Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Ashigaru Arquebusier


It's been a bit since my last post, but there were reasons starting with I was in the states on vacation for a couple weeks visiting relatives plus the amount of work to paint this unit was more then I expected and lastly I have the man flu and the world is coming down around my ears!!(moan,sniffle)

So now that I'm done with my lame excuses I'll talk a bit a bout the unit. It's my first unit for my Shimazu Clan 28mm Impetus Samurai army. I knew they were going to be hard to paint, but not as hard as they turned out to be. They are Perry figures and hands down the most difficult figures I've attempted to date and these are just the Ashigaru and not the Samurai who are ever harder which has me concerned. Mainly because the Perry's added so much fine detail it's hard to paint and highlight(darn near snapped a brush in frustration). That said, I won't give up because for years I've wanted a Samurai army and in the end I think I'll be very happy I persevered.

When starting I soon realized I had to first study how all the armour was put together before even trying to paint it as you will make mistakes if you start assuming things(like I did) making you start over(like I did 3x!). I decided for a brown armour for my Ashigaru for reasons like-

-Shogun-Loved the movie and Toranaga's Samurai were brown which I liked.
-Earthy colours- I really enjoy earthy tones so I thought since I'll be painting Ashigaru more then Samurai  I should use colours I really enjoy the most.
-I wanted something different then Red and Black which are the most used colours
-Really like the Samurai and Ashigaru in brown armour by Angus McBride

I wanted a nice contrasting colour to the brown, but again opted out on the more common black,white,red and instead went with a light blue which works out very well for me.
Overall I'm reasonably happy with the results, however I do need to add some improvements that I didn't really see when I was painting that have come to light when I viewed the pictures.

You would think I might want to take a break after complaining about their difficulty, but actually I'm already looking forward to the next base with the only thing being do I add another Ashigaru  or attempt a Samurai base. I'm also doing a couple SCW figures, but they won't take to long and ACW.....

As always thank you very much for taking time out time see what I'm doing as I really appreciate it!
Miniature Company-Perry Miniatures