Samurai Vignette - Finished

 

Samurai Vignette - Part 2

The mounted Perry daimyo looks fierce with a Steelfist head whereas the Perry samurai proudly shows his Steelfist helmet crest ;-)

Samurai Vignette - Part 1

Perry Samurai side project :-)

Samurai Field HQ

Finito - Field HQ of Konishi Yukinaga, a christian daimiyo and one of the generals who spearheaded the invasion of Korea.
Screen was done using stencil and airbrush, hence the somewhat blurry crosses :-)

WIP Samurai Field HQ - 4

Perry Daimyo with a Steelfist head.

WIP Samurai Field HQ - 3

WIP Samurai Field HQ - 2

WIP Samurai Field HQ

Perry miniatures samurai with additional helmet decoration by Oshiro.

Samurai Lord

with a Steelfist Samurai head.

WIP: Samurai Lord

Horse holder...

Ashigaru Bannermen

Perry figures carrying Steelfist brass nobori.

I am thinking about switching to 1/72 samurai for future projects, having discovered the beautiful Zvezda samurai recently. The right figure is actually a metal teppo ashigaru, available here Hagen Miniatures Still i have to find a faster way of panting these small scale minis...

Spear Samurai

Perry figures. The two others (experts among you will know that the Perry minis normally come in packs of 6 ;-)) are spared for a honjin project.

Samurai Drum - An experiment in painting lacquered armour

Coming from a WWII painting background I am used to varnish all my figures / models as matt as possible. With regard to samurai armour I was always a bit unsatisfied with the result, it just didnt appear lacquered anymore after the matt varnish treatment, the shine was missing. So I thought about the possible ways and came up with the following three ways:

1. Painting the lacquer effect
Definitely the most difficult method, applying NMM techniques and actually painting all the light reflexes a lacquered armour may have. Most time consuming process and the worst: One small mistake may ruin the whole painting. So I decided that this is not my favourite method :-)

2. Using gloss varnish
Quite simply its about varnishing only the armour parts with gloss varnish whereas all other parts (clothing, skin etc.) remains matt. You achieve quite a contrast - but does it look real? Not sure yet, looks a bit too "wet" for me. I used that method on the 2 guys in black armour.

2. Using gloss medium for the edges
Thats basically the way I paint armour in general, using metal paints on matt varnished metals to get the look of metal reflections. Just a bit modified: Mixing the armour highlight colour with Vallejo gloss medium and applying it on the raised surfaces like edges after having applied a coat of matt varnish before. I used that method on the guy in brown armour.

Pls. let me know what do you think which painting style fits samurai armour best - maybe you know a different way?

Mounted Samurai

Steelfist, Kensei and Perry.

Mounted Samurai WIP

Just the horses for now, note the size differences - left to right: Steelfist, Kensei, Perry.

Steelfist Daimyo

Its Mori Hidemoto, a veteran of Toyotomi Hideyoshis Korean campaign and a somewhat unfortunate daimyo at the battle of Sekigahara, wearing his famous peacock kabuto. Very detailed figure, not so easy to paint 28mm peacock feathers :-)

Teppo Samurai

Perry samurai with arquebus, first samurai painted since ages ...

Yari Ashigaru

Better pics now. Some Perry Ashigaru.

Samurai Messenger No. 4 and the complete Bunch

The last one with a big sashimono showing a crucified samurai.

 

and the whole lot

 

Samurai Messenger No. 3

Straight out of the box. Not quite happy with the grey but anyways...