Subodai
A 70mm White Metal figure of a Mongol Warrior from Elite Miniatures
Whilst Genghis Khan’s name is almost universally know, mainly through school lesson history, his generals are perhaps less than household names.
This strikes me as rather unfair, because although Genghis was undoubtedly a great leader, his generals were the ones to wield the massive forces that built up under the great Khan’s banner.
Subodai is one such general, possibly the greatest of them, simply because his tactics are still pertinent to the use of armies in this day and age. General Schwarzkopff referred to Subodai as a 21st century commander trapped in the 13th century.
The way Genghis Khan controlled his armies was logical and sensible to a far-reaching degree. Simply put, it was run on a meritocracy. You couldn’t expect a high position just because you were related to someone, came from the same tribe, or had money to bribe your way in. The important positions went to the people who were capable of doing the job – simple as that.
Subodai was one such. A man capable of not only leading an army, but actually able to make the men perform well beyond any expectations at the time, or for that matter, in the time since.
He developed the idea of using a small group of riders to relay messages to forces great distances apart – very similar to the way that the Pony Express system was used several centuries later to cover the vast distances in the USA.
Such was Subodai’s skill that he managed to have his army perform a flanking manoeuvre with the two forces over a thousand miles apart, the two parts of the army coming together at the correct time and place to crush the enemy.
He is credited with being the only general to beat the Russians on their own soil, using the winter as his ally. This was done by waiting for the rivers to freeze, and thus they were more easily crossed and negated the use of bridges – something that both Napoleon and Hitler’s armies could not replicate.
In fairness, the Mongolian use of the horse was rather different to Napoleon’s forces, the Mongolians electing to use their horses not only as a mode of transport, but as a mobile larder in the form of a ready source for milk and blood that could be mixed and drunk by the rider.
Subodai is also credited with being one of the first to use both light and heavy cavalry forces along with ballistic weapons - with very little, if any, use of infantry. Again, this tactical choice of using cavalry over foot soldiers is due to the Mongolians being a nomadic people, with mobility a matter of priority for covering the vast tundra they called home.
The Mongolians – to a greater extent – have been painted as barbarian hordes. Whilst this viewpoint is probably quite fair when viewing a marauding horde descending upon your farm or town, the fact is that the generals – such as Subodai – were willing to be educated and take on ideas from other nations. This being especially true when regarding new technology that could be used to expand or more easily conquer enemies.
For example Subodai took on Chinese crossbowmen, collapsible ballistae and catapults, and used dummies stuffed with straw to make his forces look more numerous.
Combined, these ideas made his force more able to tackle and defeat enemies that were possibly superior in number, and certainly thought to be more educated – by classical understanding of learning – than either himself, or his troops.
I doubt that all these ideas were solely Subodai’s, but the fact that he was able to assimilate or develop them to form a complex and working battle plan says a lot about the man.
The model.
This is quite an old offering from Elite Miniatures of Spain. It’s a simple kit with few parts, but the quality of sculpting and the way they fit together is just superb.
I managed to get hold of this from a good friend – Mike Harbour – who, in fairness, must have had a lapse in his senses to contemplate letting it out of his Grey Army…….But his loss was my gain, and also that of another good friend – Ian Johnson – who would be the eventual recipient of the piece.
So, having gotten the kit, it sat on my shelves for about nine months ( well, one has to let these things mature – like a good wine ).
The model had been cleaned up and primed by Mike ( thanks mate ), so all I really needed to do was check it over, do a little test fitting of the few parts, and then crack on with the painting.
Photos #1 and #2 show the model with an undercoated paint on the face, but the primer showing almost everywhere else. I’d purposely begun with a shade that was way too light, made from Games Workshop Bronzed Flesh and some Skull White. This was added in three separate coats so that the colour built up in solidity gradually
In photo #3 I’ve added some oil paint. It looks a mess, and is a mix of Mars Brown with a small amount of Mars Yellow ( Burnt Sienna and Yellow Ochre will do the same job, but the pigment in these latter colours isn’t as dense, so it tends not to cover the surface to the same extent ).
