The hurly-burly's done...

Luckily the weather forecast kept its promise and the weekend was pleasant. So I was able to hold two long airbrushing sessions.

The first one on friday with a lot of stuff to prime. After about one and a half hours of constant spraying 43 horses, six riders and 33 foot soldiers had a nice even coat of black primer. As usual I used my favourit: Vallejo Surface Primer Black. It works perfectly with my 0.5mm nozzle and there's no need to thin it down. On the other hand the nozzle is large enough to prime the models without wasting too much paint.

At least if you already have some airbrush equipment I think priming this way is even the cheapest way to get the models prepared. For all the stuff above I needed about 30ml of paint. Applied with a brush I would have used much more (thicker layers of paint...) and with spray cans? I'm not sure but at least half a can if not more.

Since the friendly weather continued on sunday I arranged the equipment for another session then.This time most of the stuff I primed two days earlier had to get some coulour. On that account I thinned down some Vallejo Model Colors which is always a bit tricky. Based on earlier experience between 2:1 and 1:1 (colour : thinner) works best depending on the colour and of course the nozzle of the airbrush gun. As usual I achieved rather different results but altogether I'm rather satisfied:

For the horses on the right which belong to a Saga warband of steppe warriors I chose different shades of brown to have a mixed and disordered look for the wilde horde. And by the way they'll work as guinea pigs for some new colour ideas I had...

For the lancers' / hussars' horses in the middle I chose a much more average coluor. Flat Brown for all of them. Although I thought of dappling some other shades of brown into the formation I didn't dare to disturb the disciplined look of British cavalry. By the way trumpeters in the 1880s didn't still use greys, did they?

The Normans / Crusaders and their horses were an easy choice as well. Different brown horses and a coat of dark metal on the chainmail of the knights.

For the infantry I used Khaki Grey which shall serve as base colour for the British Sudan / NWF uniforms for the 2nd Anglo-Afghan War. On the picture they look slightly more greenish than personally.

Last but not least two terrain pieces or at least some parts of them. In the foreground a part of the roof of another Dark Ages building by Stronghold, namely the Pit House I've been working on for some weeks. In the background the major part of Sarissa's awesome Pegasus Bridge. I'm not sure when I'll have that finished finally. I took several months until now and it'll take several more months. Above all I have no idea how to store or showcase the finished piece but I think it was too much work to store it disassembled in a box somewhere...