Christine de Pizan

A conversion using the bottom half of Marion from the Airfix Robin Hood set and the top half of one of the ladies from the Italeri Medieval Challenge (or the medieval Tournament) set.

Marion is painted OOB which means she´s lacking her feet

Christine looks a bit bigger than Marion, which makes the nag look comparatively small, but it was more common for  medieval women to have ridden a Palfrey  and not a Destrier.

Not that  medieval women never rode war horses, Joan of Arc (1412 - 1431) Empress Matilda (1102 - 1167)and Matilda of Boulogne (1105 - 1152) are just a handfull of famous women  among many others.

Why Christine de Pizan? I found out about her when looking for info about Joan of Arc.
Usually she´s pictured wearing a "horned" headdress (A "Butterfly Hennin",  referred to sometimes as the "Christine de Pizan headdress") but the first Picture (below) I found of her,  she wears a "Steeple Hennin"

Christine de Pizan (1364 - 1430) wrote a Poem called  "Ditie de Jehanne dArc" (the Poem of Joan of Arc, also known as the song of Joan of Arc) in which she not only eulogizes Joan, but also celebrates the appearance of a woman military leader who, according to de Pizan, vindicated and rewarded all women’s efforts to defend their own sex,

"Ditie de Jehanne dArc" - Stanza XXXIV;

Hee! quel honneur au femenin Sexe!
Que Dieu l'ayme il appert,
Quant tout ce grant pueple chenin,
Par qui tout le regne ert desert,
Par femme est sours et recouvert,
Ce que Cm hommes [fait] n'eussent,
Et les traictres mis à desert!
A peine devant ne le creussent.

(Translation)

Oh! What honor for the feminine sex!

God has shown his regard for it,

in contrast to all the people who

destroyed the Kingdom and ran away and quit.

Now recovered and saved by a woman,

who did what 5000 men could not,

and now the traitors are no more

who would have believed this before

For those interested, there´s a very nice Illustrated PDF Version (in original and Translation in english, HERE

Teutonic Grand Master III

Another  Teutonic Grand Master to go with the Valdemar Version and  Italeri  one but this time from the Mars  Medieval Baltic Crusades set.
At PSR they rightly note that the Knight won´t fit onto his mount, the saddle is way to small, but that´s easily cured by cutting the back rest off :-D

The shield pattern and flag are from  Luther von Braunschweig (also known as Lothar; ca. 1275 – April 18, 1335) who was the 18th Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights, serving as head of the order from 1331-35.
He most  probably wouldn´t have carried his own standard but it looks better and who cares? :-D

Medieval Smithy and Barn

A nice suprise:-D
This pair of buildings turned up on my door step on monday kindly sent by Thorsten Burgdorf. Brand new in the range of buildings and they are available  HERE.

The Smithy Comes with a couple of extra pieces, the fireplace (?) with bellows, a couple of sacks and a plunging trough. There was also a tiny bucket but I lost it :-( but I´ve added a Barrel :-D

The woodwork effects look excellent, especially the wattle on the gable Ends of the barn.

Entirely made from resin,  easy to construct and paint, they have the same dimensions as the other Medieval houses (or other era houses) from the same range, which means all the bits and pieces, walls, gable ends, etc can be mixed and matched.

A blast from the past.

Some very very old airfix (and a couple of others) from way way back in the days of Humbrol enamel paints and when the choice of bods made converting them a necessity. 

A drawing pin stuck into the bod..a shield. The archer has got some legs from an Airfic ACW confederate bod.

EEK!! That gloss paint!!! Sunglasses on!..Bavarian  and Nassau grenadiers

This little lot is about half what remains of my napoleonic bods, most of the cavalry and a lot of the cannons have "dissapeared" along with t two farm houses .........and hundreds of tanks, planes and 1000´s of infantry......... without counting hundreds of 1/32nd bods and thier vehicles etc. 

They used to have regimental Standards and were attached to strips of cardboard from Old cereal packets. 

Superman in his scratchbuilt war taxi.

Austrian cuirassiers Regt. Nr 8 (pt 3)

Nearly there. 200 done and dusted for the Croeburn dio..only another 50 or so to go........:-D

Medieval carriage (update)

Finally the carriage can have a "crew" added.
The bods are from the Strelets Crusaders on the march set.
Carriages for transporting people didn´t come into use until after the medieval period but seeing as virtually every medieval film, even those that claim to be historically correct (the Tudors series to name but one) I think my bods are allowed thier comforts as well.