So, having gone and made a brew of tea, and nibbled a biscuit, thus giving some of the oils time to evaporate off ( it’s probably not much, but it seems to make a difference ), I then removed most of the paint from the face with a large, soft and most importantly, dry, brush.
It helps to make downward strokes, so that the paint tends to be removed from the areas that will have the most light hitting them.
Having done that, and wiped the brush on an old T-shirt, I then gently stippled the face to blend out some of the harsher shadows.
There needs to be enough paint left on the face to allow the lighter colours to be blended in to the shadow colour ( which this dark brown happens to be ).
Too much of the dark paint will mean that you have to add lots of highlight tones to effect a change, too little, and the paint will look patchy. So it’s a case of practicing on a couple of figures to see what works.
Now I’ve said that for a reason. This is that even if you use the same colours as I do, it’s unlikely that they’ll be from the same batch of pigment that was put into the tubes, so there will almost certainly be differences in pigment density. Add to that the fact that each time we squeeze out some paint, there’s some loss of the oil carrier from the tube, plus older oils tend to be drier than new ones………Basically, there’s a lot of variables, so if you’re trying this method, please have patience and give it a few goes before frustration sets in.
So, having removed some of the shadow colour, it’s time to add some definition to the details of the face.
Photo #4 shows how I’ve blended in some Titanium White to the major raised areas. I’ve only used a small amount of paint on the tip of the brush, and used gentle strokes of the brush to blend the white and the dark brown together. I’m trying to retain the darker areas that will be in deepest shadows at this point – like the areas under the nose, under the eyebrows and under the chin and lips. He’s got fairly sunken cheeks too, so in the case of this model, I’m trying to keep some of the darker shadow colour there too.
When you get fairly confident with this method, you can start trying to keep some of the finer details like the wrinkles on the brow and the crows-feet at the corner of the eyes, but these can be added later, it’s not a worry.
What I am trying to do at this point is put as little paint on the model as possible, so that the sculptor’s skills can show me what features are there to be capitalised on. The sculptor of this piece really knows his stuff, and the details can all be seen in photo #4, so here’s the best bit of advice you’ll get – buy well sculpted figures, even if they are more expensive, because a poor sculpting will take a lot of work by even the best painters for it to look good.
On to photo #5. Here there’s more of the Titanium White been added, again in very small amounts.
Now you’re probably going to say “I’ll bet he uses a really small brush to do this.”
Actually I use a Winsor and Newton Series 7 size 1. It’s a good quality brush and has a fine point. It’ll hold a decent amount of paint when necessary, but the important thing is that it’ll form a decent point. The finer the point, the better access you have to getting the bristles to touch the right part of the model – Oh alright, so long as you’ve got good eyes too……or decent glasses.
If you compare photos#4 and #5 you can see that all I’ve done is add lighter paint to the areas of detail that had been shown up by removing the dark paint. It’s all there, barring the small wrinkles radiating down over the cheekbones.
So, having painted the face, I left it to dry fully. The oils will fade out a bit over a couple of weeks, and so I would normally return to the face to add further highlights once the figure is finished or at least nearing completion. But for now, it’s looking O.K.
Onto the hat -this is where the ideas started coming forth. I’ve seen a few of these painted, not many, but enough to realise that it’s possible to make it a really boring looking piece, or a really interesting looking piece, depending on what the painter does. Basically, the large coat is 80% of the model, it’s relatively flat, having no deep creasing or movement caused by the figure or a breeze, so it’s up to the painter to “do” something with it.
The hat was the beginning, where I tried to make the separate pieces of leather that make up the headgear look like they were slightly different colours. I didn’t labour the point; after all, the hat has a function – that being to keep the head warm, so the maker would be looking for a dense fur that performed the task. All pieces that comprised the hat therefore would be of similar density and thickness……..Make sense ?
So the fur probably came from one or two animals, but probably of the same species.
