Landsknechts

A Landsknecht Painting Guide

Stuart Mulligan

Whether you’re just starting out or are a seasoned painter, the prospect of painting Landsknechts can be quite nerve-racking and can put you right off the period as a whole or drive you to leaf desperately through army lists to find one without them!

The first and most important thing to do is don’t panic. Perhaps even more so; resist the urge to paint every limb a different colour, relax and read this!

You’ll soon have it cracked and on your way to fielding your first unit of pike.

In my own experience I simply cannot get enough of these colourful mercenaries and always have a few under-coated and ready to go alongside other projects. Painting Landsknechts will be a real test of your ability as a painter but with a few of the hints and tips that I shall describe I truly feel that you will be able to paint these figures with relative ease and enjoyment plus develop and improve your skills as a result.

The miniatures I have used in this guide are from Wargames Foundry’s Renaissance range. I also use their brushes and, in particular, their paint system; this is specifically designed to work in up to three stages from dark to light and suits my painting style exactly. This is not an intentional advertisement for Foundry, merely the use of figures and materials which I find work well for me.

As with any historical period I believe that you really will get a much better feel and understanding for these troops if you do some research first, (there is an illustrative bibliography and links page at the end of this article). Take some time to look at contemporary paintings and woodcuts of the period, this will give you a feel for the way the clothing was made along with the dyes available at the time which will help you put together a palette to paint with.

My palette is as follows, those colours marked with an asterix are non essential ;

Clothing;

Orange 3 * - Good to have, I use the shade colour as a final highlight to Scarlet.

Ochre 4 - much better than yellow, it's a lot more natural and consistent with contemporary paintings.

Canvas 8 - a good alternative to white and also looks good to represent the inner lining of clothing.

Royal Purple 19 * - Rarely used but it beats mixing it.

Deep Blue 20 *

Sky Blue 21 - A good all rounder, I sometimes use Deep blue C through to Sky Blue B as an alternative middle blue.

Phlegm Green 28 - see notes for yellow.

Arctic Grey / White 33 - used for shirts and lower hosen / tights.

Black 34

Scarlet 38 - A decent red, see notes for yellow. I also use this as part of a flesh wash.

Everything else;

Spearshaft 13 - Mainly used for.....pike / halberd shafts.

Bay Brown 42 - Used in flesh shade washes.

Deep Brown Leather 45 - Used for leather, also used as a shade wash for Ochre.

Chestnut 53 * - Hair, shoes, coifs, caps, sword scabbards.

Tan 14 * - As above

Flesh 5 - have a guess!

Burning Gold 44 * - as above!

Sometimes it can be hard to visualise what will look right, and finding that you’ve painted a gaudy uncoordinated figure at the end of a painting session can put you right off.

To help you along with this I have selected three woodcuts and traced simple line drawings from them so that you can use a drawing program on your computer to colour them in. To give you a head start I have coloured 27 examples in this way to show a selection of palette combinations that I have found work well, these are shown in the links at the top of the page.

On the whole you will notice that the majority of these examples are two to three main colours complemented with a fourth and sometimes fifth additional colour. Keep it simple, create some mock ups, and the rest will fall into place.

Furthermore, the Uniforms page above serves to illustrate some of the ‘uniform’ aspects that have been noted with regard to Landsknecht soldiers (and provide another mock up to colour in!).

The step by step guide illustrates the methods I use to paint Landsknechts and the Masterclass page explores further aspects of painting these figures, focussing particularly upon the more intricate elements.

Finally, the Flags page explores the banners that these mercenaries marched under.