The Three Musketeers - The Royal Carriage

A King always travels in style and none has more style in abundance than King Louis of France. Covered in the royal fleur de lys heraldry, the King's presence is clearly announced and all who witness this carriage's passing will know it holds an important member of the Royal household, most likely the King himself. Not so good for visits to one of the King's mistresses, but no doubt he has more discrete carriages at his disposal should such a need arise.

The King descends from his carriage and is greeted by the Cardinal under the watchful eyes of his faithful musketeers.

The model is based on a Lemax victorian carriage with a heavily modified rider. The casting and painting on the original model was very bad and I did my best to improve it, but some casting flaws were beyond repair. The ugly thread reins were replaced with florist wire. The driver was completely resculpted to wear the King's livery. His hat was donated by a 54mm figure, with some added sculpting to enlarge it.

 

The King and Queen returning from a short ride in the King's carriage. 

The downside of announcing the identity of the passengers is having to deal with the occasional assassination attempt.

 For completeness' sake, this is the Lemax model it was based on, though in reality they don't look quite as nice and clean as in the promotional pictures:

Robin Hood - Medieval Scenery and Accessories Overview

In this post I will gather in one place the different scenery elements, accessories and wild and domestic animals that are spread out over the blog.

1. Sherwood Forest Wildlife

The (other) fox of Sherwood:

Source: Lemax (repaint)

The King's deer:

Source: Lemax (repaint)

Source: Lemax (repaint)

 The Kings rabbits:

Source: Lemax (repaint)

 Squirrel life:

Source: Lemax (repaint)

 2. Tournament Accessories

The jousting barrier:

Source: King and Country

Robin Hood - Woodland Animals (part 2)

I had a few more woodland animals to finish from those Lemax sets I showed earlier. A set of wild rabbits for the Merry Men to hunt and a couple squirrels (which I suppose could also go in a forest stew at a pinch). Nothing too exciting, but a nice bit of background scenery to add to a board or setup. These aren't my best paintjobs by far, but then they were pretty rough casts and not very inspiring to work on. I think they look the part though.

The rabbit stew, au naturel:

Did you hear something?

Err... what's up, Doc?

 And the squirrels. They may be slightly big for the scale, practically the size of the rabbits, but I'm sure it will work out fine.

Aww... nuts!

My God, giant squirrels!

Robin Hood - Woodland animals (part 1)

Newly painted for the Robin Hood collection, some woodland animals, namely some deer and a (cunning?) fox. These are all repaints of Lemax figures again. Painting animals is hard by the way...

Deer family minding it's own business...

Almost too easy...

Father deer/dear...

...and the little ones

Lemax fox repaint

 

You know, I hear Disney is casting a fox to play me on the big screen...

Robin Hood: The Chaperone

Another update, another Lemax conversion and repaint. This one is a chaperone or a lady-in-waiting for Maid Marion. I used a Lemax nun as the base figure. Because classic nun outfits are basically medieval in style anyway. While I wasn't going to change the base figure much initially, I ended up converting her quite a bit. Her height was raised by lengthening her dress and adding a new base, her sleeves were changed, as was her collar and headdress. 

The chaperone and the donor figure

Overall, I think the changes were succesful into hiding her origins and turning her into a proper medieval lady. A radically different choice of colours also helps to make forget her past. I think I finally found a skin recipe for these figures that I'm happy with, though after finishing her, I can't help but feel her face looks a lot like Rowan Atkinson... Once she is varnished, the minor rough spots should hopefully look a bit smoother too. 

That Robin fellow better keep his manners (and his hands to himself)

Tssss... that modern "music" is giving me a headache.

Robin Hood: The Black Canuns

I had picked up this set of OOP "Jolly Friars" from Lemax to add to my Robin Hood project. They were standing on a thick slab of a base that made them tower over the other figures. Lowering that base was not a pleasant endavour but I'm glad I did it. Unfortunately the casting on these was not the best, so painting them was a bit of a chore. This wasn't helped by the fact that I initially started to repaint them in the same colours as the original, which had the side-effect that even when they were almost done, they never stopped looking like the christmas junk that they are to me. Now I tend to have The Adventures of Robin Hood playing in the background for inspiration when working on these and then my attention was drawn to those blackclad monks that follow the Bishop around in the movie and do his bidding. I quickly decided to paint over the robes in black and turn them into black canuns. It seems to have worked as now I can view them as proper figures even though they are still rough in places.

