From war to the painting table: Easterling Work in progress

OK!  When the Easterlings are not busy killing the "good" guys, they are being prepared for the tournament from a painting standpoint.  Here we have some early stages of the shaded basecoat on the cavalry.  I am trying to use my colors to distinguish Black Dragons from regular Easterlings, plus have them work with the colors of the Khandish allies.

I didn't want to have boring, "pure" golds, so I was mixing green and red together for my first layers.  I then started mixing in yellows, flourescent yellow, and even some space wolves grey to get variety.

I also worked on the horses, and the cloaks.  Once I had the cavalry pretty well set, I had to do the same with the infantry.

Here are the Black Dragon warriors.  I will have to do some extras of these guys to put on the board in case the Kataphracts are unhorsed.

More work on the cavalry, getting everything lightened up to the same level.

Same thing for the Infantry.  At this point, I decide to incorporate some red into all the Black Dragons.

As soon as I started getting the reds in place, I knew that it was definitely worthwhile!  Then I realized that I wanted to make a war drum for one of the cavalry (my figures are all the old metals).  I took some of my lizard bits and fashioned this.  I cut off the sword, and made a nice drumstick for him!

Then it was time to put some added touches on the other cavalry.  I had some skulls and heads that would help make these guys look as fierce as they had been in combat!!

I moved on to the bases, making some nice dark marble.

Just like all other shaded basecoats, I had to prepare the bases for all the darker shading glazes...

They sure look different when they are shaded, don't they?

I used a black, a sepia, a green and a brownish red for the dark glazes.  I even had a paper towel handy to dab away places where I wanted things to remain lighter.  That works very well on such rough surfaces!

Now I can start placing the figures onto their bases...  I will be sure to post the images of the dark glazes for the armor and cloaks.  The same process will also happen with the more 'standard' red Easterlings and their pikes.

Mortimer was very happy when his Puppets War figures arrived in the mail!  He could not wait to assemble them.  He might even let Cathy use them once in a while...