36 Knights! - last of the Hungarian heraldry

During the medieval era, armor was sometimes "blackened" in order to protect it from rust.  Blackening consisted of coating the armor with oil and burning it off or boiling the armor in oil until the oil cooked into the steel and then burning off the excess. Armor which is painted or lacquered black gives the same visual and also provides some anti-rust protection as well.

Thanks to a combination of Google and a fellow blogger in Turkey, I found the artwork of Hungarian knights below.  In each instance, the artist chose to show portray Hungarian knights in blackened armor.  It's up to us to guess whether it was painted, lacquered or blackened on!

As I discovered when painting the Royal Banderium, painting black knights in 15mm is a tricky business.  My version consisted of priming the knights black and then painting them with a Vallejo Gunmetal + Black mix.  I then drybrushed lightly with Gunmetal.  I was sorely temped to work up the brightness from there but that would defeat the point of painting black(ish) knights!

Painting heraldry consisted of me clicking through a Hungarian website until I found an icon I could paint.  Then I'd wheel my chair over to the painting table to do paint it, one shield at a time.  Underneath those shields are a few notable failures.  Hats off to you fellows who paint medieval armies and heraldry exclusively!

Once I started basing these up, I discovered that swords and lances covered up the shield of the figures to the right, obscuring a portion of the effort.  Arg!  That would not be a problem with Impetus basing!

All Essex figs.  Commanders and camp to finish this project up and then, it's Saga time!