Painting the Antonine 2mm blocks

I know lots of other painters have covered this topic, but this is a post aimed at a very small and specific audience....me!   I wanted to document how I arrived at my approach to painting these blocks as my usual system wasn't going cut it, so I can repeat the style later.  The Antonine castings don't have the definition of Irregular Miniatures 2mm stuff.  All the detail has to be painted in, some of it is there just not as much as with the IM blocks.  This has to be painting intended to fool the eye at arms length, so as I often say we are painting for mass effect not individual detail, but this time it's real what do we see at first glance stuff.  So the first thing to decide is what needs to 'pop', what are we going to see the most easily at gaming distances?  To me it's the glint of metal from helmets and the splash of colour from shields and to a lesser degree the faces and lastly the clothing on the backs of rear ranks of warriors.  Helpfully heads and shields are visible on the castings if you look carefully.  Sidney Roundwood's blog (Roundwood's World) gave me a great concept to work with; he suggested taking a look at Snayers' paintings of the battles of the Thirty Years War for inspiration.  These show masses of soldiers as seen at a distance and is the level of detail to go for.

 An extract from Snayers' Battle of Fleurus

In the above portion of a much larger painting I have focussed on troops who are in the middle distance of the painting.  If you look at the furthest infantry it is almost impressionistic simple lines and of lighter and darker shades of a base colour to give the look of a mass of men.  That's what I wanted to go for but with a bit more pop.  The other thing to notice is the contrast between the block of soldiers and the background which makes them stand out, again something to focus upon in our tiny troop formations.

So with all of that in mind I broke with my normal painting system and under coated with Vallejo Earth.  It's a mid brown edging towards the red end of the brown scale which gives it some warmth.  Once that was dry I started with the detailing I dotted a metallic (bronze, silver or gold) on most of the heads of the warband castings then added a few primary colours and a few white spots to give something to draw the eye.  More regular troops all got the same metallic dot as they are dressed in a more uniform style.  Next up was a dry brush all around the sides of the foot castings in a pale sand to hint at linen tunics.  Next up are the shields done in a mix of primary colours so they stand out.  All this needs is a spot or a short brush stroke.  Lastly a dot of pale flesh (applied with a needle's point) for faces in the front rank.  

Barbarian Horde approaching.

I kept the unit photo small to give more of the on table feel to what you can see.  Remember this is painting a 'unit' not individuals.

The cavalry were also undercoated in Earth.  As I was doing these as cataphracts they then got a gunmetal coat to the front of the head and all the top surfaces and riders.  I picked out some faces and helmets in gold and silver for variety.  Lastly I painted in some cloaks in my usual primary colours plus white.

Two rank cavalry blocks as cataphracts.  I'm happier with this basing style.

As usual basing caused me trouble.  I never seem to get a scheme that I like first time of trying.  I used my usual fine sand and PVA base but masked off a 5mm strip along the rear of the base, so far so good.  For the horde I dry brushed a lighter shade over the actual sand.  I know; painting actual sand a sandy colour, who else but a wargamer would do such a thing!  The problem is that I didn't like the resulting shade of sand I got.  I tried some olive green dry brushing to break it up but I'm still not happy.  The cavalry base is better and is probably how I will do them going forwards.

The cavalry castings just don't match the infantry castings, they are too big and too blocky

A final thought after applying paint, the cavalry castings are about 30-40% bigger than they probably should be compared to the foot castings.  Plus I can't help but feel that they look like someone's Dad made them horse armour from old cardboard boxes that flat pack furniture came in!  At some point a re-sculpt is going to be required.