Renaissance Duel Prize for IainW - The Knight of Gabbiano

Last year Iain and I had a Renaissance Duel to which he soundly trounced me. (What was I thinking? Well, obviously not much as I did the exact same thing this year...) As a prize I offered to paint him an Italian Wars figure. He graciously offered to send me one of his old skool knights that he was in the midst of stripping for repaint and I said I'd be happy to do one up for him. 

Well, it turned out I lied.

In my minds eye I thought Iain would send a gendarme all decked out in full plate and barding - lots of steel, so a fairly straightforward job, right? Nope. What I received instead was a fully caparisoned knight that would require hand painted heraldry emblazoned all over the horse barding. Iain, I silently cursed you when I opened that parcel. ;)

Nonetheless, I based up the b*gger and he sat on the paint desk staring at me this past year. In fact I petulantly ignored him until this week, when guilt finally took over and I set him in front of me so I could figure out what to do with him. Well, there was no way I was going to cop out and do a solid-colour job - he needed proper heraldry to get slaughtered in, so I put my thinking cap on. After a few hours of looking at various designs on the web I decided to take a break and get a drink. On my way to the kitchen I passed our wine rack and there he was, prancing on his charger, proud as a bishop on a bottle of Chianti.

Now I was off and running.

  

The one nice thing about this casting is that the detail is fairly soft and smooth, which made painting the pattern that much easier. Once I got my eye in, the pattern began to unfold quite easily and a few hours later the bulk of him was done.

The lance is white metal so did my best to straighten it. I'm usually not a bit fan of metal lances, but I do like the big flaring vamplate on this one.

After all my bellyaching I'm happy with how he turned out and am now quite sad to see him go. I'll have to give that pattern a go with one of my Steel Fist gendarmes in the future... 

There you go Iain, the Knight of Gabbiano. I hope you like him. As a request, I ask that you have a glass of Chianti to toast him into your collection. :)