Well, all except for the varnishing, maybe some shield patterns, a proper Koguryo standard and the camp – but finished enough to take to the tabletop at Cancon 2013. The Alain Touller Figurines look the business.

I finished the Light Horse last night (they’re the blokes on the right). It was a surreal experience as I was medicated for a tooth extraction and for a gout attack. The warnings “this may cause drowsiness” were correct.

Still, the medications dulled the pain enough to paint and flock although my hands were kind of shaking a little.

The Light Horse where finished continuing the white theme with bows of curved bone. I’m happy enough with the final appearance now. Let me introduce the troops.

	The bows and crossbows on the left, the Psiloi (or light infantry) on the right.The bows are there to strike fear in any knights the opposition may have. The Psiloi are there for a bit of rough ground coverage and to ensure that the opposition has to be careful about them rushing around the back of his army and causing problems.
	The close order infantry, in this case, known as Spears. These are solid reliable troops that are quite effective in holding down part of the battle line.They are not battle winners as such but are solid enough to stand against most things and opponent can throw at them.
	The general (on the left), part of the cataphracts which provide the main strike force. These troops are treated similarly to knights in DBA and are therefore the game winners if used properly.They will try and avoid enemy bows and light horse whilst targeting infantry and cavalry.
	The Light Horse – used for quick manoeuvring and to work the flanks. Also useful against opposition Light Troops and will cause some consternation to opponents with Knights.

Right – that’s the Koreans done. Next cab off the rank is some serious painting of the Later Hungarians.

I managed to get some painting done yesterday regardless of the attendance at Anthony’s birthday brunch.

In an attempt to maximise the effectiveness of the painting yesterday, and allowing for a semi-inebriated state from the champagne and beer at the brunch, I thought I’d finish off the foot as they were nice and straightforward.

This was a fairly simple bit of painting. I’d decided to go with a white theme whilst for some colour, the variation of the Korean red and blue being used to paint trousers and as a highlight to the tunic colour itself.

It has therefore provided some brightness to the figures.

At the same time, I thought I would see how the bases might look when they are completed so I flocked the Psiloi. Citadel had re-released their blade grass static grass flock. This is a richer green than their other ones so I thought a test base was in order just to see what the final was going to look like.

I think the final flocking colour has come up quite well and I am happy with that green. I also think that coupled with some dry grass (yellow) that it will work really well for the Hungarians, given that they have some bigger rocks on the base.

The photo below is how the Koguryo Koreans look now. I have just the light horse to finish painting, then some flocking on the base and varnishing before all the Koguryo Koreans are finished. I am hoping to get that completed tonight which will just leave me needing to do a camp.

However, in the usual way that things conspire against our deadlines, today I have a throbbing foot from gout which the meds have not yet taken the pain away from and have just had a tooth extracted, adding a throbbing pain in my mouth (the trade off was that as I stopped dribbling like an idiot as the anaesthetic wore off, so the pain in the mouth increased). Er, and the meds have not taken that pain away either although I am feeling very drowsy!

I think at this point too I can note that basing the figures before painting seems to work quite well, especially as it makes the base sanding and painting much faster and reduces to an extent the amount of paint that you need to add to a figure to complete it. I will still reserve judgement a little on things like the packed bases of the Hungarians. I think they may have been better approached in the old way of adding the figures to a tongue depressor and painting first before basing,

Back to Singapore and some proper painting. As I mentioned yesterday, Friday was spent fixing things from the travel. Yesterday was spent working on the Koreans again as I really would like to finish these guys this weekend. Actually, I wanted to finish them yesterday but a couple of naps to catch up from the travelling got in the way of that.

Today is Anthony’s birthday brunch and I am hoping that I don’t consume so much champagne that it prevents me painting effectively tonight 🙂

Yesterday I managed to finish the heavy infantry and work on the rest of the foot.

I opted for a red and white shield pending me finding anything else more interesting. I have seen red shields in the War Memorial Museum in Seoul and so I may well over-paint the shields here prior to varnishing.

The second picture is what I hope to see as the troops move forward.

I opted for a basic white theme with red and blue highlights for the Koreans. I was planning on getting some more browns and greys in there as well but the white seems to work and not be too far of the mark, as far as I can determine, historically.

I was tempted to use some plum type colours but they really would only be likely on the general’s escort but top be honest, the colour would have disappeared in amongst all the metal so I have taken some artistic license.

I did not get as much painting done over the last couple of days although I did manage some progress. I’ve finished the cataphracts (well, almost finished them). All that required to be one on them now is to add some grass to the bases and then varnish, a task I will undertake when I return to Singapore after Christmas.

I was looking at standards for the Koguryo and whilst I can see some nice dragon type ones from the War Memorial Museum in Seoul that may do the trick I opted for something quick, simple and easy. I’ll come back and redo the standard later if I have time (and inclination and yes, it means that it will probably remain the way it is now).

I opted for two basic colour schemes for the cataphracts after all was said and done.

I also managed to get the flesh wash and armour wash completed on the infantry as well as paint the horses on the Light Horse. The Light Horse was given a second coat of the basic white uniform colour.

