Lannister guardsmen

I have just received a substantial job consisting of a large number of Fire and Ice miniatures for a regular customer and thought I might add a blog or blogs on how I am painting them as I think these are probably pretty popular miniatures. Certainly, if I was still a Wargamer I would be into these in a big way. As far as I am aware the main factions currently available are Starks and Lannisters obviously, but also Night’s Watch and Free folk. The free folk giants are worth buying into free folk all on their own.

Clearly, as readers of the books will know, this is potentially just the start with Daenarys’ mob, House Tyrell, and the Greyjoys all having excellent design potential without even considering the ‘minor’ houses.

However, the current commission involves all the faction boxes available at the start of 2019 and I will be working through the Lannisters and allies, then the Starks and finally the Night’s Watch. Today we have the Lannister Guard in their finery.

Having undercoated I airbrushed the miniatures with model air red and then highlighting with scarlet. Then to provide a bit of depth they were washed with Army Painter red. This tones down the Scarlet and gets into the shadows in a nice smooth way.

These miniatures are not sculpted with heavy folds in the cloth to give depth as in the manner of GW or even Bolt Action so a bit of shading adds this in a naturalistic manner.

Having darkened the overall figure I then went back and airbrushed Scarlet again into the areas I wanted to highlight specifically the bottom of the tunic at the front, the top of the tunic at the back between the shoulders and a sort of quartering effect on the shields.

The faces where visible were also painted at this point and a thin line painted in eyeslit of the helmet for those figures sensible enough to have their helmet down.

This was the end of the airbrush contribution until varnishing, now it was time to lay down the rest of the colours starting with the Lannister armour which I had decided will be brighter and shinier than other factions to emphasise their wealth. The first step was to paint in black all the metal areas which were to be metal armoured and once a nice flat base established a mix of gunmetal and silver (but mainly gunmetal) was applied.

Next a mix of gunmetal with quite a bit more silver was applied with a sort of stripe down the middle of each shoulder piece – Pauldron. This gives the effect of light reflecting better than actually painting the whole Pauldron bright. This is clearer in the final photographs than the WIP shot.

Once again though this was then toned down a tad with a thinned wash of Nuln oil to avoid them looking like they were armoured in mirrors. The vanbraces on the forearms were painted black but left unhighlighted as yet as I suspected I might mess them up yet.

As the lions of Casterly Rock icons were to be painted yellow I painted them in now with a Vallejo Dark Sand as a base on shields, breastplate and banner. This makes painting the yellow a million times easier later. I was going to use yellow for these to add variety as the edging of the uniform was going to be in Brass and it could all get a bit red gold samey otherwise.

Happy with progress so far the backs of the shields were filled in. Literally nobody pays any attention to the shield backs as they are mostly invisible or cast into shadow so these were painted desert yellow with a wash of brown and job done. If you look carefully you can see the interior of a couple of shields in the photo below looking satisfactorily woodish.

More importantly all the leather parts were now to be painted of which there are lots here and need to done in a variety of leather colours to look natural. To start all were basecoated with German camo dark brown which is nicely dark and gives good definition. The swordbelt and pouch were then highlighted with flat brown as I see this as a unit. The scabbard was edge highlighted with a much lighter verion of the dark brown, a bit of desert yellow mixed in. The gloves were earth brown with finger highlights again using desert yellow whilst the boots were burnt umber lightened up in parts again with….desert yellow. This gives a worn dusty appearance to the boots which I prefer to parade ground black or brown.

None of the leatherwork stands out but the little metal reinforcement strips on the sword provide a bit more interest.

Approaching the home straight now it was time to do the faces where they were visible. Having painted the flat flesh in earlier and popped on a flesh wash the faces were highlighted in flat flesh on nose cheekbones and chin/forehead when visible (which wasn’t much). This was further lightened with a bit of whiter flesh colour on the nose. The faces are a bit flatter featured on these models than the usual 28mm miniatures I imagine in keeping with the more naturalistic approach. Drops of stronger wash were applied into the eyesckets for depth then a final thinned flesh wash added to tie it together and get rid of the stage make up effect.

Plumes were drybrushed red which was a pity as there is an awful lot of red already but on the box they are red - so there you go…cant have too much red apparently. Lastly it was yellow and gold time. Yellow was applied to all the lions except the banner which was painted Vallejo brass with the curved uppy folds having silver added in to mirror the highlighting of the red cloth. Then the same brass was used to edge the tunic and gorget and finelined around the shields. Some of the shields had small lion heads in the top right corners and a few had lion heads on the front all also painted brass. All the brass was washed with soft tone then re-highlighted with brass and a bit of silver.

The pictures below are included as they show the quartering effect on the shield quite nicely as well as the shiny pauldron effect. The highlighting of the brass colour on the banner doesn’t show as well for some reason to do with the lighting. They also show the two tone effect on the swords where the upper surfaces of the blades are painted a brighter silver than the lower. Lastly the airbrushing of the red is shown nicely on the completed miniature with the lower front and upper back being lighter.

This is the approach I will use on all the Lannisters for coherency and consistency. As I complete more I will post on my facebook page and on flickr .