Waaagh! It’s Spring Clean 2023!

This is a Perry sculpt and comes with several of their cavalry sets. I painted the model as normal then glazed heavily thinned blue ink all over the model to accentuate the bitter cold. The figure will eventually be placed under ‘ice ‘ when the vignette is completed.

I wanted to recreate the painting below. This was a complicated kit bash and also involved a lot of sculpting with Greenstuff.  The right arm (nearly all the parts are Perry Miniatures plastics) is from one of the Wars of The Roses boxes, the left is a French line infantry officers, the body, torso horse and helmet are from the French Heavy cavalry box and the head and legs are from the French Chasseurs.

All the shoulder detail and buttons etc were removed from the arms. The buttons were also removed from the legs. The helmet horsehair was altered and additions were made with putty. The head was cut and drilled out of the helmet. All the saddlery was removed from the horse. I also removed the plume and bag from the chasseurs hat and added a new bag to it.

I sculpted all of the new saddle, bags and blankets etc. I refined a lot of the details ( adding facial hair etc)  and sculpted more fur on the bearskin and added a coat with fur trim to the model. Finally I added a wire lance ( the point was filed) and a cartridge box from a Warlord French line infantryman and a sword from the Heavy Cavalry box by Perry.

I have already showed one of the knights and Richard but I have now managed to complete the rest of the unit. Michael Perry has done a superb job with these and I used heads from several different Wars of the Roses plastic boxed sets, although there is more than enough variety even within the box to make every figure unique. I altered the charging lance arms on several to make more of them with couched lance and to make sure that these arms matched the armour sculpted on the torsos.

I painted the knights and horses separately to enable me to access details easier especially with the knights where I had to paint livery badges on their tabards. Richard’s royal coat of arms would have been impossible to do otherwise with the detail I wanted to portray. The only snag I found was that a lot of the bodies wouldn’t fit onto the horses because of the angle I had glued their swords scabbards on. This resulted in me having to remove them, refit them and tidy up where necessary. The flags are by the very talented Petes Flags.

I must have assembled these about twenty years ago. After correcting a lot of my originally shoddy work I added some extra bits to them and drilled out all the barrels and vents on the guns barrels. My Wow stick makes light work of such tasks. I used a variety of blacks to ensure the model had a lot of tonal variation. I started from a black Halfords spray undercoat. The trousers were base coated Scale 75 Graphene Grey and I used this colour mixed with Vallejo Ivory to highlight the cloth. Petroleum Grey from Scale 75 was used to shade the cloth. Brown leather was basecoated GW Rhinox hide and this was then highlighted with GW Doombull Brown, Mournfang Brown and finally with XV88. Several of the belts and ammo packs etc were simply highlighted with ( for the boots ) Graphene Grey and the rest of the black areas with GW Administratum Grey.

Red was used as a spot colour on all the minis. Mephiston Red was highlighted with Evil Sunz Scarlet and Wild Rider Red and a sparingly applied extreme highlight of Fire Dragon Bright. Shading was either on the plume Liquitex Raw Umber Ink or on cloth areas Mephiston Red mixed with Word Bearers Red by GW.

The skin was base coated with the very old GW Goblin Green ( yes I still have two useable pots!) and then washed with a heavily diluted mix of Sap Green and Carbon Black inks by Liquitex. The original colour was the reapplied and highlighted with this mixed with Army Painter Daemonic Yellow. Brush applied Vallejo Matt varnish matted down the glossy ink. The skin was finished with a glaze of Inktense Yellow by Scale75.

Metal areas were base coated with GW Leadbelcher and then washed with diluted Carbon Black Ink. The original colour was then glazed back and edge highlights and scratches added with GW Stormhost Silver.

Having titled my project with the word Waaagh I thought it was about time I addressed this aspect of my Spring Clean Challenge. I got all my 40K Orks out of the garage and had a look at what I had. I had assembled the Boyz years ago, however I had not done a particularly good job. This will need corrected as I progress through this part of my project. Mould lines will need cleaned properly and guns drilled out and in some cases I am going to have to completely reassemble the models.

The two vehicles I had also built but I want to do a quite a bit more work on them and add details such as chains and car body mesh etc. The bikes were all still attached to their sprues. The only problem I had was that I hated the riders and drivers and crew. This was at the time of Gorkamorka and some of the Ork plastics were not exactly to my taste. I used five spare Boyz and converted them so they could ride the bikes. The hands holding the handle bars was the trickiest bit. I used hands that were designed to hold shootas and cut them off at the wrists and rotated them until they ‘worked’. The bodies legs and arms were all then ‘made’ to result in a convincing rider. I was really pleased with how these turned out.

This was a fairly simple kit bash and involves using the crowned head from the command sprue in the Perry Foot Knights 1450-1500 boxed set with a horse and rider from the Mounted Men at Arms boxed set. The head was actually designed to be used to make a dismounted version of Richard.

I like to vary the colours I use in units of horse so the following are the mixes I used for my unit of Mounted Men at Arms 1450-1500 by Perry Miniatures.

All paints used are from Colour Party’s horse set of paints unless mentioned.

Palomino: Base Palomino, wash with Army Painter Soft Tone, highlight with base mixed with Vallejo Ivory. The horse’s mane, tail and socks were painted Ivory and also washed with Soft Tone before being highlighted with the base colour.

White: this was painted Ivory and then washed with a diluted mix of Space Wolves Grey Contrast Paint and water. Thin glazes of Ivory were then used to create definition on the raised areas of the horse.

Black: The miniature was painted with Scale 75 Petroleum Grey and then shaded with any black. Highlights were then Scale 75 Rainy Grey and final highlights with GW Administratum Grey. I used this colour to highlight the horse hair as well. Socks were painted Ivory and washed with Space Wolves Grey before being highlighted with the base colour.

Light Bay: Starting from a base of Light Bay wash with Army Painter Light Tone before highlighting up to the original colour before final highlights are applied with that mixed with Ivory.

Grey Bay: Wash the Grey Bay with GW Basilacanum Grey Contrast. highlight with Administratum Grey.

Brown. Base with Vallejo Flat Brown and wash with Liquitex Raw Umber Ink. Highlight with the original colour mixed with GW Zandri Dust.

Chestnut : Wash the Chestnut with Scale 75 Inktensity Chestnut Ink. Highlights are applied with the base colour and further highlighted with that colour mixed with Vallejo Yellow Ochre.

The Brown. Light and Dark Bay’s horses socks, manes and tails were painted black and highlighted with Administratum Grey. Thar Brown and Rainy Grey were used depending on horse colour for the horses’s hooves. The former was washed with Agrax Earthshade and the latter with Basilicanum Grey.

This was built straight out of the box. The spirals on the lance are two colours : Mephiston Red from GW and Petroleum Grey from Scale 75. The armour on this model was a base of Vallejo Air Duraluminium washed with a blue / black ink wash. This wash was heavily thinned with water. Because of the ‘blue’ result I then highlighted up with glazes of GW Grey Knights Steel ( it has a bluish tone to the silver) and final highlights were applied with GW Stormhost Silver.