The crown of the hat is done in one set of colours – Shadows from a mix of Mars Black and Mars Brown, with some Mars Brown on it’s own for the mid-tones, and then Titanium White blended in for the highlights and along the worn edges of the seams where the leather has been stretched to form the sewn joint between the separate pieces.
The method used to blend the paint was very similar to that used on the face, the shadows added first and then brushed off, the mid-tones added, and then highlights after that, again allowing the sculpted detail and imperfections in my brushwork to build into random details.
This is perhaps more evident on the neck covering area of the hat, where I’ve added some Light Red oils into the mid-tone and primary highlight mix to give a different colour to the area. The shadows are the same, as too is the highlight ( See photos #7 and #8 )
Having had the idea for pieces of leather on the hat, I was prompted to rethink how the coat was going to look.
Photo #7 shows how I’d already begun the sleeves, and these looked O.K. if a little boring. In photo #9 I began experimenting with small random patches of colour to try and depict separate pieces of leather.
Initially I supposed that Subodai would have been poor, and that a coat made from leather patches might have been a necessity when game animals were scarce. Piecing together parts of old garments that hadn’t worn out with new patches of leather didn’t seem too much of a stretch of the imagination. But then having discussed the matter with Ian Johnson, who’s knowledge of the subject far exceeds mine, he mentioned that fur of various kinds was a most lucrative business in the area that Subodai was charged with controlling, so I suggested that the opposite might then be true, this was effectively a “coat of many colours” displaying wealth by having many different animals skins making it up………It’s always good to have a fast brain and a ready excuse !
Anyway, photo #9 shows how it started. It looks quite bright, but the fading process that the oils go through, not to mention drying – this is still wet, as you can tell from the shine of the paints – plus a little bit of weathering to make it look used, would all come together to mute these colours a lot.
How were the patches done ?
Well, I laid out several colours on the palette – Mars Black, Mars Brown, Light Red, Mars Yellow, Flesh Tint, Naples Yellow and Titanium White.
You can see in photo #9 that I’ve drawn some squiggles on the unpainted side of the lower coat. This is a very ( and I do stress “very” ) rough guide to the size of the patches.
Each patch was painted individually; beginning with marking the patches edges out with a band of the dark paint. The edge of this would form the apparent seam that joined it to the rest of the patches surrounding it. Then I began randomly mixing some of the colours – say the Mars Black and Mars Brown, to make a lighter colour, this was added inside the bounding line of dark paint, thinning the dark border down quite substantially. Then through further mixing of lighter colours into the initial brown blend, I shifted through mid-tones to highlights.
Again, this is much like the method for painting the face; just using a lot more mixes of paint to work up to the highlights. I haven’t even bothered counting the number of patches – I don’t think I want to go there, but each one was painted separately, so no two are the same shape, nor should they be exactly the same colour. It took quite a few weeks to work over the body section of the coat, and whilst I was at it, I attempted to set in some rudimentary folds as well, by simply painting them into place – compare photos #6 and #10, which is a virtually flat area that appears to have two or three vertical folds parallel to the edge of the coat once painted. It’s clever slight of hand, that’s all, but it does look effective.
Photo #10 also shows how the upper area of the coat on his right hand side is one single piece of leather – this changes in later photos as I decided that the whole of the coat barring the sleeves would be painted to look like it was pieced together.
Running through these pictures quickly – because it’s all done with the same method, and whilst I was starting to feel the tedium, you don’t have to ( hopefully ), it’s worth noting in photo #11, #12 and #13 how I’ve sectioned the coat. Even though patches of leather are being used to make up the coat’s form, it still has to be made of panels, just the same as if it were larger single pieces.
With this in mind, I painted on dark boundary lines where the panels would be separated. It’s a small matter, but it’s one of the things that will make the whole coat seem to “work” rather than having random patches all over the place.
