More Spanish This Way Come

After the disappointment of the last batch of painting, the French Mounted Crossbows, I'm very happy to say that the next batch of Spanish Arquebusiers have come out rather nicely. I took my time with these, which after all can make all the difference; though they still have to face the slings and arrows of the varnishing process. Picking the right time of the day to spray varnish, it being not too cold and not too humid being the key. If the weather is not suitable, I'm going to wait.

This is the second lot of Spanish Arquebusiers from an earlier post which can be viewed HERE. Better to pop back to the earlier post for the details as I don't want to start getting too repetitive.

French Mounted Crossbowmen

I think I overdid the speed painting malarkey this time and I am not really very satisfied with the end results. I was trying to see just how fast I could get these mini's painted up; the layered paint being applied after a very rough wash with very rough highlights to follow. All of which I ended up having mix up a medium hue to blend in the awful contrast that resulted.

I also made the school boy error of hurrying the matt varnish after the gloss which has resulted in some spectacular "speckling" on the miniatures, all of which which just rubbed salt into the self inflicted wound! I will not be repeating the superfast speed paint job again! Medium pace it is from now on unless I'm working on something I intend to take my time with.

Still, they are fine for the table top so will remain in my collection rather then being cast into eBay oblivion.

If you take a look at the pics of the single bases you will see the "speckling" in all of it's ghastliness. So, I repeat my varnishing mantra again, "wait a week between the gloss and the matt coats you silly sod!" All a bit of a terrible shame really as there were some nice conversions and kit bashed models in the unit. I came very close to not bother including the pictures of the single bases, but, in the interests of being transparent (bad pun).........

Vignettes

I was very tempted to do a full write up of what inspired the making of all these vignettes. But why? Is the whole point of a vignette not to be part of the a subplot of a game? To provide an anecdote or to add drama? Indeed, to tell a story in it's own right? With that in mind, I'm going to let the pictures do the talking.