15mm War & Conquest figure

One of West Wind's new War and Conquest figures.  Almost spot on 15mm foot to eye.  To small for me to paint anyway.  I've put them on eBay!

Grand Manner Roman Galley 3: Some issues with shields

Prior to undercoating

I have finished the filling and sanding on the main hull and have now undercoated it.  It's such a big model it took a full can of Humbrol aerosol to cover it!  I put on some paint today as a test and I think it will look quite striking as I am going for a yellow and red colour scheme.

I have a few issues so far. I am not brilliant at using my hands so the filling of the (quite substantial) gaps between the bow and stern pieces and the main hull isn't brilliant.  I am running out of time, however, so I just needed to get on with it.  The main problem is the one of the shields mounted down the side of the guard rails.  I really wish Grand manner hadn't done this as it sets it in a particular period.  At this time (46 BC) the Romans were using the spined, curved top scutum as depicted in the excellent new Warlord Games plastics.  The flat oval ones were used by auxiliaries from a little later (before they were universally adopted a few hundred years later).  So, the shields are wrong for the period.   

I don't have any reference books on Roman Warships (there isn't an Osprey, surprisingly, as there is for Greek warships) so I am restricted to Greece and Rome at War and Warfare in the Classical World. Neither of them, worryingly, give any information on rigging!  This illustration, from Greece and Rome at War, is based on a relief from Ostia, of about 30 BC and clearly shows spined shields overlapping along the guard rails.

This illustration, from the same book, based on another relief from Praeneste, is from slightly later.  The shields on the railing seem to have been replaced by a solid bulwark (the Grand Manner ship uses the classic Roman X rail design) with, it is thought, decorative shields painted on.  Of course, the shields my not be present because the marines on board are carrying them.

Interestingly, Warfare in the Classical World has a reconstruction clearly based on the classical original from this relief.  The interpretation of the ram here is exactly as Grand Manner have done it.  The placement of the castle is interesting as the illustrator has interpreted it as being with the sides at 45 degrees to the side of the ship's bulwark, rather than parallel.  Is this what the original shows, or is it an attempt to show perspective (which would be very unusual in ancient painting)?  Another decision to make!

Ever since I bought the Osprey Roman Legionary 58 BC - AD 69 I had wanted to have a unit of marines in this striking blue colour.  I did order some Warlord Games flat auxiliary shields to match the ones cast on the galley but I have now decided to go for the authentic shields they come with and not worry about the difference in shape.  

I went into Orc's Nest last week but they didn't have any of the Warlord Caesarian bolt throwers so I have just ordered a couple online.  Let's hope they actually arrive as the auxiliary shields never did and although the money was taken from PayPal I never received an order acknowledgement.

Anyway, more hull painting tonight as I puzzle as to what colour to paint the decks.  All the wooden decks on boats I have seen are a pale grey in colour but I don't really have the right colour. 

Grand Manner Roman Galley 2: Assembly begun

Having lost a lot of weeks with travelling I have suddenly realised, with some sense of panic, that Colours is only just over a month away and I need to complete this galley and a unit of Roman marines to go with it.  I have decided to use the Warlord Games plastic Caesarians for these as I have already started them.  I have ordered some metal oval auxiliary shields for them from Warlord.

Today I have glued on some of the main parts and found that superglue really sticks resin well (as I find that it hardly sticks anything else I use it for).  In fact, so well that you only have a few seconds to position everything correctly!  I have not stuck on the starboard fence rail yet as I have run out of glue. The two oar galleries and one fence took a whole tube!  

There are quite a lot of gaps to fill and I had to do some sanding and filing to get parts to fit.  I intend to have it ready for undercoating this weekend.

Ramming speed!

The Legatus hasn't painted anything for well over a month now. This is for a number of reasons, not least of which being that I have been out of the country for more than three weeks.  However, there is something else: a loss of confidence in my painting ability.  Hopefully this will return.  In the meantime a suitably nautical lifeline has been thrown by Big Red Bat.  He is looking for Roman galleys for a game he is running and remembered I had mentioned that I had the Grand Manner one (unpainted of course).  So I have now offered to paint (and possibly crew - I've always wanted to paint some Roman marines) it.  This will give me the opportunity to paint something which isn't  a figure and, hopefully help me recapture my painting skills.

I've always liked Roman galleys and one of my main interests in these were caused by the fine illustrations by Italian artist Ruggero Giovannini (1922-1983) for the Ben Hur comic strip which appeared in Look and Learn magazine in 1969.  Running for a suitably epic twenty weeks it contained several fine representations of galleys.

So I plan to ascend to the loft tomorrow and locate my galley which, I am sure, will be just as complicated to build as I fear!  Its the oars, its the oars!  And the rigging. And the sail.

Romans everywhere!

Workbench today

I meant to sit down and have a good go at my Romans this weekend but for some reason I didn't feel like painting, despite the nice, bright weather.  Mostly, this is because when I have new figures it seems such a long journey before they are anything like ready that I give up before I start.  I knew that however much I did this weekend they would be nowhere close to being finished so, oddly I didn't start them until late this afternoon.

The other problem is, of course, that I had meant to start a unit of 2nd Century AD Romans but then with the arrival of my Legio II Augusta shield transfers for my Warlord plastic EIR figures I wanted to get them done and then this week I bought a box of Warlord's Caesarian plastics too.  So instead of twenty four figures to start work on I had over seventy.  Most off putting! 

In the end I did base the whole Praetorian Aventine Cohort and the rest of them should be ready for undercoating tomorrow.  I even started to paint four of them.  I only have four EIR's under way but am now working on a dozen of the Caesarian plastics.  Well, they are not all plastics as I ordered the metal command set direct from Warlord which arrived the next day, along with some LBMS shield transfers.  Taking a little longer to arrive was my second Aventine order of shield transfers for the Praetorians plus a command set and 16 auxiliary archers.  So I have no excuse to delay now.

One thing I did agonise over for a while was what colour to undercoat them. I usually use white undercoat but the Romans, of course, have quite a lot of metal on them which would suggest a black undercoat.  However, I don't really like black undercoat as I find it difficult to see what I am painting and given that I use enamels and not acrylics they don't cover so well over black.  As I am painting my Romans with white tunics I decided to stick to white undercoat.  This does mean that I will have to paint the metal parts with black which adds extra work.  Still, it's better than the three or four coats of white it takes to cover a black undercoat though.

Finally, I found a Copplestone sculpted Foundry Casarian centurion which I had painted a long time ago.  He needs tidying up (he was never properly finished -I had to rush him for the Fishbourne game) so will get him done in order to give me a nice acheivable target for this week.