So, using the miracle that is a “Mil Mod article” we can assume that I painted the back of the coat in a similar manner to the front……
What, you want proof. Well, you’ll just have to wait until photo #15, because in photo #14 I’d gone off on yet another tangent, sorry, good idea, that being that the cuffs and hem of the coat looked way too boring now, being flat, and they needed something to spruce them up.
Patching them or a pattern didn’t work – I tried it, just trust me, there was too much going on for the eye to cope.
But some nice fluffy fur might work.
Out came the Magic Sculpt and the Superglue, along with a fine sculpting tool, and hey presto ( I told you these articles are a kind of magic ) photo #14 shows a sleeve cuff textured to perfection.
Gosh, you want to know how that was done too ?
O.K. then, it’s pretty simple – lets skip photo #15, it’s only the back of the coat, and we know how that was done……Yes, I know there’s three panels to the back – it’s alright, I checked, they were made like that, let’s just hop over to photo #16 then and look at that sculpting, it’s much more interesting !
I know, photo #16 shows the other cuff. I’m just teasing you here, because right at the bottom of the coat hem, you can see a bit of the putty waiting to be formed into the fur.
Photo #17 then shows how this was done. The Magic Sculpt is sometimes a little reluctant to stick to the paint, and I’d rather not begin contemplating putting paint stripper near the model at this stage, so by adding a thin layer of Superglue to the hem, then putting a thin layer of the putty on, I had a sticky base to lay on more of the putty and know that it’s going to stick.
This is shown in the photo towards the middle of the shot, and on the right is where I’m adding little cones of putty – with the point of each cone pointing downwards – and sculpting little lines in each cone. Each of the lines is slightly curved, and I’m trying to make each cone end up in a kind of “S” shape, although not as defined and sharp as the letter “S”. This gives movement and interest to each clump of fur.
The cones are added from the bottom hem of the coat upwards, again each one is sculpted prior to the next one being added, and they’re overlaid like tiles or slates on a roof.
Photo #18 shows the area completed, and the upper line is meant to be uneven and rough – it’s fur after all, and it tends not to conform to straight lines.
It’s all coming together in photo #19, the leather and fur being the greater part of the model. However, all that brown, albeit in a lot of different shades, was a bit dull, so I added a nice rich red coloured sash. Again, this appears bright, but it’s still freshly painted, and drying it will dull it down.
Photo #20 shows the arrows. These are well moulded and need fitting in between the two halves of the quiver. Invariably castings like this arrive with bends and twists in them, and because they are such fine castings, it’s not always obvious how to correct this. I find that by putting the arrows ( one at a time ) on a flat surface, with the feathers overhanging an edge so they don’t get flattened, then place a small steel rule over the top of the arrow shaft. By rolling the shaft between the rule and the flat surface, again being very careful not to damage the feathers, the arrow shaft will straighten up.
Moving on to the bowcase shown in photo #21, again this is formed of two parts, one having the bow attached, the other just being half of the case.
In an ongoing regime of irritating my son – he’s a teenager, and it’s what Dad’s were put on earth for, to irritate and embarrass teenage sons – and in a moment when his back was turned as he was working on a model at the adjoining bench, I plucked a single hair from his head to use as a bowstring.
I explained to the yowl of pain that extended from his side of the room, that we all have to suffer for our art, and sometimes he had to suffer too. Please note that no animals or higher life forms were injured during the making of this model…….well, not much.
The other point being that I’m almost bald, and I need to protect what little hair I have left !
Oh, O.K. he volunteered the hair. Before you go calling Childline !
Anyway, back to photo #21. I wanted a different leather effect – as if I hadn’t done enough already, and after flicking through a few books, found exactly what I wanted to depict. Goatskin !
Goats were a primary source of, well, lots of things for the nomadic Mongolian tribesmen and their families, and so covering the bowcase in goatskin seemed logical. I could also play around with the mottled effect the colour patches have on the hair side of the skin.
