2013-07-24: K-Nig-Hts of Morr Work in Progress

The base coating is plodding along.  I think, think I tell yah, I have found a way to get a decent looking black armor without taking too much time.  Base coat of black with a little blue grey mixed in, and then take a wide flat brush to apply dryish blue grey paint with the side of the brush.  I have yet to take the next step and apply washes or white highlights.  I might not try to do too much with it and rely on a gloss varnish to make it look shiny.


The besides black, I plan on making use of white, muted green and either purple or red.  I was going with the red but then I thought that it would be hard to make the purple not look garish or too muted.  Especially on the lances.  But, a red with purple shading might pull it off OK and give some pop.
Unless I get much more hobby time then I expect (I have a guest visiting this weekend, bees may need some love, the garden is actually in ok shape but there is that toddler thing that demands attention) I don’t think I will get them done-done by the start of August.
I think August’s goal will be to assemble the halberdiers and great swords and perhaps paint a small batch of one or both.  I definitely have to scale down my painting level expectations on the halberdiers.  I just can’t pour in the level of detail into all of them and hope to get them done anytime soon.

2013-07-03: Double Down

My June pledge was to do a unit of Bear Riders to sub for Demi-Chickens.  Overtime at work and pressing garden needs kept me from doing more than building the bears.  The building was also delayed by having to order bits that I neglected to buy when I first ordered the knight bits from the DG kit.  But, while waiting for those bits to arrive I did also work on building some Knights of Morr for the Inner Circle unit I have in my army list.  So, I am going to paint both units in July.

Here is the unit of 6 bear riders I built.  The bears are a toy that I scrounged off the web.  It took a while to find a toy that was sufficiently detailed and realistic and the right size.  I kind of wish I had some alternative poses but oh well.  Three of the knights are demigryph knights and three are regular knights.  I had ordered the DG bits but afterwards figured I could use the regular knights which I have a surplus of.  I added bed rolls from the Ourtrider/Pistolier kit to add ‘something’ to the back, snipped shields for back supports, and various banner topper or other bits to act as a pommel.  I think I might also try to get the sheathed swords on as well.  The straps are strips of paper that I glued into place and then struck on the idea of adding a couple drops of super thin super glue which wicked into the paper and then hardened making them more durable than untreated paper… and probably less likely to have issues curling or falling apart when the paint is added.

And this photo of the Knights of Morr was taken before priming. It was a humid day and I had some graininess in the resulting coat, but currently the Frozen North has seen about 2 weeks of off and on rain with no end in sight so I risked it.  Could have been worse.  Three of them will have scythes (and be proper great weapons) while the others have lances.  In the future I will make more and will make two units.  I have to track down some more zombie scythes for the conversion however.

I will be attempting to do black armor (which I am not looking forward to) and white/grey horses/bears.  I figured that they might be going for the ‘riding a pale horse’ thing and from a painting view point it would be much easier than trying to get a black knight to stand out from a black horse.