point. For this, I use Tanned Flesh (AP again). The next step in my process is painting the daggers at their belts, done in gold and silver (Old Gold by Vallejo and Shining Silver from GW) in as much variety as the models allow. I finish them by painting on the patterns for the shields. Whilst I admit to not going to deep in my research of Early Crusade period shield design for the Muslim armies, I did look through some ospreys to get a general gist of what I should and what I could do know my freehand isn't great. Stripes are always good and easy to do but there are only so many ways they can be done, that goes for the dots too! (I know Stephen Sheridan has been saying much the same thing about crosses on his shields). I have been doing this unit with a 'Blue Theme' to their shields and plan to have the other units in other colours to differentiate them, probably yellow and green depending on how they look.

I then give the cloth a going over with the Skeleton Bone again (this time with a brush :P) to fix any mess ups and make it a bit brighter. Finally, I give them a 'dip' (also using a brush) with the 'Quickshade - Strong' to bring out the details and give them a general unwashed look.

A coating with a matt varnish and they are good for basing. I stick them down with a good deal of liquid nails to give a bit of texture to the base and help mask the foot tabs. Sand stuck down with PVA, gets painted Fur Brown for a nice reddy brown, inked with GW's Agrax Earthshade, and dry brushed a 50/50 of Fur Brown and the Yellow Ochre which makes it a good bright colour. Then a few patches of flock to make it pretty.

That seems really long winded as I look back over it. :/

Sorry....

Alongside batch one

That done I also painted up a unit of Minas Tirith Swordsmen to go alongside my Archer for Dragon Rampant. I had hoped to get them done for armour but time got away from me. They are painted up in much the same manner ar the archers. The biggest difference being the shields which were done by drybrushing Plate Mail over the Black on the face of the shield, then drybrushed black again (avoiding the tree) to dull it down, and after the Nuln Oil a final drybrush again of the Plate Mail.

So, 24 more figures done, plenty more to go!

Cheers,

Aled.

Alan and Paul: Having seen these figures today up close (while Aled was crushing me in two different wargames), I can confirm that they look even better 'in the flesh'. The shields of the Minas Tirith swordsmen look especially good, the subtle contrast between the black and the silver looking very realistic. Thanks for sharing how you went about painting your Arabs - this is going to be a great looking army.