Rude passenger and the crew, The rude passenger has an unfortunate piece of plastic across his left eye.

Two female passengers.

The foot rest had to be made a bit thiker as it proved impossible to set the seat lower to accomodate their legs.

Drinking and driving

The rude passenger having a good old "dig" in his beak

Mrs Miggins is telling the rude passenger what she thinks of his pastime

gg

Bannockburn Project (Pt1)

The start of two medieval armies. The plan is to use mainly Strelets/linear-b bods and build both the english and scottish armies before the 24th of June 2015, the 700th anniversary of the Battle of Bannockburn.

The mounted Knights and welsh archers might prove a bit of a Problem but at least it´s one project I´ve got every chance of bringing to a close and on time :-D

How many bods will be painted? If I take the lowest number of troops that anyone reckons were there, 5000 for the Scottish side and 14,000 for the English, divide by 100 then 50 and 140. Doesn´t Sound a lot. eh? Ideas??

Bods used so far;

Foot Military Order Knights

Military Order Warriors

Medieval Levy 1

Medieval Levy 2

The result of the last couple of days, 13 Scottish and 7 English

The English troops are so far, getting a "uniform" colour scheme.....

...the scottish troops a more "General" mixed look.

The shields. I´m certainly not going to paint every Lion and Leopard on every shield so.....

Find the Patterns on the web (watch out for Copyright) copy and paste. The shields are 1.2 - 1.3 cms tall and 0.98 -1 cms wide. The flags I make 2.3 cms high and 2.6 cms wide.

Find a woodgrain pattern, copy, paste, reduce to "scale", copy and repeat until a full sheet is created.

Glue the front and back to a thin pece of card.........

.let dry, cut out, colour the cut edges with a felt tip and "shape" over a Piece of dowel or pen. To glue to the bods I use Pattex 100.  It´s thicker than most superglues, has no thinners and it drys a bit like Silicon, which gives a slightly flexible final bond which is good when the bods get dropped or knocked.

 

Wars of the Roses Scottish Troops (RedBox)

10 bods in the set...and to be honest, a LOT of flash! On 2 of the  4 sprues in the set I got some of the bods were surrounded with Flash. Over at PSR they seem to have got one of the good sprues (Here)
Still, when the Flash is  removed there´s some quite nice bods buried in it. A lot of them are quite generic looking and fit well alongside  other WotR´s bods.

The whole mob with conversions together. The Tartan. I made it up as I went along and any similarity to a real pattern is purely coincidental.

Missile bods.

Infantry. The one on the right..A Gallowglass?

The other figs, with conversions

The rather large halberd replaced with a pike

I wouldn´t want to be on the recieving end of that chopper...that´s if the guy could have actually lifted it.

The pikes that come attached to the bods are pretty thick and useless, so they got replaced. Why manufacturers still insist on creating poses with the pikes attached is beyond me. Easier would surely be just have the bod with ring Hands that a pike could be fitted to?

Now the last bod, the musician.
Bagpipes seem to have been used way back in human history and I´ve found a couple of references to them being used in warfare but nothing really definate. They turn up in Medieval manuscripts as far back as the 12th century (a collection of manuscripts with Bagpipes in them HERE)

Here  is the Sound of a reconstructed set  of a medieval  German Bagpipes called  "Hummelchen" (Little bee)  It has some similarity  to the "modern" sound of a set of Bagpipes.

The main Problem with the piper is that he hasn´t got the mouthpiece to blow the bag up!! Mind you, as can be seen in the pic above (the two pipers) the mouthpieces could be quite small so maybe it´s hidden against his chest.

Spartacus Uprising - Defeat ( Linear-b)

 

 

Spartacus   finally lost the Third Servile war and was killed at the battle of the Siler river and  the Retribution taken upon his remaining  followers was swift and terrible!!!

The whole set together.

Crixus getting a kick.
"The little vascal has spivit!"
"Has what, sir?" 
 "Spivit.!"
"Yes, he did, sir"
"No, no, spivit! Sort of...bombavdo, a touch of devving-do"
The Lictor is a good addition, the Fasces showing the power to excecute...

Forming an orderly line waiting for punishment (Roman officer from the  Construction set.)
"Crucifixtion?"
"yes"
"Good...out of the door, line on the left, one cross each"

The Roman soldier can have the whip removed and replaced with a rope as part of a construction Team or onboard a ship.

"You don't have to do this! You don't have to take orders!"
" I like orders!"

 

This Scene from the 1960 film, Spartacus. This scene   captures the  powerfull and  menacing look of a Roman Legion.