Heaven and Earth a Samurai Project

Ladies and gentlemen may introduce to you, Takeda’s army.

I did my basic flock mix today and will apply grass tufts tomorrow. The Flock mix that I use is a blend of things.
I use sifted dirt, Fine Turf Green Grass ( Woodland Scenics), dried coffee grounds, and a random assortment of inexpensive tea bags ( different colors light to dark). Mix and there you have it a great looking Flock Mix that is easy to make and the best part inexpensive.
And before you start asking what ratios and brands of tea I used. Just play around what you have laying the house because the hell if I can remember.

Alcohol might have been involved =P

Placed refrigerator magnets on the bottom of the newly painted Samurai today.
Hopefully tomorrow I will be basing these.

So I am almost finished with Takeda’s main force. All I have left to paint is the knot work and heads.

So I am starting my last ten bodyguards for Takeda’s army tonight and these will be the last of Takeda’s main force. After this is complete I will be working on bulking up Uesugi’s army. It currently only has 90 men in his force. I will be adding an additional 110 men and when that is complete I will be working on Allies for each army.

What the hell was I thinking when I started this? 🥴

I must say that these Bandits and Brigands are fun miniatures to paint up.

I finished this model tonight. I find myself painting better faces when I have a better sculpted miniature.

I still need to do the knot work then on to the next 5.

The first model for Takeda’s command section is none other than Takeda himself . This and the rest of the command section will be Perry models.

Well after 41 days of my 30 minute a day painting challenge I finally finished painting my 40 Ashigaru block. The decals and basing will have to wait till I order some supplies.

For my 30 minute challenge today I did some base color work and blacked out the arm armor. I also did some tan under coating to prep for the red on the banners, swords, and the spears.

So after some thought I decided that the Jig I made for was to narrow for my fat fingers. It need to have for space in-between the posts to allow for better use.

When the doctor says you can only have one drink a day you should save it for when you are painting miniatures and then do it with style people =D
Day 9 of the 30 minute painting challenge and this is what I was able to accomplish. I finished painting the ten man group and all that is left is a wash then on to the next ten. I am at the half way point 😉 Woo hoo!

So I started the next ten Ashigaru and I am already on Day 7 of the painting 30 minutes a day challenge. Today I painted the faces the only tint I used was P3 Midlund Flesh. I spent about an hour and a half painting these. I painted each face one at a time start to finish. I then went back and darkened the eyes with a brown is black and painted the lower lip with a reddish flesh tone mixed from the three colors from yesterday . I applied a washes from P3 Caspian and Kossite flesh wash and used for the first time Citadel Reikland Fleshshade. When all was dry I painted the whites of the eyes with a 10/0 brush then used my new secret weapon for the black dot. The Pigma MICRON .003 pen.

The base coat of the flesh toned these are the paints that I used. 2parts Gun Corps Brown, 1part Meaty Ochre, and .5 to .75 part Khardic Flesh. By the way all are from Privateer Press P3 paint line.

Well I got quite a bit done today on day 6. All 10 are finished as far as painting is concerned. I need to apply decals and basing material but I will do that when all 40 are finished. I also will be adding fridge magnets to the bottom of all 40 as well.

For tomorrow I will finish the knot work and start on the heads.

Well I got back to my Ashigaru a little sooner than I thought. I applied the reds and now am waiting for them to dry. I will come back and do a little clean up work and that might be all for today but I might start on the knot work 🤨 maybe!

This morning I have gone back and painted tan on the areas that I will have a bright red such as the armor plates on the arms and shins, spears, sword sheaths and as well as the banners. Time to give my eyes a rest and continue with the red later on this evening, I might even be able to get some washes tonight too.

So I got about about two hours of painting done today and I think that makes up for the lack of painting the last two days. I realized that I started wrong by painting the pants and shirt first instead of the armor. I usually paint the armor first so I can dry brush and not worry about the other base colors. I will remember this for other 30 I need to paint. So today I dry brushed the armor did some black out line and applied tan on the banners.

So I started painting my 40 Ashigaru Yari block and decided to go back to my routine of painting at least 30 minutes a day 10 troops at a time to keep it from becoming overwhelming. I will try to post photos every day to show you all just how fast it will go.

This was 45 minutes of painting and was able to get my basecoats done.

I was able to get some work done on my 40 man block of Yari troops this weekend. I am leaving the heads off so I can try and do a better job of painting the faces, we will see about that =P

20 advancing archers ready for the battlefield. Now I have to paint up 40 more Yari Ashigaru, oh boy what was I thinking =P

Now where did I put those darn decals at?

The models are Warlord plastic ashigaru and the pavise are scratch built using wood craft stick and coffee stirs.

Here is a sample model I painted up of my advancing archer unit with a Pavise. I will be adding arrows later 😉 When all is finished I will have two units of ten men each.

So I saw a photo of a Manga(Don’t ask I have no idea what it was) it was of a line of archers advancing with pivises raised and the archers following close behind. Well I like it so much that I had to make it and here is my start.

This weekend I was able to finish that last six of mistress Yae’s retinue and to be honest I am glad that one is over too. On to something simpler to paint like some Pulp Figures. I will be using mistress Yae  and her followers as my Samura Retinue for Test of Honour.

I only finished two of mistress Yae’s retinue I was hoping to finish four but I think I am getting better at painting female faces.

Well I started to paint the last of mistress Yae’s war band to night I think I will break them up to two sets of four just to make it easier to paint.

So I was playing around with some trees and minis.  The trees are bought from XtrainsModelTrains.com They are located in Washington State USA. The tree trunks I made using Balsa wood.

