Greenstuff for the War Elephants and Markov's Mount

I applied greenstuff to the elephants tonight, mainly to make the trunks' join with the heads look natural. I used my exacto blade to put folds on the greenstuff to mimic the texture of the hide. This process took very little time, as I kept dipping the exacto blade in water which made the business of working the putty easy.


The Indian Elephant Stomping had some issues with gaps about its head-body join (and some very small areas of pitting on its underside) that I also fixed up. In fairness to Empire Models, I could have made the joint of the head and body true but I didn't want to work the resin as it is a foul and poisonous substance until painted, when it assumes the mantle of beauty.



There was a gap on the nether portion of the horse of Kovnik Markov that I also filled with greenstuff tonight. Again, the work of a minute.

Warmachine Khador Great Bears of Gallowswood

I just finished these. These were awesome miniatures to paint. One piece of advice I would give is to glue the arms on first, before priming. I painted the arms separately, which was cool, but it would have been far more efficient to do it the other way. The paints I used were GW Foundation Mechrite Red over the black primer, followed by a number of coats of Derivan Rourke's Drift Red, followed by Derivan Roman Red, followed by Reaper Clear Red. The blue is Delta Ceramcote Payne's Gray, highlighted by adding Delta Ceramcote Ivory to it, The flesh is Privateer Press PP3 as is the Flesh Wash and Armor Wash. The metallics are GW, as is the old Citadel Flesh Wash I painted over a coat of diluted white paint to make one of the lads a blond. The Field Gray on the inside of the cloaks is an Italian paint called Lifecolor, an old (read 1998 old) favorite of mine. The bear pelts were painted with about 8 drybrushes of various off-whites over the original black followed by a wash of Reaper Creamy Ivory. I used Reaper Brown Liner on the axe handles.

Gripping Beast EIR Auxiliary archers

I finished this unit of 17 archers tonight. They have to be given a spray of Testors Dullcote, but they're done. I really enjoyed painting them. The poses are very lifelike, and the faces are suitably foreign for auxiliaries; that is to say, two of them (kneeling and walking) are Hunnic or Alanic looking, and the other two poses, loosing and drawing, are taller fellows with big boned faces, typical Germans one might think. I suppose I might be making all of this up, but it's the kind of thoughts you have when you spend hours painting the little shaggers. The bases turned out nicely as well.

I think I'll complete a backlog of Khador models next, including Beast-09, Epic Irusk, Yuri, the Great Bears of Gallowswood and Kovnik Markov. I have been painting them in bits on a fairly continuous basis, and it's time to get them finished.

EIR War Elephants from Empire Models

I received these in the post today. I purchased them from Empire Models on April 23, 2009, which means they got from England to me in Canada in eight business days. That's impressive. And I had to build them, just because the miniatures are, likewise, impressive. These elephants are very reasonably priced at 12 quid each. They both come with two mahouts, one a handsome looking young fellow, long locks flowing in the wind, and the other a soldier that comes with a selection of 4 heads, which I took to be Seleucid, Bactrian, Antigonid and Ptolemaic. The trip across the Atlantic was not without incident for these resin models. The Indian Elephant Stomping had his stomping leg broken off, and the Indian Elephant Walking had a piece of the tower broken. Nevertheless it was the work of merely a few minutes to affix the parts again with superglue, which sort of thing is most def a part of our hobby. And the resin was good on both elephants with only one small pit on the underside of the Stomper. There were relatively significant mold lines on the mahouts, including on the head I used. This was not a major problem, but I have to say it was somewhat disagreeable. I used a gap filler to properly affix the head of the Indian Elephant Walking. This was because I abhor any manual filing or cutting of resin, my other option. Both elephants will require some greenstuff to make true the join of trunk and head, but I couldn't find my greenstuff this evening and it shall have to wait.

The elephants are excellent. I will be putting scuta around the towers on both, with LBMS transfers applied. I am going to use the top halves of a couple of Wargame Foundry Late Roman Cataphract figures that I will attach to an appropriate set of legs so as to crew both elephants with a Roman pikeman. I expect to put a legionary throwing a pilum in each tower as well.


When I first went looking for suitable elephants for my 28mm WAB EIR army, I checked into it on the WABList, a Yahoo Group I have been a (mostly lurking) member of for years. I received a number of posts in reply to my inquiry, one of which advised me to get the 1/72nd scale Zvezda War Elephants, which the poster stated were oversized for 1/72nd and suitable for God's scale. I did so. Below you will see one of the two elephants the Zvezda War Elephants box contains, with red painted on it by my 3 year old, which is certainly a good thing - if not the the best thing that I could say of this elephant.



I had an interesting time shopping last night. What happened was that my wife splurged at J.Crew last Sunday morning, so this opened the purse strings for yours truly. So yesterday I acquired the following:

Painting supplies:

2 Citadel TIN BITZ paints
2 GW Foundation Mechrite Red paints
2 GW Foundation Gretchin Green paints
2 GW Foundation Iyanden Darksun paints
1 Foundry PRUSSIAN BLUE PALETTE (3 paint set)
1 Privateer Press P3 Standard Studio Paint Brush

I have to have the Foundation paints as I undercoat with black and these paints just give complete coverage on one application. The PP brush has been a pleasant surprise, which is why I'm getting another. The Foundry paints are an experiment.

I also picked up a few miniatures:

2 blisters Foundry Late Roman Fully Armoured Cataphract Cavalry. These are for the EIR project and I need to kitbash a couple of pikemen for the elephants.

1 Reaper Dark Heaven Garnuk the Ogre
1 Reaper Dark Heaven Kagonk Ogre Chieftain
1 Reaper Dark Heaven Vourgha Ogre Warrior
I just love the big Bob Olley sculpts. Fantastic.

1 box Perry Miniatures Napoleonic British. Got to have them. I will be doing these up with the Victrix box towards the end of this year.

1 Newline Designs 25mm Ancient Galatian Warband of 24 Foot & 3 Mounted. These are for a 28mm 300 point Impetus army I'm devising.

I live in a town where there are only two products locally available for my hobby, being White Dwarf magazine and Delta Ceramcote paints. So shopping is a lot of fun for me.

Workbench Update - EIR and Menoth

These are from a unit of 17 Gripping Beast EIR Auxiliary archers. They are very close to completion. I need to highlight the flesh and tunics, finish the bows, paint the fletchings and flock the bases. Nice miniatures.
This picture shows a unit of ten Menoth Flameguard Cleansers I started working on earlier this week. These are Kev White sculpts. Sweet. You can also see a warjack (an Avatar of Menoth) that I'm building, another, a Repenter, that I'm painting, and a couple of Sunburst artillery pieces I'm building. In the background is the Khador jack, Beast-09, which I am working on the base of.

This is merely an update that, for the most part, I'm making to keep me motivated. I'll post the completed EIR archers in maybe 3 days. The Menoth miniatures will certainly take longer.

Praetorians Redux!

This is a second unit of Gripping Beast EIR Praetorian miniatures with LBMS shield transfers, and they are based for WAB. The Primus Pilus has joined the front rank.
Both units of Praetorians together...last stand.


This is what happens when you put colour besides white on the shield face you are going to put the transfer on. My advice is to follow Mr. Hales' instructions to the letter.

Praetorians!

These are all Gripping Beast miniatures and they are based for WAB. I should say that I don't know for sure the provenance of the standard. A Tribune has picked up a shield and pushed his way to the front rank, no doubt emulating the glorius Julius Caesar. I quite like the way red and blue work together. I am embarking on a red and blue phase without any doubt. It could last for years. If I'm lucky.