Tuesday 16 June 2009

Essex Islamic Persians

These guys are close enough to be used for late Sassanian aristocracy with lance and bow:

There's a good mix of figure types: two archers and three lancers, on two kinds of armoured horses and two unarmoured. I have 48 of them in total.

These are the first in an attempt to revitalise my older figures, which have grown rather dilapidated.

There's the usual assortment of broken spears, paint damage and so on, but there is also a problem that has appeared over a number of years. I don't know if anyone has come across it, but basically it's to do with the use of enamel paints and enamel varnish. Over time, these have dulled down very considerably, and a full repaint is needed.

In practice, it turned out not to be as bad as I had expected. The dull paint takes an acrylic highlight beautifully, giving the overall effect of a a layered paint job.

The artist's varmish really finishes it all off, bringing out the colours very nicely indeed. I also replaced all of the lances with Xyston 15mm pikes. These are 5cm long, which is just about right for 25mm lances. They can also be cut down for shorter spears or javelins.
As with Gripping Beast figures, the horse trappings took a lot of effort!

2 comments:

  1. Very nice units. I have some horse archers to paint up but i'm having trouble getting started again after a break. I like your basing method of having them twisting and turning around on the base.

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  2. Thanks! You can't tell from the photos, but I've put them on 5cm deep bases so that they are the same as my Gripping Beast figures, which really need the extra depth. Essex figures don't, so I was able to play around with their positions a little.

    Cheers
    Paul

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