Oh I have not forgotten Mistress Yae and her female Samurai unit. I finished up three and have eight more to go. The first two I had a bit of trouble getting the eyes and skin tone down. I asked Dallas Kemp for some help and I think it paid off for Mistress Yae.

I needed some building so I made some out of coffee stirs and craft sticks I wanted to make a fishing village so I also need fishing accessories as well. I made the nets out of cheese cloth that I died using black tea. The fish I sculpted out of putty.

Check out these blasts from the past first is a Dragon from the Grenadier company circa late 80’s and a  1/35th scale Samurai from the Tamiya circa early 70’s

I also wanted to do another conversion using the new Ninjas of Iga and the heads that you get from the Masked Men set both are from Test of Honour.  The conversion was simple I just cut off the heads of the Ninjas and replaced them with the Masked Men heads. I also used putty to hide the seam where the heads meet the body I tried to make it look like the hoods of the Ninja suits.

This was something I saw when I was a kid and it stuck with me till this day. Ninjas with demon masks.

I the Samurai movie heven and Earth (1990) Tekeda had a warrior mistress named  Yae she commanded a small unit of female Samurai. so I decided to make it for my Tekeda force. Now I know we should not make units that we saw in a movie for it is usually not accurate but some times you have to go with the rule of cool.

basically female Samurai look just like their male counter part because of all the armor that they are wearing. I found some bald female heads from Statuesque miniatures and I found out that I am not that good of a sculptor so I decided to use horse tails for there ponytails. that was quick and easy. then I sculpted some bandanas and hair which was easy but you need to have paitcents and take your time.

At this time I wanted to add some civilians so I got some of the Perry’s to add a little flavor to the table. I also painted up a limited edition unarmored Samurai and monk as well as a palanquin from A W Miniatures.

I painted up two clans first was the Shimazu clan then the Okubo clan the one that I play. For the back banners for the Okubo I used post it notes and it seemed to worked out.

At this time I was introduced to Test of Honour and was I hooked I found a clan I wanted to play the, Okubo clan.  Their Samurai had butterflies as sashimonos and Ashigaru had the wing of a butterfly. I also painted a miniature for my friend that wanted to give away prices for his tournament  so I obliged him.

I also painted up Samurai squads for Tekeda as well and I was able to finish these in a week. Painting at least a half hour a day really is a great way to bulk out an army.

I also decided to paint up Tekeda’s allied generals as well.

Being a very honorable Samurai Takeda was not one for Arquebus so archers is what he would be using.

I decided to make some barricades for Uesugi’s Arquebus squads. I used bamboo skewers and it did the trick.

So painting 20 Cavalry stands even using assembly line techniques took me almost three weeks but the results look pretty  good in my opinion.

I started to build 20 cavalry stands.

As I stated earlier I was going to have to paint up two armies so I decided that Tekeda needed some love too so I painted up the rest of the 40 man squad of Ashigaru spearmen and I also added decals (water transfers) I used Veni Vidi Vici decals and I love them the only problem is that they don’t make a large selection for Samurai.

Tekeda loved his Cavalry so I started to collect more for his force.

And here is my Samurai Kingdom of Men for Kings of War. I think we only played three games. Don’t you love friends that go “Oh look a new Shiny” ! Well it got me to start painting up my Samurai armies and yes you heard right. I am painting two Samurai armies because I know none of my friends will paint one up on there own.

And every general needs a friend so here is a Dragon. In Kings of War you can have War Beasts so I dug out this old Clan War miniature out it is a Earth Dragon I painted back in the late nineties.

Damn I am old =P

Every army needs a general so here is my interpretation of Uesugi Kenshin

I decided to make it a 20 man Samurai squad

I also painted up a Samurai squad as well.

Uesugi loved his Arquebus so that was next 20 man squad.

So the assembly line painting worked out very well I was able to paint up 40 miniatures in about two weeks. I was painting at least half an hour a night and  would average about fifty minutes a night. This is a lot of dry brush and wash and I think they came out alright.

This was the start of my 40 man squad of Asigaru and a little inspiration that I like to watch as well.

At this time a friend of mine got me to play Kings of War and it was fun very beer and pretzel but thats what we do when we play. He told me that I should build my s=Samurai for the Kingdom of Men and that lit the fire under my butt to get building up my Uesegi army so I did.

This would be my first Ashigaru for Uesugi Kenshin  a prototype that turned out OK

The first ten Ashigaru for Tekeda are finished but many more to come.

The first ashigaru I painted was a prototype for  Takeda Shingen’s force. I was overall happy with the paint scheme that I used the Mon for the backbanner would come later because I knew I would not paint them on but use decals.

So I started to collect what I could afford and that was at the time Wargames Factory Samurai and Ashigaru sets later to become Warlord Games Samurai and Ashigaru for Test of Honour and there Pike and Shotte line of sets. Now I know that there are a lot of people that don’t like these sets because they are fiddly with lots of bits but if it was not for these miniatures and to be honest the price of these miniatures I would have never got in to Samurai Wargaming at all.

So here are what I painted up first some Monks from the Assault Group line . This was the last miniatures that I painted with out the use of glasses and magnifiers.

Meet Dean this is the man that started me down the path of the Samurai with this game at Enfilade a historical miniature wargaming con here in Olympia, WA USA. Dean was running this game and I was lucky enough to be able to play. The miniatures that you see here are all painted by Dean I was blown away by the detail of the miniature and the level of painting that Dean put into his miniatures. To be frank I was surprised that he allowed us to touch them, ha ha ha .