Showcase: Arsmouth Freeband

Another commission is in the books and I have a new batch of Freeblades minis to show off!  Here they are!

This muster archer is painted wearing a menagerie of peasant greens, browns, and greys, having either spontaneously joined the freeband to protect his farm or because a heavy handed magistrate ordered his conscription.

All musters have an armband with the county colors they are privateering for, in this case the sky blue of Arsmouth.

A custom arrow, made from Formula P3 super thin .5mm brass pin and thin-sheet plasticard completes the muster's bow and arrow ensemble.

A more formally equipped member of the freeband is the militiaman, who shares uniform tabard, tunic, coif, shield, and bracers with his fellows.

To date, I've done three Arsmouth militia spearmen for Jon, so this time I wanted to add some visual variety to the group by posing this one in a crouched stance.  

Check out his left eye, it's been lamed when he suffered a slash down his face where he still has the scar to prove it!

I've begun transitioning to a non-metallic metal schemes on most pieces, in this commission the only metallic areas were the chain mail coifs on the the spearmen.

A couple of months ago I received a very special commission that included two unreleased models for the freeblades system.  It was a incredibly cool experience being the first anywhere to put paint to a brand new model and I feel especially honored to have had the opportunity.  Well, one of those models became my absolute favorite from the range and this apprentice knight of Vidnuar is directly inspired by it.  I'm looking forward to posting pics of those two yet to be released models when they are ready to make their debut!

This apprentice knight really keys off on my efforts to transition to NNM painting styles.  Not one drop of metallic paint was used him and in the end it really lends to a clean look with crisp lines.  

This model is a variant on the apprentice knight of Barek with the only difference being his greatsword and lack of goatee, so I was set to task adding differentiation between the two.  The skull between the knight's feet was removed and his trailing leg was bent back to give him a striding pose and increase his dynamism a bit.  The addition of a ponytail and fluttering ribbon are both nudges pushing him towards the pretty-boy look of those who follow Vidnuar the lion/leadership aspect.

I'm glad Jon appreciated the subtle touches that were the graying hair and lamb's wool vest on this muster thresher.  He may be old, but not so old he won't bludgeon you with his flail!

I had a lot of fun painting up this Vekul, and took the opportunity to do a snow basing for the first time.  I used GW's snow effects, and was reasonably satisfied... until the basing completely dried.  Admittedly I was using their old snow product (I'm unsure if it has changed since it received new packaging), but the use of long "string" pieces as snowflakes instead of powder is not what I'm looking for.  Think "a giant woolly beast just shed" instead of "yay, it just snowed!" and you'll get the picture.  For future projects I might try Snow Tex, but am undecided, any suggestions?

Thanks for stopping by the Lab and checking out my latest work, come by next week to see the completed chaos soul Grinder models I started on last week and later on down the road a Ghetorix/Warp Wolf conversion for Hordes!

Happy hobbying!