Tuesday, August 14, 2012

A Merchant Captain for Legends of the High Seas

I've been super busy with the last of the summer tourists and have not had much time for painting or blogging.  Despite the hectic Dog Days of Summer, I have been able to complete a few minis lately.  Since I only have time for a quick update I'll focus on one of them....a merchant captain for my Legends of the High Seas campaign.



The miniature is part of the Pirate Captains pack from Old Glory Miniatures. The scale is a bit off from the vast majority of the miniatures I'm using (25mm compared to 28-30) but the addition of the base evened out most the difference.  Of all the miniatures in the pack, this guy is my favorite.  Although he is not armed with a cutlass and only a hint of his pistol is visible, he still strikes me as an opposing figure.  However, since he does not exactly fit the popular image of a pirate captain, I decided to use him as one of the non-pirate citizens of Port Largo.

Though I do not have his background fully fleshed out as of this post, I know he will be serving as a merchant captain on the island.  A pirates plunder is only as good as the coin it can be sold for and that is where this gentleman will play a role.  I envision him as a law abiding mostly law abiding citizen trying to make a living in a port town infested with pirates. He will purchase their ill-gotten gains and sell them to colonists in Charles Towne or some of the other islands.

To set him apart from the mostly colorful pirates I've been painting, I decided upon a fairly muted color scheme.  His britches, boots, hat, and stockings are low key and blend in with the mini.  The blue for the coat was chosen to make him stand out just a bit without being overwhelming.  The grey for the vest was my own private little joke representing his ambiguous position in a pirate society.  The best feature is his chubby cheeks.  Though my iPhone photo does not show it very well since everything is washed out (I had camera troubles with my Nikon on the day of the photo), I worked hard to accentuate that feature and make them stand out while still giving his cheeks and bald head a bit of sunburn/tan from working in the tropical sun.  Now that I have the camera sorted out, I'll try to snap another photo and add it below to illustrate the skin tone I'm describing.

Well, that's it for now.  I have miniatures to paint......


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4 comments:

  1. I think he will fit the role you have planned out for him very well, he certainly seems to have got rich, and fat, from his wheeling and dealing!

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  2. Fat and rich indeed. It's funny, but until I started the LotS campaign, I never really though about the "industry" that built up around piracy. Movies, books, even history tends to focus on the pirates and acts of piracy itself. I knew something was missing so to make the narrative flow realistically, I started doing a bit of reading on the less-than-glamorous aspects of piracy and was quite surprised at what I found. Anyhow, thanks for reading!

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  3. This is a really good work! Colours are great...a very nice blog too!

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  4. Nice work on the Captain, he looks very much like a merchant, keep up the good work.

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