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Celtic Standard bearer
 Pegaso is one of those firms, which can treat the modeller to excellent and original figures every month. It will be no surprise if I tell you that I have several dozen of their figures stacked away in my cupboard, all waiting till the moment arrives that my painting skills do them justice.
The last couple of months I was commissioned to do some World War II figures, and there’s only that much grey, green and browns one can take before needing to paint something colourful.
To the rescue came this figure Celtic standard bearer (54-133). That this figure was based on a painting by Angus McBride, one of my favourite military illustrators, was a big bonus for me.
The painting can be found in the book titled Barbarians by Concord publication (ISBN 962-361-634-1) on page 15 to be exact. The pose of the figure in the painting is much more violent, but it is clear to see that the garment was based on this figure.
 As one has come to expect from Pegaso, cleaning up was almost unnecessary and soon I was reaching for the 5-minute epoxy glue.
I pinned as many parts as possible using pieces of paperclip. I also drilled a hole in one of the feet and attached a piece of paperclip, which will later be used as attachments point to the base. I glued all parts together before priming, and this was something I might not do if I were to paint the figure again.
I had a hard time painting the inside of the cape and had to retouch some other parts because I spilled some paint of the cape on them.
 Now with everything cleaned up and glued together one would expect priming to be the next thing. But no, I first build my groundwork.
This way I don’t have to handle the finished figure too much and so minimising the risk of damaging the paintwork. I began by choosing a suitable base. I wanted the figure to be on top of a mountain, overlooking the valley where he lives with some arrogance and a proud look on his face. By using a base, which has one rough looking side, this feeling was enhanced.
It goes without saying that such a special and high quality base came from Oakwood studio’s, where you’ll always find that special base you’re looking for. The top of the base was first scorched so the white glue had some grip. A rough form was sculpted using Das pronto.
Das pronto is a Milliput like paste, but consists only of one compound and hardens at room temperature. The figure was placed on top so the pin previously glued in the figure would fir perfectly. Once this  was dry I covered the sides and the back of my “hill” with Magic Sculp. This was wetted with water and a piece of rock was pushed in to create the structure of a rock.
This was painted in various shades of grey, making sure to use the darkest shades for the bottom parts and the lighter on top. The structure of the rock was accentuated by drybrushing various lighter tints of greys.
So far I only used acrylics for the groundwork. Next I applied filters with various colours of oilpaint, not only using greys but other colours like Green Umber, Blue Black, Flesh Tint, Burnt Umber, etc… Once this was all dry, the rock received a very light final drybrushing with a light grey.
At the same time I painted the root trunk, which is a resin casting by Armand Bayardi. I used Andrea Wood (AC421) for the outer part and Vallejo Natural Wood (VA834) for the inner part. The outer part was washed with Burnt Umber and later drybrushed using a lighter mix of the Andrea wood, the inner part got a wash with Raw Umber and drybrush treatment with a lightened Natural Wood colour. Sepia was used for the dark shadows.
I now build up the sand using Acrylic texture filler, mixed with fine sand, white glue and some Tamiya Buff. The tree trunk was pressed in place, as was the, still unpainted figure to get a positive fit on the groundwork. The groundwork was now put aside to dry, and will only be painted when the figure is ready. This I do because I like to use the same colours to paint the groundwork and to dirty up the figure. I feel this helps getting the figure to tie in with the groundwork, rather than having a figure being placed on a groundwork.
Let the painting begin!
 The figure was now mounted on a temporarily base, washed in mild soapy water and rinsed toughly. When dry, out came the spraycan of Citadell Skullwhite, which I always use to prime my figures. I like to start working on a white underground, although I know lots of modellers who prefer a light grey coat and they get better results then I do. It’s up to a personal taste I think.
Now, theoretically you can start painting after letting this coat dry for about an hour, but I always let it dry overnight.  Whenever there are big parts of metal to do, I do them first. This is for two reasons: first I’m no good at painting metallic surfaces. So when I see these look awful I stop the figure and start another and secondly the metallic paint won’t be able to spoil previously painted work. The pigments of metallic paints often go all over the figure.
I use separate brushes, cloths and thinners for the metallic paints. This way no pigment can be mixed with my non-metallic paints. I’ll start with the bronze parts. These were first undercoated with Black Green (VA980). When dry this was overpainted Bronze (VA998) using a semi drybush method. By this I mean that there’s less paint in the brush then used when painting but yet a bit more then when drybrushing.
