Husaria - the Polish Hussars of the 17th Century (part 2)

In this blog post I continue the description of building my Polish army for the 1620s, starting with the famous ‘Winged’ Hussars.  In this part I get on to painting. (See Part 1 - here.)

Polish Winged Hussars looking awesome!

I am by no means an expert painter and so will not go in to too much detail, but will instead talk through some of the processes I used, and any tips I picked up along the way.

The horses were black undercoated, as already described in Part 1, and painted separately from the riders. Not much to report. I used triads of browns for most of the horses, with a grey added in for good measure.  I went for bright saddle cloths but resisted the temptation to try and spruce these up with any free hand detail. I reckoned on neat stripes looking better than poorly executed detailing.  After the paint was throughly dried I brushed on gloss varnish as a protective layer. 

Foundry Hussar horses ready for their varnish.

I also like to use a black undercoat on 17th century cavalrymen as I find it a good base for armour, and it also helps hide mistakes / missed bits! In my previous TYW armies I kept armour very dark as it was typical in the West to blacken armour to protect it from rust.  I made the Hussars armour brighter as this seems to have been more typical for them to not blacken armour (I guess they had more people available to shine their armour!).  For my first unit I chose several different shades of red for the Hussars’ clothing and cloaks, to make them look part of the same unit, without giving them a uniform.  Red was considered a higher status colour, and so popular with the noble Hussar companions. Yellow boots or shoes were also a must-have fashion accessory and so I used a Yellow Ochre for these on the figures which was a good match for the pictures in the Osprey books. 

Foundry and TAG riders with armour and flesh colours done. Numbering is to match riders to mounts.

One item on the figures that was a ‘first’ for me was the animal pelts.  These were very popular for the wealthier Hussars, and leopard skins seem to have been most popular.  It was not unusual to make fake leopard skins by adding spots to pelts from other animals.  I had never painted leopard skins before and so I resorted to searching YouTube for a suitable tutorial.  I found one (link) which was nice and straight forward, and I was quite pleased with the result.  Here are the steps I used. (All colours are from Vallejo Model Color range.)

First 131 Orange Brown as a base, leaving a gap at the edge.

Random ‘splodges’ added in 169 Black.

Base coat highlighted with 121 Yellow Ochre.

Splodges highlighted with 140 Flat Brown.

Splodges further highlighted with 121 Yellow Ochre

Edges painted with 124 Iraqi Sand.

Edges highlighted with 5 Ivory and 4 Off White.

I was quite pleased with the result.  At a wargaming, arm’s length, distance it looks like a good approximation of a leopard skin, although I don’t think it would fool a real leopard.  On the basis that many of the cloaks worn by the Hussars were ‘fake’, this might actually be a point in my favour! 

One other discovery perhaps worth pointing out was painting reds.  Although I have been a fan of black undercoating for a long time I have always struggled with reds (and yellows!) on top of black. As I wanted to use quite a lot of reds here I decided to investigate the Games Workshop (GW) paint ranges.  Those 40k Spaces Marines come in some very bright colours and so perhaps they have a trick or two up their sleeve?  I often catch the GW painting tutorials on YouTube, and one of their presenters, has recently gone solo (Duncan Rhodes, link) with his own tutorials.  These are all super easy to follow with all of the steps layed out very clearly.  After watching a few vids about some very red Space Marines I invested in a few of the GW red paints.  GW have a paint system which includes ‘Base’ colours, to give a nice opaque covering (even over black!) and ‘Layer’ colours, to highlight the Base colours.  The two red Base colours I have used give really good base coverage, even over black.  (You’ll have to excuse the strange names which I understand are used for the sake of creating a unique IP.) Khorne Red (Base) with Wazdakka Red (Layer) gives a nice carmine red odour.  Mephiston Red (Base) with Evil Sunz (Layer) gives a nice bright red.  I am pleasantly impressed and will be using these a lot, I suspect, in my Polish army.  

Lances made using 80mm brass spears (from Warlord) and with a small bead added to each. Undercoated with black spray primer. 

These reds certainly came in handy when it came to the lances.  These are typically shown as painted red, often with patterns.  I decided to keep the lances red, but fairly plain, with just a small detail on the hand guard.  (I will try to work up to stripes etc. for future units.) I painted and varnished the lances separately before attaching them to the figures.  One of the striking features of the hussars are the brightly coloured, swallow tailed lance pennons.  I bought some sets of these from Battle Flag (link).  I cut these out with a modelling blade and then glued them on to the lances. 

