Tuesday, December 09, 2008

Atrebates

Painting 'horde' armies can be very time consuming and seem never ending. To help me get through the huge amount of figures required to make an army, I thought I would make it more interesting for myself by dividing them into tribes. Each tribe will have it's own look and shield colour/design. Changing cloth colour and textile patterns is another way of making units look different from each other.
I think creating interest within the warbands will help give them personality and help me keep painting through the never ending ranks of similar looking figures.
I've also been playing around with new ways of painting large numbers of figures and have worked out an easy way to help me cope with the work load. I have started to paint the same colour onto a number of different figures at once, this way the figures get coloured very quickly. Each new colour on the brush gets dotted around to add variety here and there until the figures are all covered. This helps with shading also as each colour is shaded at the same time. I am not worrying to much about the clothing colours as it is the shield colour and design that will dominate the look of the figure. I have also used paint washes more than usual to speed up the process. This was inspired in a way by the 'Quickdip' pot I bought, just without the glossy finish.
With around forty two models needed for a warband I still have a long way to go, however I managed to crack these guys in a day and a half and they were fun to do, so I may try to finish off the Atrebates before I start anything else. Famous last words......

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

More nice work! Are these Warlord Games figures?

Ave!

Secundus said...

No, these are AandA miniatures I bought many years ago. I quite like them as they have nice flat clothes that are perfect for painting checkered patterns on. There are also a scattering of Gripping Beast mini's in amongst them to add some variety. The more makes of figures the better I say for Celtic Warbands, helps add to their motley rabble look.

I do like the Warlord Celts but thought I would start to wade through my buckets of metal ones first.

Secundus said...

I think I'm going to redo the front shield on this base as I think it is starting to look a little cartoony for my liking. I prefer the simple designs of the horse shapes of the others.

Anonymous said...

TIME TO BREAK OUT THE CHARIOT HOARDS? KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK