Men In Boxes

"At least, the sun will be on our backs," muttered Brogda the Red as he clutched at the rails of his chariot while Cumal his charioteer  manouvered to the front of the Keltoi battle line. "May the Morrigan feast well today, and not on my innards!" For weeks, Keltoi scouts have followed the advance of an orcish host from the deep south. Now, the green horde of monsters have reached the outermost village of the Keltoi Irinae tribe. With only a vast grassy field separating the monsters from the village, Brogda and the Keltoi weaponsmen he could muster plan to meet the invaders at the village edge and hold them until reinforcing  Irinae from other villages arrive. The women and children have left the village together with half the scouts two days past and reinforcements should be arriving this morning. "They better be bringing their chariots and horsemen," Cumal said to the brooding Brogda. " The orcs have wolves...  and trolls." "Balor ...

Trying out some 1:72 armies on the battle mat. These were shot with daylight and I'm finding the tone a bit too bright. I may have to adjust the green a bit. More on that soon.

Grenadiers à Cheval de la Garde Impériale on a simple handpainted battle mat made from board.

The Spanish contingent in early Punic War Carthaginian armies was quite small, but as the Spanish province grew so too did the numbers of Spanish troops in Carthaginian service, though their quality varied considerably. Nevertheless they were an important part of the armies of their masters. The Spanish infantry with the large oval shield are scutarii, heavy infantry named after their shield, who made up the bulk of the Spaniards. 1:72  figures from HäT Industrie set # 8019 Spanish Infantry

1:72 figures from Hat Industrie and Miniart primed and based. posted from Bloggeroid

 From Hat Industries' 1/72 Punic Wars range. Painted in acrylics.

 These are the light infantry figures from the set 8020 Carthaginian African infantry.  I'n not happy with the way these turned out so I'll be repainting them soon. This is actually the very first Hat Industrie set I bought.

A pity the set only had 2 poses of the Celtic-Iberians. Nonetheless, I enjoyed painting these.

After base painting the 1/72 Zvezda greek warriors, I whipped out my reference materials and the ingredients for my magic wash -- my illustration acrylic inks from Magic Color and Pledge Wipe & Shine Floor Polish aka Future Floor Polish! My favorite shades from Magic Color are Golden Sand and Earth Brown. I'm an illustrator and I've always liked experimenting with my art materials on scale models and figures. I've discovered that these acrylic inks, combined with the Pledge Wipe & Shine make excellent scale model washes due to their viscosity, ease of application, mixability, vibrance and flexibility. Flexibility is very imortant, especially for these soft plastic figures. Modellers have complained about having paint chipping off from finished figures. This is because of the plastic's pliability, making the inflexible paint detach from surfaces that "move." By having the innate flexilbity of acrylics and combined with the covering properties o...