Once dry, I painted the edges of the flags (very important!).

Lance pennons and flag attached, with edges to be touched up.

Final steps were to glue the riders on to the mounts, matt varnish over the complete model, and then gluing the lances on to the riders. It was great to finally add the lances; the figures seemed to come to life with the lances in their hands!

A finished Hussar with his lance added.

To complete the unit I followed my normal basing approach.  The figures were glued, two figures to each 50mm wide and 60mm deep MDF base, from Warbases (link). The bases were then covered in an earth coloured paint and PVA glue mix, and sharp sand sprinkled on to the mixture while it was still wet.  Once the PVA mix was dry it was dry brushed with a beige colour, and then static grass and tufts were glued on with more PVA.

Hussars glued to MDF bases from Warbases.

With a final fanfare of trumpets my first unit of Hussars was completed!

The finished unit charging in to action!

I really like the impression of the swirling lance pennons.

There they go.

Drone shot!

It feels pretty good to have the first unit done.  I realise that I have made a bit of a ‘song and dance’ over one unit of cavalry, but I really enjoyed putting it together, and trying out some new techniques.  I’m also pleased that the unit looks like I’d hoped it would, and should give a good impression of a 1620s Hussar formation.

Next in the painting queue is another unit of Hussars.  I look forward to pushing through a bit faster on this one, using all of the lessons learnt on this first unit. 

Until next time!

Andy @ FoGH.

 

New Paint, New Fur and New Research

I have been having a bit of a hobby hiatus over the summer as I prepared for the next big project.  This blog post describes some of the things I have been experimenting with and some of the research for the Swedish-Polish war.

Contrast Paint

Games Workshop remains a behemoth in the wargames industry and so their 2019 release of a new wonder paint has been on every conceivable wargames media channel.  Even I, who has only just discovered acrylics, was intrigued. I decided to buy a few select colours and try them out.  I also bought a spray can of the special primer recommended by GW for us with the Contrast paint.  As I'm sure you will have already seen  these new paints are designed to provide a base colour and initial shade by replicating a heavy wash over a light undercoat.  I had two hopes.  First was that these paints would provide a means to paint a lot of yellow uniformed troops for the Swedish Yellow Brigade which is planned. Secondly, that these paints would speed up painting the horses for the many cavalry units planned.

I prepared a cross section of spare figures from the lead pile.  Mounted and foot figures, using plastic and metals.

Warlord Pike and Shotte 28mm cavalry from their plastic box set.

28mm Pike and Shote infantry from (left to right): Avanpost, Warlord plastic (x2), Warlord metal and Perry metal (x2).

Undercoated with GW Wraith Bone primer.

Undercoated with GW Wraith Bone primer.

I was pleasantly surprised with the primer.  It went on very nicely and gave a smooth, even coat.  It was a bit of a shock for someone who has been undercoating in black for decades to see first hand what figures looked like in off-white.  I was amazed how much the details of the figure standout like this.

Just primer in the back rank, and primer washed with GW Agrax Earthshade in the front rank.

I had seen a YouTube video by a very good painter (see Sonic Sledgehammer Studio) where he had tried giving figures a wash of dark brown (GW Agrax Earthsahde) after priming and before base coats.  I decided to give this a go on some of the figures.

Then I was ready to start slopping on a heavy coat (as advised by GW) of the Contrast paints.  I must admit that I found this bit very hard!  It is a completely different approach to starting dark and building up to the light that I normally do with black undercoated figures.  I had also forgotten how much more difficult it is when you can't just miss a tricky-to-get-to bit and leave it black / primer coloured.

I was disappointed by the effect that I could get to with the horses.  I couldn't get the paint to work so well on the broader surfaces of a 28mm horse.  It also feels like the paint requires you to get it right first time. A second coat will often over darken and loose any shading effect.  I found the pre washed figures easier to work with, and I like the slightly more dingy look (see the left hand of each of the two sets musketeers below for the pre-washed figures.)  In most cases I was left wanting to do a further highlight to get to the level of contrast I wanted to get to.

