Modelling

HaT Nubians; a hairy problem

Posted by Ochoin on 26 Sep 2023, 08:29

This is, for me, that rare thing: a box of figures, long unpainted. However, my poor NKE army is sadly lacking in skirmishers & so they are being called to Arms.

I took them out of the cupboard & really, they're not nearly as bad as the PSR review makes them. I think some careful painting may produce an acceptable unit.

I've been thinking of their hair. Clearly, it would be black. However, black hair is what all Egyptians had so some contrast would be nice. How about red?

Not so ridiculous as you might suppose:
https://www.pinterest.com.au/pin/452400725038530430/

I'm thinking they either smeared it with red clay or perhaps used some fierce hair dye. I think a reddy-orange might work?

I'm also going to NOT paint their skin solid black as past experience with Zulus has shown this might be accurate but kills all detail so a brown, washed black will be their skin colour.

donald
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Ochoin  Scotland
 
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Posted by Peter on 26 Sep 2023, 10:42

I've painted these in 2013, and here is how they looked like. black hair and rather dark skin tone.

Image

Image

Image

Image

The blog post: https://peterscave.blogspot.com/2013/11 ... valry.html

I also think they had some red clay in their hair while looking at that picture. ;-)
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Peter  Belgium

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Posted by Ochoin on 26 Sep 2023, 11:49

They're just lovely figures, Peter. A positive inspiration.

donald
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Ochoin  Scotland
 
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Posted by steve_pickstock on 26 Sep 2023, 13:45

I think if you are going down the coloured hair route and the image you linked to is pretty good justification - then anything between a genuine orange (the |Himba people of Northern Namibia who still do this and they use ochre clay) to a dirt colour as the 'do' gets to a point where it needs a touch up.
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steve_pickstock  England
 
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20 Jun 2010, 19:56

Posted by RSDean on 17 Oct 2023, 22:20

I’ve started in on some Nubians, with a mix of black hair, ochre, and red. It may be from the same tomb, but I was working from the first picture down on this page: https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/ ... egypt-beta, showing the Nubians delivering gifts (or tribute) including a very limp cat and trays of doughnuts.
RSDean  United States of America
 
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22 Jan 2022, 13:11

Posted by Xantippos on 26 Nov 2023, 17:07

In my case, I painted some red, orange and even yellow, as well as black. All options I think are 100 % accurate. You can look at this image;

https://www.pinterest.com.au/pin/great- ... 133370049/

It seems it would be probably, the best option to paint them in red ochre, that would have been the more common and what would be more striking.
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