#pictii

[downthetubes]

Crowdfunding Spotlight: BOXES Volume 4, from ThirdBear Press

Crowdfunding Spotlight: BOXES Volume 4, from ThirdBear Press

[trve-grimdark]

Painting the Albainn of Darklands, and getting Pictish Inspiration.

Lately the game of Darklands from Mierce Miniatures has been filling the gaping hole of dark, gritty, history inspired fantasy left in my soul after the demise of WHF. 

I just finished painting my first unit and have to say I’m quite proud of how this army, The Albainn, is coming along. Its was a bit of a struggle to decide how I wanted these fantasy versions of the Picts (The ancient peoples of iron age and dark age Scotland) to be depicted in my painting.

FIRST AND FOREMOST: I love Scottish culture, and the ancient history of Scotland and the isles in general. Being of Scottish decent myself (Wallace on one side, Maxwell on the other) I guess its rather obvious why.

The Picts however, are my main fascination in this part of history. A people we know so little about, not even what they called themselves (The Romans called them Picts or Pictii, meaning Painted or Painted People). They are prime breeding grounds for all sorts of fantasy style ideas. Just look at the works of Robert E. Howard.

I’m not going to sit here and debate all the endless dead ends and possible historical facts we know or don’t know about the Picts Instead I’ll just give a exposition on why I chose what I did when painting this army and why.

Did The Picts really wear blue paint and tattoos (Made from ‘Woad’)?

Who knows? The Romans said they did, but the Romans said a lot of things about the people they where trying to conquer (Most of it not nice). But in this case I do believe they wouldn’t have bothered to say something so specific about this one people in the far north of Britain with out a reason.

I decided to go for painting blue war paint on my Albainn as both a way to identify easily that yes, these are Picts, and also because I am quite sure they did something along those lines that got the Romans talking. 

It was a bitch to come up with an idea on how to do this in a way that didn’t compromise the high detail Mierce puts into their minis..

So, I settled on combining the ideas of some popular movies and games I rather enjoy watching. The first of course being the Portrayal of the Picts in the movie King Arthur, Staring Clive Owen and Keira Knightly. I also took a bit of inspiration from the movie Centurion and The Eagle. 

The Eagle was strange in that it made the Picts look a bit more Native American, that painted their whole bodies in a crusty blue grey-ish paint and I rather liked the super primitive look.

I wanted to make the paint look like it was slathered on the body by hand, not designed by some air brush wielding costume artist backstage. I found the answer in a rather odd form. An upcoming game called Hellblade Senua’s Sacrifice. 

The game revolves around a young Celtic woman (with a very Pictish look about her) whose village and husband are slaughtered by viking raiders. On a quest into the Norse heartland, Senua’s mind is broken by her ordeal and psychosis sets in that makes her perceive the world around her in a mythological and extremely dark and brutal way. I was drawn to how the paint on Senua, and on other creatures in the game had a weird, mud like caked on appearance and the blue was more muted.

So I decided to go with this pale skin tone built up from a light fleshy purple, and then layered the war paint on by using muted brown colors and building up to a small highlight of pure blue to give the paint a more dirty look.

This post is getting long. So here’s a few more pics, and I will just pic up more on this hobby story later when I have more things done.