"Table Ready"

The verdict.  I don't expect to change my basic approach because of these new paints.  I am going to stick with black undercoating and regular paint built up in layers.  However, just this very small experiment has got me to relook at my basic approach.  These new paints have resulted in me looking at a lot of other people's work and approaches, and reading a lot of paint / painting reviews.  So, while I was at first a bit disappointed that I hadn't discovered a quick route to painting Nirvana, I have come away with some smaller improvements to my approach due to the research:

• The near white undercoat does make looking at what you've got to paint so much easier.  I saw a lot of people talking about "zenithal highlighting" which seemed an interesting compromise between black and white undercoats.   I then read (on Twitter) Matt from Glenbrook Games writing about an approach he uses with an initial Vallejo Flat Brown dry brush over a black undercoat.  I have now used this a couple of times and it is great at showing the details on the figure, and for the very brown 17th century, getting figures closer to their table ready state.  Thanks, Matt!
• You don't have to use the Contrast paints over white, just over lighter colours.  The black (Black Templar) when thinned a bit is great for black horses and black armour, when used over brown or steel.
• I can get really good reds and yellows when starting over lighter colours.  I always struggle with these two colours with a black undercoat.  Even though I still don't use a whole white undercoat, I have started to do a base coat for these colours on the figure with a pale colour first.  Then adding the red or yellow.  
• The Contrast paints are a useful addition to the painters arsenal.  I am sure that I will find more uses over the coming months.

In closing on Contrast paints, I must say that several of my gaming buddies have had absolutely stunning results with the paints, and knocked out vast quantities of table ready figures in accelerated timescales.  Just like everything else, it is horses for courses.  I would recommend people have a play with a pot or two.  A bit of experimenting can throw up some interesting results, even if its not what you were expecting!

New Fur

My next big project is looking at the Battle of Dirschau 1627 between the Swedes and the Poles.  It has an interesting battlefield with, amongst other things, a lot of small streams and marshes.  I am looking at doing another teddy-bear fur mat for the terrain, but I haven't tackled streams and marsh yet.  I have some off-cuts from my last foray into fur and so I decided to experiment.

Antelope Brown short faux-fur.

Early stages were straightforward and followed my earlier approach (see earlier post, Fun With Fur).  My cheapo Amazon dog trimmer does sterling work on shaving all the way down to the backing material for the roads / streams etc., or just a light trim with the depth guards on.  Sharpie marker is a handy way to draw out designs before shaving.

A messy outdoor job.

Lots of combing required to get rid of shaved fur and a job best done outdoors.  Small scissors are useful for making more subtle trims to the mat.  Here I was trying to represent a marshy area

Careful snipping.

My last mat was coloured using a range of acrylic paints I had around the house: house paints, children's paints, and artists paints.  This works ok, but it requires an awful lot of combing to stop the fur getting matted by the paint.  I decided to try some alternatives.  First of all inks.  My logic was that these shouldn't clog in the same way as the thicker paint, but should still dye the fur.   I tried Windsor and Newton inks, some other artist inks (one in a handy spray applicator!), and normal model washes / inks.   These all worked in a similar way.  Not as opaque / strong colours as the paint, and you couldn't lighten a dark fur with this approach, but much less clogging.

Paint below the stream and inks above the stream.

After some internet investigation on the dress making, and teddy bear making, forums, I discovered there is such a thing as "Material Paint".  It is typically used to change the colour of all sorts of sewn material.   This still seems to be water based and acrylic, so I'm not sure what the difference is to, say, house paint.  This stuff was great in that it didn't clog like the other paint, and covered better than the ink.  A result!  It is more expensive than house paint, and not as easily available.  Full scale trials are planned for the future.

I then need to work out the streams and other wet bits.  I want to build these in to the mat in the same way that I have for the roads.  The roads I did previously were a mixture of paint, sand a PVA applied to the bits of the matt shaved down to the backing material.  When dry this was dry brushed, and remained flexible enough to roll the mat up.  For the wet areas I want something that I can apply to the backing material, and will give a smooth surface that will be painted and take a coat of gloss varnish or similar.  After studying many Terrain Tutor videos I have been experimenting with decorators caulk, both neat for the streams, and with added sand for the roads.

Filler, glue, paint and sand.