Black canuns vs Lemax Jolly Friars

I'm not too happy with the faces, but they'll do fine for some cheap background figures.

Robbing you blind while looking all pious...

The Bishop of Nottingham and his cronies 

And the original inspiration...

Friar Tuck is not impressed by the black canuns' arguments

The Three Musketeers - The Flowergirl

Next update is another Lemax conversion for the Musketeers project, and one I'm particularly stoked with as I think it worked really well.

The starting model is Lemax' violet girl, which for once was really well cast and sculpted with really good, fine details. As usual, the paint was splashed on in the general direction of the figure (official pic below is flattering). From the start, I thought this model had a lot of potential for converting to the 17th century (it's practically perfect) and I looked at some pictures of 17th century clothing before deciding on the colourscheme. In fact, she's so perfect that I no longer feel the tomato vendor is good enough to use in this setting, so I may relocate that one to some other project.

 

 

I wasn't originally going to keep the flowers purple, but since I painted those almost last, I more or less painted myself into a corner by already using all the other likely colours on her clothing. No complaints though, I think it worked out well. I also went for brighter colours on this one rather than the drab colours of the others and I think it worked out for the best, so I'll keep going in this direction.

Buy my pretty flowers. They come with a kiss.

I think the paintjob's match to the King & Country figures is as good as it's going to get with my skills. She doesn't stand out next to them as someone who doesn't belong. Size is perfect too, only minor niggle is the thickness of her base, but I did my best to at least round off the edges to make it less noticeable. 

"Some pretty flowers for your lady, Milord?"

"According to my book, those plants are the mark of a witch!" - "Look, I don't want any trouble..."

The Three Musketeers - The King's Gardens - Part 3

No update on the fountain (though I did invest in some water effects products and ordered some clear fishing line, so that's progress of sorts).

What I did manage to finish is another repaint of a Lemax item for the garden, this time a bird bath. Promotional picture of the original item below, I should stress that they don't look like that in the stores. Casting flaws and shoddy painting (the birds were three dirty coloured blobs on mine) means they need a bit of TLC to get there.

False advertising at work...

After texturing the base to match the K&C figures and patching up any major casting flaws, I decided to ditch the unrealistic red, blue and yellow and try and give the birds a colourfull pattern that could be found in nature too.  After some googling, I ended up with this:

I may have overdone it a bit...

And for good measure (and indication of size, the King on a stroll in his garden (with a watchful musketeer in the back to keep an eye on him in case the pretty birds get angry)...

My, aren't you pretty lovelies?

The Three Musketeers - The King's Gardens - Part 2

A small update on the fountain and some new topiaries. The fountain has been dismantled, most of the unseemly glue has been removed and I've started filling holes etc... You can see in the pic that one of the statues broke, but it came like that (second hand model) and will be glued back on when it's time to start painting. I noticed the bottom wasn't quite level, so I raised it on one side and puttied it up, so it's more level now. I still need to sand the stand for the centerpiece for good measure and then it should sit straight as it should. I've removed the oversized clear tubing (it felt greasy anyway) and will make some replacement tubing from rolls of putty (a small test piece can be seen in the second pic. Loads to do still, but it looks heaps better already.

Another experimental purchase were the Lemax items seen below. The bird bath is still being worked on, but I did a test piece with one of the topiaries and it came out well, I think. 

Before and after comparison:

Basically I painted over the snow with green paint, covered it in watered down pva glue and dipped that in a bag of coarse flock and let it sit overnight. Then just a matter of carefully brushing and shaking off most of the excess and let some thin glue dripple over it.

And a picture for size. I think they can make pretty useful scenic items and they really cost peanuts.