by Bob Cooper
The Bretonnian army is rather unique in it's approach, in that many a Bretonnian Army has very little by way of a "unifying theme". Individual knights have their own color scheme, pattern, look, and so forth. This can sometimes make the task of painting them a bit intimidating.
This is a basic guide to getting started painting Bretonnian Knights. While I do not consider myself an expert by any means, I'm happy to share some of the tips I've picked up over my years as a Bretonnian player, painter, and fan. This is not as much a guide to painting itself (there are many out there on the Internet, although I do intend to write one up myself someday) as to planning out the "look" of your Knights.
The sheet in the back of the 5th edition Bretonnian Army Book is actually a lot of help getting started. However, I've 'tweaked' it a bit, and have here one that could prove slightly more useful, as it allows you to plan out horseflesh colors, the pennion on the Knight's lance, and the girth strap on the steed.
Let's start with something fairly basic. As a general rule, you should not venture far from the six basic Bretonnian colors...black, white, green, red, blue, and yellow. The painting section of the 5th edition book gives some indication as to why, and what blazons can be put where...so I won't go back over it here.
So to start off with, try painting these three knights. Vary the colors if you see a scheme you don't care for. They're all pretty straightforward designs, so you shouldn't have a hard time at all with them.
So far so good, yes? Ok...now I'm going to introduce you to one of the two simple ways to add some variation to these bland schemes...the stripe. Basically, you're just taking an existing background, and running a stripe across, down, or diagonally through it. These next three examples are all ways to use the stripe for different looks. Try them in order, left to right...don't be intimidated by the last one. It takes a steady hand, but is quite doable with some patience and willingness to go back over to fix small errors.
Still with me? Now, let's try a second concept, quartering. With quartering, you're basically dividing the pattern into "quarters" and painting opposite corners different colors. It's another fairly simple, yet effective, way to create interest and variation. The three examples below are again designed in increasing degrees of difficulty. If you would like some tips on how to go about painting them, especially the last one, you might take a look at my page on Checkerboard Patterns.
Glad to see you're still here. It sounds like you're definately taking an interest in Bretonnia as an army, and if you've painted your way this far, you've already got a fair-sized regiment put together. The rest here is not necessicarially something you want to take on right away. In fact, you may want to just stick with what you've seen so far...vary the colors, alter the patterns in slight ways. If you're stuck for ideas, you might check out Realm of the Border Prince. He's got a very nifty design program under "Paint/Convert/Build" and then "Barding". He's got plenty of other great stuff to look over there as well, so it's genuinely worth a visit.
If you're still here, then you're after some more advanced techniques. Well, we're going back to the Stripe and the Quarter again, only this time we're getting trickier.
Below are three more examples of the Stripe. The first is pretty simple...the second a variation on the third one above...you can use these techniques in sub-portions of the pattern. The third one here is a real crowd-pleaser, but it takes a LOT of patience and a VERY steady hand. Good luck if you want to take this one on.
And last, but not least, three more examples of the Quarter. If you haven't looked yet, you'll definately want to check ou the page on Checkerboard Patterns. The first shows that you don't have to re-quarter all four sides when you divide it up further...you can just do two of the four, or one, or three...all work. In the second, we've basically quartered the quarters AGAIN to create a fairly small checkerboard patern. This is very intimidating at first, but if you just work away at it a bit at a time (and if you have a good, fine-tip brush) you'll be surprised how easily it comes to you. The last one is, again, a very tricky pattern, and one that is not for the timid. I've taken extremely fine squares and alternated them to form a border around the various areas of the model.
With time, patience, and practice you can eventually produce results like:
 |
 |
 |
 |