Hittite Refurb Project: Spearmen

 

With the Chariot portion of the Bill McHugh Chariot Armies Refurb Project complete, it is time to move on to the Hittite infantry. 

With some shuffling of the figures, and some minor paint adjustments, there were enough spearmen to make 2 units of 12 figures each.

This first unit is the "Green Shields". 

Very imaginative naming, I'll agree. 

The basic paintjobs on these were very solid to start with.

To give some unifying theme to the unit, some shields needed to be repainted, and some of the borders on the half-cloaks were redone or touched up. 

The shading on the robes was already very well done.

Here's the second unit of Spearmen. 

They are hereby given the surprising name of the "Red Shields"!

Once again, only minor painting changes were needed. 

I like the rather subdued palette that Bill used when he painted these.

The biggest challenge with these figures was replicating something like the basing method that Bill used for them. The bases were covered with a sort of textured white sand, stained in splotches with some different shades of green 

I bought a bag of off white calcium sand at Petco - should last several lifetimes for this kind of purpose!

I made a sort of slurry out of the sand and scenic cement, and then added some extra white glue.

A modest amount of brown talus was added for some variety of color and texture. 

The mixture was applied to the gaps between the old bases, and in areas partly over the old basing as well. It was allowed to dry over night, after which it set up like concrete! Some limited staining of the "sand" was done, and allowed to dry, and then tufts in various colors were glued on top.