Not that I don't have enough projects on my work table but I was looking for parts for a Questing Knight I am working on and as with many things one led to another so here goes.
I present to you the beginnings of Sir Bonneville and his followers.



Sir Bonneville was inspired by Tristan, a QK that is also a musician. Having no luck finding a Tristan figure for a reasonable price, I decided to create my own Knight. The harp is from the Kings of War range and the back story is that it was a gift from the Elves for preventing needless bloodshed by convincing the leaders of a group of Elves and Bretonnians to cool their heels, Drink and Sing rather than fight each other when the real enemy at the time was a tribe of beast men that had moved into the area. Sir Bonneville has been on his quest for some time since then and has acquired a retinue and some gear along the way.







I can't seem to find Men at Arms shields so these are Tomb Kings shields with the markings filed off. The pack horse is a GW medieval horse and the baggage even includes some 1/35 scale pieces that I picked up along the way. I'm also working on a pair of bowmen and perhaps a KE on foot. As you probably guessed, I hate to see parts go to waste I'll keep you updated on their progress. As always please let me know what you think.

Looking good! While big games with loads of men are cool its also nice to bring it down to grass roots sometimes and have smaller games where each guy has his own backstory and name!

Keep us updated!

Wolf

So on to construction. I'm still working on Sir Bonneville but here are a few of his retainers.

Landau, his long time sargent of his Men at Arms. The partial paint job was already there.



Four Men at Arms, Ommegang, Lagunitas, Hoegaarden, and Troeg



Geary and Killian, two stalwart archers.



Sir Matthew, a Knight Errant seeking fame and glory.




The Bucket helm is what I use for all my Knight errant. They have not earned the right to wear a full helm or a crest.That will come with their ascension to Knight of the Realm. As I'm sure you already guessed, the shields are left off for priming and painting.

I'll post more as they are ready. Thanks for the input.

I can't wait to see the warband fully assembled! Each member is characterful and expertly kit bashed. Landau is a particularly unique miniature, as grizzled, competent peasants are difficult to find these days. Also, the tasty brew references have not been lost on me. Perhaps future peasants can be named Saranac, Yeungling (highly sought after but overrated), or one could have a magic hat.

Now that priming is done I can begin painting. Over the years (more than I care to relate) I have tried a lot of painting methods. Priming light, priming dark, shading, limited shading, and so on and so on and so on. You get the idea.
For this war band I'm going all the way back to the method I learned when I started. I once had (and may still have) a painting guide by a man named Shepard Payne. His basic idea was to paint the figure as though you were dressing it, from the inside out. taking that idea one step further painting from the inside of the body outward. I,m using my Knight Errant for my demo piece. I always prime my knights white to bring out the bright colors of their heraldry and dress and prime my peasants grey to tone down the colors.

So as you can guess, we start with the face. I start with Black for the eyes...



Then White to either side to create the pupils...



Next, Dark Red for the inside of the mouth…



I the carefully work my Flesh Tone around the nose, to either side of the face, and around the mouth taking extreme care around the eyes so that they are neither too large (and thus give that Pop eyed look) or too small, in which you will have wasted the time trying to paint them in the first place.



Once this is done you can shade the chin with a slightly darker Flesh Tone to give him that 5 O'Clock shadow. In this case however the arming hood obscures the chin so it won't be needed. So there you are, one way out of many to paint faces.



Don't worry, I don't plan on going into this much detail on each portion of the painting but I thought that this much might be helpful.

Still painting but I wanted to show you the last three archers.

Beamish, Smithwick, and Kinsale. Sorry I haven't found a Magic Hat so far but I'll keep looking.



The legs are from the Empire archers while the arrows are from the old skeleton sprues. I just cut the archers at the belt and they fit perfectly.

Sir Matthew is nearly complete. I still have the basing to finish but I've decided to do the whole war band at once so I have left it green for now.



Because he is on foot I decided on the large shield (from the High Elves range). This may change if he is able one day to afford a war horse. Because he is a Knight seeking to be worthy of elevation to a Knight of the Realm his colors and coat of arms are those of his family and not of the rest of the war band.






I'll update with more soon

Next up for Sir Bonnevile's retainers are the archers. The first two were pretty straight forward using two of the Men at Arms command bodies, Peasant archer heads and the arms from Empire Archer arms, Geary and Killian.







The arms didn't really allow me to position them in a traditional fashion so I like to think of them as nocking their arrows just before bringing them to bear.

The next three were a lot easier than I thought they were going to be. Beamish, Kinsale, and Smithwick were done using Peasant archer heads and upper bodies, with the legs from the kneeling Empire archer and arrows from the old skeleton sprue.









Hopefully more dynamic than the usual archers, they were a lot of fun to build.



Please let me know what you think. I'll have more on the background and colors as Sir Bonneville progresses

Arrows should be on the other side of the bow...

Can't be, they are guided off the thumb. In this case the arrows are being nocked prior to righting the bow for shooting. Only the two kneeling bowmen with their bows righted are ready to shoot.

They're looking great! I love warbands because they often afford us the opportunity to give a little extra attention to models we'd normally overlook.

I really love these kneeling bowmen! The rest is great, too!

I love the boozy names for the peasants, some of my favourite beers are there!

Looking good!

I love the individuality of Warband's, its nice to see a hard bitten smaller group of men fighting!

Kind Regards

Wolf

Just adding too the.... arrows are on the wrong side of the bow..