Bretonnian peasants...

Greetings,

Now I know that a lot of people have given me a lot of abuse for how quickly I can throw an army together and my Bretonnians were definitely a major area of annoyance from my friends and fellow gamers. I know that they aren't the best and I don't say that I'm proud of them. The only thing I'm proud of is that I did 40 in about a week or so. The archers were done over two weeks, but I did all of the commands in that time-frame too.

The way that I painted my Bretonnians is definitely a lazy way of doing it. It is fast, and it most definitely isn't pretty, but if you want a vast mob of dishevelled scum in a short space of time, this is one of the routes you should follow.

I used the following GW paints and inks; Dehneb Stone, Tallarn Flesh, Chainmail, Boltgun Metal, Badab Black, Gryphonne Sepia, and Devlan Mud.

1. Remove the models from the sprue -duh!
2. Glue the body centrally onto the base. Check for possible ranking issues at this stage. If you mess up for ranking up here you might be able to sort it out later on but it is best caught early.
3. Glue the heads and weapon arms onto the body.
4. Give the model a generous basecoat of Dehneb Stone. Make sure you get everywhere apart from all of the shield arm socket. This needs to be left clear so the plastic glue adheres to it properly.
5. Paint all of the flesh Tallarn Flesh. There isn't a lot so don't go overboard or you will have a lot of cleaning up to do.
6. Once the Dehneb and Tallarn is dry go over the paint with a heavy coat of Gryphonne Sepia. This gives the model a good base-colour as it looks slightly like leather, especially when used in conjunction with other washes.
7. Paint all of the metal items on the model with Chainmail or Boltgun metal. Boltgun is darker than Chainmail, but you can alter their appearance with the other inks that I used for their colour scheme. Again be carfeul with the problem of accidently painting over areas that have already been done so.
8. The spear or halberd staff should be neatened up with Dehneb stone to neaten up what the ink has potentially done with the heavy coat of ink.
9. The shield should be coated with Dehneb and the metal trim is gone over with one of the metallics.
10. When it is dry go over the shield with Badab Black. The rest of the peasants can be coated with either Gryphonne, Devlan or Badab. The use of layering these washes changes the way that the models look and they still have a coherent look about them. The metals can be gone over with the three different washes, but be careful that they don't look too different, unless you want different ones for different units.
11. The shields just had a heavy coat of Badab Black, which collected near the bottom and gave them some interesting effects due to the shields design and their casting.
12. You can also go over one of the previous washes with a drybruhing of Deneb Stone then a single wash to create more variants of the paint scheme. This is especially effective for the archer with the furs.
13. The bases of mine have just been painted snot green as I haven't yet gotten around to putting flock on their bases. But following your normal basing routine sould be fine.

The command groups have the same basic paint scheme on them, but the banner bearers have had one of the GW Foundation paints painted on the background with the shield painted black. These were then gone over with Gryphonne Sepia to give the off-beige colour.

You can also do similar with the archers. These models are great for playing about with the inks due to the detailing of their casts. The banners will need pinning though, as you get next to nothing to affix it to. You can see how this worked with the step-by-step Bowmen in the above image.

I hope you will find this helpful. I did a similar thing with my Bretonnian Knights, but I'll show them at a later date.

Regards,

English Pillock