Results so far suggest that I stick with the original approach for there roads, and that the neat decorators caulk will be best for streams, and wet areas of marsh.  I also think the marshy bits need more open areas of water, rather than the polka dot effect I have ended up with here.

Sand, paint, glue and filler

So, still some way to go on the fur experiments.  I have sourced some new fur material so that I can start in green this time.  I have  bought two 7' x 5' fur mats from Killing Fields, supplied in the UK by Company D Miniatures.   You can see Pappenheim and escort having a test ride across the new fur below.

Killing Field's Fur Mat.

Project Research - Dirschau / Tczew 1627

My next big 17th century project is going to be refighting the battle of Dirsahau (to the Swedes/Germans) and Tczew (to the Poles) which took place in 1627.  I have done a sweep of the internet material available, and picked up some books to start reading about the battle.  I have amassed so much material so far that I have started a separate page on the blog (here) to record all of the material.  Partly this is in case it is useful to anyone else, and also to help me remember what I have already found!  

The page linked to above explains why I have chosen this battle, but in summary, I chose Dirschau / Tczew 1627 as it seemed to have the most interesting forces and terrain of the late 1620s battles, and it also had Gustav Adolf, and the top Polish general of the period Stanisław Koniecpolski, in command of their respective armies.  I think this is an interesting period to look at as it is Gustav Adolf and the Swedish army evolving,  and developing tactics, that will provide so decisive when translated to the main German theatre of war.

Broadly the project will fall in to these streams of activity.

1. Making the battlefield in teddy-bear fur, with integrated streams, roads and marshes.
2. Large Swedish camp behind extensive earthworks, and the walled town of Dirschau/Tczew.  
3. Polish camp, and several small Polish villages.
4. Increase my existing Swedish forces with more cavalry, and for the foot, the Yellow Regiment.
5. A whole new Polish force, with a good helping of Winged Hussars, of course!

You will therefore see that I have plenty to be getting on with!  I hope to share the progress on the blog here.  I may allow myself an out of period distraction at some point, but at the moment the painting table has artillery limbers on it, and next in the queue is more Croats.

Until next time!

Andy @ FOGH.

Fun With Fur - Materials & Tools

I have had some people ask which particular fur, or paint etc. I used in making the cloth.  I thought I would add this to the blog so that I could also remember what I used in the future.

I chose these products from google / amazon searches and reading online reviews.  I don't get anything for the free advertising; I'm just sharing what I used.

Calico

Material for joining the fur pieces. This is a really wide piece. You can get narrower as well. 

96" wide Extra Wide Medium Weight Calico Fabric - per metre https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0089V4FS0/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_N5LECbV6PVNGP

Brush

The replacement brush I had to buy after borrowing my daughter’s brush.

Denman D90 Tangle Tamer Hairbrush https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0031ZV8OS/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_C7LECbK6P7XS8

Glue

The fabric glue used to join the faux fur to the calico. I used 4 tubes in the end. 

2pk Fabric Glue by Craft Central | Extra Strong & Large 50ml Fabric Glue for Clothes, Fabrics & Textiles | No More Needle and Thread as Now You Can Sew in Seconds https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07HJ6V448/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_E8LECb871HMC5

Fur

The main deal!

Plain Fun Faux Fur Fabric Material ANTELOPE BROWN https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00LX1RXSW/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_N9LECb024T1W2

Clippers

You can use these wired or unwired. They’re the only clippers I’ve ever bought so difficult to recommend over others. They did the job!

Pet Grooming Clippers TOPOP... https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07FP68B5B?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share

Comb

Err. It’s a comb. Probably the most important tool. Get two. 

Gents Pocket Hair Plastic Comb 6" Pack of 2 https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01BMAKXDK/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_5zMECbA82RYYC

Paint. 

I used what I could find in the house, including raiding my wife and daughters’ stashes.  A big mixture!

From Acrylic Essentials craft paint I used green, brown and yellow!

I had quite a lot of Dulux tester pots left over from another project. Forest Lake, Rum Caramel, Woodland Fern. 

Daler Rowney Graduate Acrylics: Raw Umber, Yellow Ochre, Buff Titanium. A Chrome green from some other make as well. 

I think the Yellow Ochre and the Chrome Green were my favourites.  It was very liberating to use a 2” brush and to mix colours with such abandon.