This was once again let to dry, and then the shadows were painted with thinned Green Umber oil paint. Highlights were painted Green Gold (VA795) and finally some spot highlights got a dot of Super Silver (VA848). Whenever painting metallic surfaces  I find it important to use a strong contrast between the shadows and highlights. Note that I didn’t blend any of the colours.
Now, this turned out better then I expected and gave me some courage to paint the red gold items. These were first painted Burnt Cadmium Red (VA814) and semi drybrushed using Red Gold (VA794). Thinned Madder Brown Alizarin was used to shade and Old Gold (VA792) for the highlights.
 Once again some highlights were picked out using the Super Silver to represent catches of light.
What I feared the most had turned out not so bad!
Next the skin tones were done. For those of you who might have missed my articles in previous Military Modelling’s I will quickly explain how I paint these. The base was Flat Flesh (VA955).
My flesh colour in oil is always made up of the following colours: Titanium White, Mars Orange Red, Alizarin Crimson and Cadmium Yellow. To this I mix one or two other colours, depending on the circumstances the figure is placed in. By this I mean time of day, time of year, region, the age of the figure I’m painting, etc… All to often you see great painted figures but which lack personality because the painter used a standard skin tone, not one that fits the figure. In this case I added Green Umber.
 This mixed is laid on as thin as possible and immediately wiped of with a clean flat broad brush. A bit of Indian red was blended in the hollow of the cheeks and was also used for the lower lip.
I then paint in the shadows using Mars Brown while a mix of Alizarin Purple and Madder Brown Alizarin was used for the dark shadows. Highlighting was done by mixing some Titanium White and Cadmium Yellow with the skin tone I had mixed before, more Titanium White was added for the highest highlights.
The figure was now left to dry for a couple of day, after which the deepest shadows were repainted with the dark shadow mix with some Green Umber added and pure Titanium White was added for the highest highlights. It was now once again put aside to dry. Next I use a technique called glazing.
What I do is mix one part bleached linseed oil to three parts turpentine. This mix is then used to thin the oil colours down. First some Mars red is applied to the hollow of the cheeks. If you want to represent a soldier who hasn’t had some sleep for a couple of days, then you can paint this under the eyes to. Flake white was used for the highest highlights, and the dark shadow mix with a little Mars Black mixed in for the darkest shadows. Pure Green Umber was used for the 5 ‘o clock shadow. To represent the 5 ‘o clock shadow I also use different colours depending on the figure (Green Umber, Blue Black, Payenes Grey, etc…). Et voila, our figure becomes alive.
 The red shirt was next to tackle. Red is a difficult colour, which often turn out either to pinkish or orange. The tunic was painted red (VA947). The first highlight was Vermilion (VA909) and Sunny Skin Tone (VA845) was added for the next highlights. With each highlight I increased the amount of Sunny Skin Tone till I finally used pure Sunny Skin Tone for the last highlight. Some Deep Green (VA970) was mixed in the red and this was used to shade. More Deep Green and Flat Black (VA950) were added to the mix to paint the darker parts of the shadow.
Finally pure black was used for the darkest shadows.
On to challenge number two: the checker design at the borders of the shirt. I must admit that I’m totally not good when it comes to painting patterns, etc… But if I want to improve I have to tackle them one day and I thought the day had come. When painting the red of the shirt I had taken care not to paint the red where the pattern had to come. This border was then first painted with a mixture of White, black, English Uniform (VA921) and a tiny bit of red. Since white is a very reflective colour I always like to mix some of the colour which is nearest to the whit in my basic mix. Highlighting was done by adding more white, shading by adding more black.  No extreme highlights or shadows were painted at this stage.
Next I drew a horizontal line dividing the white in two equal parts, and some vertical lines at an even space. That means: what I hoped and thought to be even spaced. Then I coloured the blocks to be black with a mix of black, white and English Uniform.
To highlights I added Sunny Skintone to the mix while black was added for the shadows. At this point I also painted the extreme highlights and shadows for both the white and black blocks using pure white and black respectively.
The cape was painted English Uniform. Sunny skintone was added to highlight and some Buff (VA976) for the high highlights. Again, no extreme highlights were painted at this stage. For the shading process I added some Burnt Umber to the English Uniform; no extreme shadows were painted at this moment.
