Dixmude 1489 part 2, John Pearson

Of the few accounts of the battle I found the following really evocative;

'And also it is not to be forgoten, but to by had in ramenbrance, the goode courage of an Englyshe yoman called John Person, whiche was somtymes a baker off Coventre; which John Person, after that a gowne had borne away his foote by the small of the legge yet that notwithstonding, what setting and what kneling, shot affter many of his arows. And when the Frenshe men fledde and his felowes ware in the chase, he cried to one off his fellowes and saide: "Have thow thise vj arawes that I have lefte and folow thow the chase, for I may not", the whiche John Person died within few dayes aftir, on whose saulle Gode have mercy.'

From this I saw two potential conversions; the first part of an archer firing while kneeling or the second of him passing his arrows. I opted for the latter but I think I could still do both. Either way this makes for a great casualty or battered marker.

In terms of clothing the base coat in this cut and livery was a feature of Henry VIII's early reign but I want this to easily blend with the rest of my collection so that's the artistic license I'm taking 😃.

The figure was converted from parts from the Perry Miniatures Ansar, Bow and Bill and Mercenaries sets with dagger and pouch from the Warlord Landsknecht set. Here's the initial kit-bash and sculpting in progress;

Here's another converted casualty marker;

This writhing casualty used a Perry Miniatures Zulu body as a dolly. I opted to leave it free of weapons so it works for both bow or bill.

Prior to painting;

All the best

Stuart

Dixmude 1489 part 1, foot knights

The day job, home, family etc has been quite hectic and i'll be honest I've just been exhausted in my downtime. It's been frustrating at times as I've been finding that when I'm away from the painting table I have a real urge to paint but can't and when I have time I often just don't feel it at all. Burnout.

However, the last couple of weeks I've put a bit of discipline into things and made a real effort to break the impasse. I've got various projects on the go which in itself can be a bit depressing as they sit there for months not being painted so I decided I'd add one more ! I wanted a quick result to kickstart things and opted for some foot knights as I considered I could get a good production line going and have fun assembling them.

The initial inspiration for these was the idea of creating a small early Tudor force for the battle of Dixmude 1489. There's a good article about it here. Henry VII sent a force of 1000 archers under command of among others Giles, Lord Daubeney, Captain of the Calais Garrison. 

I've got plenty of archers so for my part I just need to create some foot knights for the personalities and hopefully a few vignettes.

Daubeney was first up and needed some armoured colleagues. You can read more about Daubeney

here, he's got an interesting military career including putting down the Cornish Rebels at Blackheath which could be fun to represent.

These were all just Perry Miniatures foot knights assembled straight from the box, there's a lot of inspiration online for good assembly combinations and these were some of my favourites;

The armour is suitable easily up to around 1515 and beyond for many of the poorer nobles. There are a wealth of effigies depicting Tudor noblemen in older armour and heraldic surcoats.

The standard bearer is metal from a pack of Perry WOTR standard bearers, banner is from Pete's flags.

The painting process for these were as follows;

• black undercoat
• paint the armour in Foundry Metal mid-shade
• wash with 1:2 mix of Games Workshop Nuln Oil and Agrax Earthshade
• light drybrush of Foundry metal shade
• Neatly highlight with Foundry metal mid-shade
• light wash of a 1:1 mix of Foundry British Blue Grey shade and Granite shade with water 
• Highlight with Foundry Spearpoint metal highlight 

They really 'pop' at the last 2 stages, the blue defines it and makes the metal appear brilliant. All other areas were then painted in the usual way. I had them on a production line and finished them over the course of a week, working in the evenings.

I've another base of foot knights to do so I have practiced enormous self control in not basing these figures yet. This way I can have a play around with which combinations work best.

Bye for now, there's another update straight after this.

Stuart