Whilst I did not get the army finished before heading back to Oz, a good painting session on a Saturday will see the Koguryo finished. The first weekend that is likely to happen will be 12 January when I am back in Singapore – with just two weeks to go before Cancon 2013.

I still have the camps to make yet – that will be a task for January as well.

In the meantime, I am not sure whether or not I will do any work on the Hungarians between now and 12 January as I am in Jakarta and will be heading to Oz on Wednesday. The Hungarians are still in Singapore.

There was very little painting progress last night. This due to the time I spent fiddling around and reset the WiFi security, SSIDs etc after the installation of our new 150Mbps Internet Connection (eat your heart out NBN waiters).

Yes, the Internet now flies at warp speed through Thomo’s Singapore Hole.

As for how painting on the Koreans went, I managed to give all the armour a brush with Citadel’s Chainmail colour. It now looks suitably steely. The general himself has been given a golden cuirass, partly because he is the general and partly because I wanted to see if it worked. It works!

I also managed to get five of the horses painted in their base colour as well (they’ll be the dark brown ones). Next will be the chestnuts and a white (for the general) and black horse and then I can pick out the blazes and socks for them.

What I didn’t get done last night was to wash the flash areas or the armour although I did also spend some time looking at Korean historical dramas on the Internet for future inspiration.

Tonight I am off to Anthony’s for a game so if I do any more painting when I get back, it will be just to do those washes – both are 10 minute jobs only. Otherwise, there will be no progress tonight at all. One thing I have discovered in the past – even when you don’t feel like painting or don’t have the time, try and do at least one colour. It is amazing how fast figures get painted when you do that.

I did not spend much time last night painting but rather I was researching colours and catching up on some reading (after ducking between rain drops here and there on the way to get dinner then get home).

I did get some more paint on the figures though (although you’d probably not notice from the picture to the right).

The first colour on the figures was a dark grey to the horses’ hooves – see, told you you would probably not notice 😆

A couple of close-ups may help here.

I also did a base colour for the flesh on the figures. I am trying to get three shades on a 15mm face so started with a flesh foundation colour. Tonight I will give the flesh a brown wash then a dry-brush with a light flesh colour and let’s see how that looks.

For the heavy infantry here I also painted the armour. This was painted with a chainmail colour which looks a bit steely. It will be washed with black ink tonight which should darken it a little and pick out the detail.

The last colour added last night was some white.

I did the uniforms on the Light Horse with a white coat of paint. Again, tonight, I will maybe wash the white areas with a dark grey wash and then a final white dry-brush to take care of the major part of the uniform.

I’ll then add some colourful borders to the figures so give them a little more pizzazz. I am thinking that nice Korean blue will work well and give the figures the appropriate appearance.

The next instalment will be tomorrow where we are able to start to see some of the figures approaching completion. I think the Heavy Cavalry is in for some work tonight!

The next step in the painting process is to work on the bases. When painting with the figures already based it is actually easier to slop the base paint around before painting the figure rather than having to dry-brush carefully after the figure has been painted and stuck to the base.

Last night was a simple production line process then using three highlight colours on the burnt umber over black base colour. You can see the progress of the base colours below:

	A reddish brown acrylic is dry-brushed here over the bases giving a ferrite look to everything.
	Next yellow ochre is applied to lighten it further. Note that some of the reddish brown will still show through and that is what we are trying for – shades on the rocks.
	Lastly a cream colour is applied over the top of it all to lighten it further. Note that the bases that appear to have a heavier amount of cream on are still drying and as the paint dries, so it colour softens.

Once the figures themselves are painted then I will apply some static grass to the bases as well and we should have a pretty little Korean DBA Army.

As the Hungarians had all been stuck to bases and I wanted to let the superglue and Tarzan’s Grip both cure properly, I returned to the Koreans.

The next task was undercoating them and that was done Sunday morning before going out. I will post some pictures later of my improvised spray painting chamber but suffice it to say at the moment that it worked and I am able to spray paint inside the apartment without colouring the room black!

I sprayed and then went out to let the troops dry. I undercoated in black as this provides a natural shading to colours and speeds the painting process. The downside is that it makes the detail on the figures difficult to see. There is a solution to that and that is that once the undercoat has dried, give the figures a white brush. More on that later.

The Koreans now moved to the painting table.

The next step was to wash the base in a burnt umber colour. This is going to provide the base colour for the bases and it is good to get the bases finished first as the process tends to splash paint around a little and this way I don’t paint over any detail already painted.

The photograph to the right shows the bases after the wash. As you can see, the brown wash (about 50:50 acrylic paint and water) almost disappears into the black bases.

The next step in the process was to apply a heavy dry-brush of white paint to the figures.

The white (again, acrylic paint – I am inly using acrylics now) is thinned a little with some water and applied with a flat brush that is about 5-8mm across. Working quickly and the thinned white looks like a grey on the figures but helps pick out the detail on the figure. This has two effects. One is that it starts to provide light and shade on the figure, the other is that is makes it easier to see the detail to paint on the figure.

That’s about where I got to on Sunday night. Monday night’s painting will be to finish the painting of the bases (more burnt umber followed by three shades of brown) and maybe start on the light troops or the cataphracts, both of which should be fairly quick to paint.