To render this, I first painted the whole bowcase with the usual browns I’d use for leather ( Mars Black, Mars Brown, Light Red and Mars Yellow ), then began stippling white onto the paints whilst they were still wet. This worked O.K. but the brown paint tended to pollute the white, and getting a solid colour with the white was pretty much out of the question.
So I let the whole thing dry fully for a couple of days, then returned with some heavily thinned Titanium White. Again I used a stippling method to add the white patches, and allowed the brown colours underneath to show through a little.
It’s an easy method, working very much to the “less is more” ideal, the bonus being that the newly added paint can be removed for a retry if it all goes wrong, leaving the brown paint underneath that has hardened fully, completely untouched..
Photo #22 – the sword. Well, it’s probably more of a long knife, but whatever, I love painting Japanese lacquer. It’s fun, random and best of all, easy !
The first thing to do is get a solid coat of black acrylic established on the area – three thin coats of GW Chaos Black is ideal. Then once fully dry, put a thin coat of white spirit onto the area, and dab on some oil based ( Humbrol is ideal ) gold paint.
The idea here is to add little blooms of the gold colour to the black, but only in certain places, there has to be an amount of the black left showing.
Again, allow this to dry fully, then mix up some Tamiya Clear Blue with some Clear Orange ( O.K. you can use the blue with a bit of red and yellow, but using the orange is simpler ). Thin this with a little water and paint on three or four thin coats.
What ?
Oh, sorry, that’s it. Once the Tamiya clear dries, you should have something that looks like what’s in photo #22.
Photo #23 shows the quiver, with arrows. This is the only part of the figure that I struggled painting. It had three tries before the fourth one worked.
To be honest – you won’t believe it, but I’ll tell you anyway – the first one was the best one. I’d got a nice leather finish, a bit redder than this, but it was working for me, and I’d dried it for a couple of days in the drying cabinet so that I could then add a design. I’d used oils for the leather – hence a couple of days drying, and then would use more oils to add the design.
I’ve just had to replenish my stock of White Spirit, and whether the chemicals in this new stuff are stronger, the drying cabinet wasn’t warm enough, or the paints were just being awkward doesn’t matter. Because although I added quite a nice design to the back of the quiver ( practicing for the front ), once I got onto the bit you’d see, the leather paint started to dissolve under the paint I was now applying.
It was a right disaster, and I had to strip the paint away completely, without destroying the paint on the arrows. Two more tries aiming for the same nice reddish colour, and I couldn’t seem to get the right mixes, so I chose to just paint this colouration, and go with what came out.
I couldn’t bring myself to try a design on the quiver after this, and in fairness, thought it might have detracted from all that was going on with the leather patches on the coat – is that excuse working for you ? Please say it is.
With the bowcase done, and dried for a week to make darn sure, it was time to add glue and think of a base.
Groundwork needed to be simple. Again I didn’t want to detract from the effect I’d spent a lot of effort on – the coat, so a simple little plot of earth with some grass was the order of the day. This was modelled with some Magic Sculpt onto the top of one of Dave Armstrong’s plinths, with a little nameplate added from Name It.
Last words.
I think this is a classic kit. Lots of folk have done them in the past, and I’m pretty sure that lots more will have a stab at them in the future. It’s very simple in its stance, and can just have a very plain paint-job done on it. Do it neatly, and it’s going to look good. Finding something to make it stand out is always interesting, and I’ve seen that done a couple of times before now.
Hopefully I’ve come up with something different from what’s gone before, and that the chap who’s commissioned this will be pleased to have it in his cabinet. I enjoyed this so much, I might even buy another one for myself – although in all the years I’ve been painting, I have only returned to do two kits a second time, and both of those disastrously. So, maybe not, we’ll see.
I should suppose that a basic paint job on this could be done in a matter of evenings, it’s really that simple a kit; but by putting a little more into it, a stunning little rendition could be had.
I’m so glad that Mike Harbour decided to sell me this, and that I took brushes to it to add some paint. Now there’ll be a bit of a wrench to send it to it’s new home, but I know it’s going somewhere good, so maybe not too much of a wrench then.
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