Next I painted the horizontal coloured stripes, for the black and red I used the same mixes as for the shirt. The blue stripe was first painted with a mix of Flat Blue (VA962) and Turquoise (VA966).
Highlighting was done by adding more Turquoise to the mix and for the final highlights I added some Light Turquoise (VA840). I mixed more Flat Blue in the basic colour to shade, and some black was added for the darker shadows. It was at this moment that I regretted gluing the cape in place when starting the figure. I accidentally painted on the shirt and breastplate a couple of times. These were overpainted in the right colour once the cape was finished.
I now painted the highest highlights of the cape using Beige (VA917) and White, taking care to add them to the places that receive the most light. As the colour become lighter, the spots where I painted the highlights became smaller.
The same was done for the shadows, only this time using pure black. The only big area left to be painted were the trouser. First I thought of following the Angus McBride colour plate, but as I was quit pleased with my pattern painting so far, I decide to add some to the trousers to.
After all, since I was painting in acrylics I could easily overpaint them should the pattern not work out. The base colour for the pants was a mix of Japanese Uniform WWII (VA923), Yellow Ochre (VA913) and Beige. Highlighting was done by adding more beige to the mix and some Sunny Skintone for the high highlights. For the shading process I used more Japanese Uniform WWII and some Burnt Umber for the darker shadows. Next I painted the broad horizontal stripes using Orange Brown (VA981). Sunny Skintone was added to the Orange brown to paint the highlights. Shading wasn’t done until the pattern was completed.
The small horizontal and vertical stripes were painted in Burnt Umber.
The trousers were now highlighted again using Beige and White; while Burnt Umber and Flat Black was used to create the shadows. The deepest shadows were done with very diluted Flat black, applying them in several passes rather than one heavy. When working with light colours it’s important not to overdo the shadows. It was at this stage that I took the figure to a modelshow to have it “judged” by some clubmembers. They all found it looked ok, so I returned home with a good feeling.
That was until I opened my box I used for transportation. The figure had come loose from its temporarily base, and the pole had broken just above the hands. Disaster with a capital D! After a sleepless night I sat down at my workbench, thinking on how to repair this.
Suddenly I saw it: I drilled a hole in the hands and one at the bottom of the wild boar. My luck must have changed since the diameter of a paperclip was just the right size.
This was then cut to length and glued in place. Only one more problem to solve: the place where the pole entered into the hands was damaged. After looking through some books on Celtic weapons and artefacts, I decided to glue some fine copperwire around the pole where the figure grabbed it.
This was done in the same fashion as the figure’s torque. The pole of the standard was painted Andrea Wood (AC41). Woodgrain (VA828) was used for the highlights. This colour was also used to paint the design of the wood. Shadows and the grain were painted on using Burnt Umber.
Back to the base.
 The figure was now ready to be attached to his base, hopefully forever this time! I only had created a piece of rock for a part of the groundwork. The rest had to become a sandy underground. I mixed some acrylic texture paste with fine sand, woodglue and Tamiya Buff. This was spread over the base, and while still wet the figure was pressed in place and the lump glued in place.
Once dry it was painted Sand Yellow (VA916). A wash of Italian Earth (Old Holland oil paint) was painted on next. Once this was dry it was drybrushed using the Sand Yellow, beige and a tiny amount of white. Some static grass was glued on using white glue. While this was still wet, I gently blew across the surface.
This I did for two reasons: it blows away all the excess and it will make the grass stand up, just like the real thing. Once this was dry it was painted a dark green colour using Acrylic paints. This was then drybrushed using the basic colour with lighter green mixed in and later some yellow.
The figure was now glue in place using 5-minute epoxy glue. To tie the figure to the groundwork I dusted both with Mig pigment powders. These can be compared to sanded pastel chalk, only do they adhere in a much better way.
Conclusion
I had a great time painting this figure. This is really one of those figures that can be painted by anyone, from the beginner to the master. You have such a choice of how to paint the clothing that you make it as simple or complicated as you wish. For my standard I made it quit complicated, but then again I feel I have learned a lot and am now a bit more self assured to tackle figures with a more complex uniform. As with all Pegaso figures I have no hesitation in recommending this figure to the fullest.
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