Celtic (ish) flag design

After reading through David James excellent book "draw your own Celtic designs", I thought I would have a go at adding a Celtic deign to the Hordes Titan Gladiator, I am currently painting.

First step was to measure and sketch out the flag from the miniature..

Once you allow for the fabric that goes around the flag pole, I have a flag area of 12.5mm by 44mm. Now to sketch out an ambitious flag design. I choose to go for a Celtic fish because of the fish on the models flag pole and the top symbol is a Skorne emblem...

The problem came when I tried to paint this onto the flag. It turned out I just could not manage to paint a 2mm wide border  pattern without it looking like a big fat splodge. So I painted over with a base colour and tried again with a 4mm wide pattern.

This appears to work quite well. After going through this I believe I can paint the next one at 3mm wide, but after all that effort I could not bring myself to paint over and start this design again. The problem now is that this does not leave much of a gap for the patterns in the middle. In the end I opted for a simple Skorne shape.

This has taken a day a side to complete and at that one side is not yet fully highlighted. Hope it is worth all the effort...

Hordes Titan Gladiator striped and ready to go.

After finishing my first Skorne titan gladiator, its time to start on my second. With the first chap I spent some time making her stand more up-right. This time I have gone for a more simple build.

She still needed some green stuff around the stomach area. For some reason all of these figures require some work in this fashion. The moulds just do not seem to be designed to fit together as they come. Don't get me wrong, the work is fairly minor, but it is required.

Now it is time to get the gold and green paint out again. I have given some thought to a different flag pattern this time, and if I am brave enough I will go for a celtic (ish) look.

Warhammer - Hordes: Hill Fort scenery

Mid week I started tarting up old and underused bits of scenery. The process has moved on a step. Previously I took tired looking hill and unused ruins and combined them by gouging out small pits in the hills to mount the ruins; and by making walls from bits of card.

I then gave the whole ensemble two hearty coverings of PVA to give them some protection. The guys at the club tend to throw them around a bit and packing away is always done at speed, so they need all the protection they can get. I then covered in sand in the normal way.

Once again, I gave a substantial covering of PVA. It never hurts to help protect them. The club has adopted a standard colour scheme for all of our scenery, and it has made a dramatic improvement to the way all the pieces of scenery fit together. To match the colour scheme, the hills are undercoated black, painted scorched brown and dry brushed bleached bone. Flock is then added in a patchwork effect.

These items can either be used individually as singke ruins or collectively to give the impression of a much larger ruined fortification.