Introducing Myself - SimonG

While the circumstances might be extreme I'm glad to have a chance to join you all for the first time in a painting challenges having followed Challenge X with great interest for the past several months.

I am a returnee to the hobby after a 40 year break. Back in the late 70s and early 80s I was a teenaged member of the York Wargames Society and fielded an extensive LoTR army based around Minifigs D&D figures predominantly. I still recall fondly my massed ranks of pig faced orcs all painted in vibrant shades of enamel blue!

Wind forward the clock and now mostly retired and with time on my hands my wife encouraged me to find something new to do so here I am again!

Casting around for an area to focus I settled on the Hundred Years War, and most specifically the period around the emergence of La Pucelle d'Orleans with 28mm miniatures primarily from Perry (plastic and metal) with some Front Rank. Over the past three months I've worked through a French army all mounted on Impetus bases and am coming to the end of that before moving to the English.

Here's the last piece I worked on before the challenge -- a stand of Knights led by Jacques de Chabannes, Lord of La Palice -- home designed and laser printed banners and hand painted Tabard (don't look too closely 😆)

Funny thing is I've been putting off doing the mounted figures as I was worrying about painting horses -- turns out I actually love doing them -- they're so characterful and varied and I now find myself clipping pictures of different horses to act as references whenever I find them, the dark horse with the standard bearer is actually based off a Brooke rescue working horse on a calendar attached to our Fridge!

Anyway my first Challenge proper job is a stand of French crossbowmen using older Perry sculpts from Wargames Foundry. At first glance these are pretty unprepossessing with plenty of flash and mould lines. Thank god for MitreFast for attaching the separate crossbows and hands! Also my first time with adding bow strings which turned out to be fun.

But once you get the undercoat on they're actually really characterful (some great 'taches) and with lots of detail so should paint up nicely!

Going forward I apologise in advance for a lack of period variety but I can promise civilians, donkeys, carts, lots of archers and maybe some scenery