Lockdown Diversion

At the moment I have three painting projects on the go: American Civil War (ACW) Confederate infantry, War of the Roses retinue men at arms and a largish unit of medieval Russian light horse.   My current lack of focus means that none are complete.

Of course, my painting commissions for Ian at Fighting15s has slowed down my personal output a touch but I enjoy the variety that Ian's figures provide.  They are a nice break from working through a couple of dozen figures that are essentially all the same.

As a seasoned wargamer I responded to this "pressure" and lack of focus by starting a completely new mini-project that may lead to another full blown project:

This vignette is a medieval Russian general for Art de la Guerre (ADLG). It is the result of a dive in to the spares & scrap pile and some messing about with a graphics package. It's also the first time I've painted figures from Mirliton in over a decade. Previously I was too busy selling them to get round to painting them.

I decided to paint this element as I have, or will shortly have, a reasonable force of Russian cavalry.   They are destined to be mercenaries for my Lithuanian/Polish army but there's now going to be nearly enough to field as a full ally and for that a dedicated general would be nice.  That's my excuse anyway.

I have a couple of packs of Russian spear in the painting queue and stupidly I have looked at what I would need to field a full Russian ADLG army. To my amazement I'm a lot closer than I thought. I suppose you could call this "mission creep" or simple madness.

Figures Used
The cavalry rider is a spare RKRU2 from Roundway riding an unknown Essex horse from the scrap box. The infantry are from Mirliton's early Russian range (C32 Command group):

I have to say I like the faces on the Mirliton figures: they are really well sculpted, full of character and were very easy to paint.  To accommodate the over size flag the standard bearer was given a custom flag pole made from brass rod and its angle adjusted to be almost vertical.

Russian Icon Flags
Here is the image file I used to create the flag plus a bonus flag.  Both are conjectural.  The flag above is 17 mm.

I made flags of both of the above images but to be honest the second flag looks great on the screen but didn't look as vibrant in "real life".

After publicising this post someone asked about the way the rider was facing in the first flag.  Normally heraldic figures face the hoist so the sides are mirror images of one another.  I thought of doing this but decided that they were copies of icon paintings not heraldic figures so I didn't.  However if you'd prefer a reversed version here you are:

List of all the project posts