Southern Italian Hoplites WIP2

Title says it all, really.

Finished the shields and attached them to the figures. Shield designs by LBMS, cut to fit and overpainted around the edge in an attempt to make them blend. As you can see in one or two cases this has been in vain and I need to go back and do some touching up. Seeing something in a photo about six times bigger than it really is can be sobering....

I temporarily attached the figures to bases with blutack to get an idea of how they'd rank up. Apologies if one or two look a bit wobbly. Worthwhile doing, as I quickly realised I need to have the spears angled slightly to ensure each rank will line up behind the other.

 As mentioned previously, I need to wait until all 48 are done before I can start basing for real - very frustrating for someone as impatient as me! Part of my painting psychology is to get some figures painted and based as early as possible as inspiration to get stuck into the rest.

Southern Italian Hoplites WIP 1

These are the first batch of 12, from 48 I currently plan to paint.

My approach to these is to paint four groups of 12, each with the same basic tunic colour, but with varying levels of trim. These have a base of blue (bet you didn't spot that, did you?), the next batch in line will have red, with grey and off white to come.

Colour choices are based on various tomb paintings that have survived from Southern Italy. Try a Google Image search for "paestum tomb" and you'll get the idea.

I've done the flesh tones on these slightly differently to some previous figures, with less contrast. Not sure I'm happy and would be interested in other opinions.

Shields are mostly finished and just need adding to the figures. Will try and get some photos of them up tomorrow.

Tarentines Completed

Managed to finish these off in the week but had to wait until today to get enough natural light to photograph them. It's already past the time of year that it's too dull on a morning for photography before I leave for work and too dark by the time I get home, a fact that will become far more obvious as we descend into Winter.

I'm pleased with the shields. I used various LBMS hoplite variants for several different figure ranges; most didn't fit! The rimmed shields I decided to use for these figures have a relatively small central area, so I had a bit of careful choosing and trimming to do to make things work. I'm happy with the results.

I used a slightly different mix of tufts this time around and I quite like the effect. Haven't decided if I should add a couple of flowers or not.

As noted before, painting these has helped me formulate plan for the Southern Italian hoplites that are next on the agenda. I've decided to use four basic tunic colours, as here, with varying levels of trim. To achieve this, I've split the 48 figures into batches of 12 (didn't know I did maths, did you?). Body armour is mixed, with variations from none, plain T-Y, padded T-Y, reinforced T-Y and plate armour on some of the command figures, so lots of scope for mixtures of white, yellow, red, blue and anything else I can think of....

"Tarentine" WIP

Some pictures of my Aventine "Tarentines" in progress.

Painting is finished, just need to add shields, varnish and base. How I base them is the reason for the "".  I can't decide  whether to base them in 3's, so general Southern Italian medium cavalry, or in 2's as more open order light cavalry. I'm hedging towards 3's, as I think they'll be more useful that way, but if anyone's got any ideas, I'd love to hear other opinions.

 

Pictures are clickable.

Next project is some Southern Italian Hoplites. I'll use the same basic colour scheme as I've used on these to give them plenty of variety and colour.