An Unexpected Army -Part 2 First Hobbits Finished

Seeing as William Hupp of Thistle & Rose was so nice to send me these samples, I thought that it behooved me to move them to the front of the painting queue.

Irregulars are always a challenge, trying to get variety in the clothing without driving yourself crazy. After getting confused and stalled by cycling through tunics, trousers, cloaks all at once, I just concentrated on getting the cloaks looking right with some highlights because they are the major part of the figure and will grab the eye.

Archers

Scouts

After that everything else fell into place and I got them done in a couple of hours painting session with Patrick and Mikey.

I kept the palette simple and muted. These are scouts and skirmishers and archers, so mostly browns and greys, a few greens, and the occasional dark blue cloak or shirt. The three leader figures (from the original Vendel halfing adventurer pack) have red or yellow shirts, because JRRT mentions in his essay "Concerning Hobbits" that they like yellow. If you're trying to sneak up on some orcs, you can pull your cloak around to cover your yellow shirt after all. Also I figure the leaders would be from the more well to do families and have better clothes.

With the delicate separate weapon hands on the spear hobbits and villagers I decided early on that multi-figure basing would be required with these chaps, so I'm doing all of them that way to keep the army looking cohesive. This also allows for some dramatic basing with ferny undergrowth (dried moss actually).

I'm following the scheme I worked out with my Medieval armies; 40mm x 40mm bases, 2 skirmishers, or 3 light infantry, or 4 heavy infantry per base.

So first up two 6 figure units of rock throwing skirmisher/scouts.

One 12 figure unit of light missiles.

Adding in the captain figures will give me some spares, which I will gather into another scout unit with a mix of bows, rocks and spears.