ASSYRIANS

[AWK600]

SLOWLY COMING ON WITH THESE , PLEASE COMMENT
units are assyrian cavalry,kisir sharruti infantry,command chariot,sab sharri auxiliaries with arab skirmishers plus same command chariot.

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[argh]

great stuff,

hope to see this army at toy soldier in July?

[zedeyejoe]

I think you will find that 'dip' (varnish with a colour added to it) will help with the look of these figures by deepening the colours in the shadow areas.

see http://15mmvsf.bagofmice.com/paint/dip.html

it takes practice, so try on a figure which is not part of a unit first.

Now also look at horses eyes



You will see that from a distance they don't have much white to them, so are best to paint as dark patches.

You might like to see my page on basic horse colours

http://www.3vwargames.co.uk/horsepaint.htm

[Matt1066]

Looking good! Really like that hefty chariot.

The 'wash' tip is good, but definitely try out on a few non-vital figures first.

Eyes - personally I don't paint them as I've never quite managed to avoid the startled look.

The blue is very striking and will look great on the table. Apologies for my ignorance on the subject but were they really that blue? How did they make it? Some sort of refined copper ore I'd guess. Expensive?

Cheers

Matt

[zedeyejoe]

For colours try this article:

http://africanhistory.about.com/od/egyp ... Colour.htm

and specifically on blue

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_Blue

Egyptian Blue is chemically known as Calcium copper silicate (CaCuSi4O10 or CaO·CuO·4SiO2). It is a pigment used by Egyptians for thousands of years. It is considered to be the first synthetic pigment. The pigment was known to the Romans by the name caeruleum. Vitruvius describes in his work de architectura how it was produced by grinding sand, copper and natron and heating the mixture, shaped into small balls, in a furnace. Lime is necessary for the production as well, but probably lime-rich sand was used. After the Roman era Egyptian Blue was not used anymore.

OK Egyptians I know but probably not unknown to the Assyrians as well. Roll on blue Assyrians.

[AWK600]

Thanks for the comments,ive got another 12 horse cavalry unit to do plus a 10 horse guard cavalry unit,im going to change the horses eyes on the unit ive done and add different colour horses to the other 2 units. as for the colour blue I LIKE IT,im using it for the standing army units only the guard are going to be purple that will make them stand out !!!!!! .
more chariots are still to be purchased but could be a while as im on a budget

[zedeyejoe]

Purple of course is right out - a colour used only by the very wealthy and the Spanish, who seemed to have found an imitation purple

Although the earliest archaeological evidence for the origins of purple dyes points to the Minoan civilization in Crete, about 1900 B.C., the ancient land of Canaan (its corresponding Greek name was Phoenicia, which means “land of the purple�) was the centre of the ancient purple dye industry. The city of Tyr in Phoenicia was especially famous for producing the dye; thus the name “Tyrian�. “Tyrian Purple� was produced from the mucus of the hypobranchial gland of various species of marine mollusks, notably the Murex. It is believed that it took some 12,000 shellfish to extract 1.5 grams of the pure dye! It can readily be seen why this labour-intensive process was so expensive.

http://pffc-online.com/mag/paper_histor ... h_royalty/

this page has quite a bit of discussion on the topic of ancient colours as well

http://flagspot.net/flags/xf-dye.html