paints a legend from the Trojan Wars.Tutorial: Painting Warlord's Plastic Roman Legionaries
by Rabbits in My Basement (A part of Talk Wargaming Network)
My friend Scott got very excited by my 28mm Roman project. So excited, he's been amassing an army of his own. I have to paint them, though. He got himself a couple of the 30-figure boxed sets of plastic legionaries, so I thought I'd chronicle the painting of one of them. This photo essay is rather picture heavy, so I've made them all small to ease page loading.
First Assembly:
I use a cutting mat and a plastic block to cut on. The block helps brace objects that won't lie flat. I also use a pair of clippers at times if the piece is fragile and the tension of using a knife will break it.
I remove all the pieces for one figure (and only one figure) at a time.
Then glue him together. Making sure I get the hand lined up with the grip on the shield. Some leave the shield off for painting, but I can't see the point of painting a bunch of stuff that is going to be behind the shield. I also worry that any paint will negatively affect the glue bond. A decent glue is really important. I like the ProWeld with the brush-on applicator.
I noticed while I was painting that some of the bodies have empty scabbards. But in an effort to create some dynamic poses, I was just looking at the position of legs and arms, so I have some chaps with pila and an empty scabbard and others thrusting with their gladius with another hilt in the scabbard. Oops!
The command group. The trumpeter and signifer were the hardest to assemble, trying to get both arms and the standard joined at the same time and the trumpet wanted to push the head off the shoulders of the figure.
I then glue everyone on to some scrap card for ease of handling (and to keep the light plastic figures from blowing away with the force of the spray) and white prime. I use a matte spray in the summer, and in the winter I switch to brush-on gesso.
Everyone is then given a heavy wash of burnt umber for a basecoat. Notice I have now cut the strips of card apart for ease of painting.
Armor, weapons and edges of shields are then given a heavy drybrushing of pewter or gun metal.
To read the rest of the tutorial, click here.
