The Knight of Umbar

Not a whole lot to talk about with this post.  Here is my second named ringwraith, The Knight of Umbar.

It was an interesting model to paint, mainly because of the slight greenish tint in his armor.  I gave him more of a heroic pose, as if leaping over the rock.  I thought it looked cooler than the rather static pose you tend to see.  It'll be fun to see how well he does on the battlefield.  2 down, 1 to go...

The Dwimmerlaik

So things are heating up in preparation for Adepticon 2015.  Sadly, there is no standard 750 LOTR tournament this year.  I can't help but be a little disappointed by this.  However, there will be a 750 point, 20 model limit, march to mount doom madness elimination style tournament.  I didn't play in the one that was ran during 2013, so it should be fun.

That being said, I've been tinkering with my list since December.  Originally, I was going to rock Buhrdur and 8 cave trolls figuring it'd be a cool theme.  Also a horde of cave trolls with 3 wounds a pop surrounding big heroes..... yeah, your going to eat up all your might and you might kill 2 if your lucky, but you'll eventually roll shitty and the hammers will come down.  Unfortunately, I don't have any cave trolls painted up, and after looking over how much work I'd have to do, I figured it'd be easier to do higher point cost heroes with a lower model count.

And with that, I decided to do a pure Mordor list.  This gives me the motivation to paint up some named Ringwraiths.  So up first, The Dwimmerlaik......

I scowered the interwebs looking for pictures of other people's models of this guy.  Slim pickins' for sure, and the pictures I did see I wasn't too thrilled with the paintjobs.  Either they went with a more bluish tint (completely forgoing the bottom white parts) or did the dirty drybrush method in which the model looked too bright.  I really didn't see anyone try to emulate GW's example, and that's basically what I wanted to follow.  I'm not the most skilled in painting black, so I spent a fair bit of time going back and forth with my greys.  Also, blending pure white to black is a pain in the ass to do.  Hopefully if you stumbled upon my site looking for examples on how to paint this guy, you found it useful (as far as pictures go).  I think he turned out pretty good.  I still need more practice with blacks, but I have 2 other ringwraiths coming in the near future.  Check back for more later....

The Elusive Shade

A little story first.....

Last year at Adepticon I was looking around at this one area that sells loose and OOP miniatures, as well as bargin bin stuff, painted stuff, and various other products.  It's one of my favorite areas to browse thru when I go to adepticon.  So, I was slumming thru the "LOTR Bin" on the first day of the Convension, most of the miniatures in the bin being in little plastic bags with a "$2" or "$1" price written on the bag with a black marker.  They also have a few loose blister packs swimming in the bin as well.  As I was browsing, I grabbed one of the blister packs to look at, and what do I behold??

The Shade.....  the elusive shade that went OOP with the first or second batch of LOTR products from GW that were discontinued.  I had been looking for this model for over a year and all I could find were ebay auctions with an $80+ price tag on it.  Sorry, but $80 dollars for one miniature is a bit crazy to pay for any one model that isn't riding a dragon or is a huge monster.  Alas, I had the elusive shade in my hands with a price tag of $8.  I quickly snatched it, paid for it, and shoved it in my bag.

Time passed, and I had never painted it for some reason.  I had put it together, primed it, and left it in my bin until this past weekend.  So here He/She/It is....

So I'll admit, it's not my best work, but I think it looks pretty cool and I got to play with blending techniques.  All in all, should be a fun model to throw behind my lines to lower the enemies fight value.  I might in the future attempt my own Shade conversion with a mix of Warhammer and LOTR products.  We'll see though as I have mountains of pewter before me that need to be put to the brush.  Enjoy!

Bolg, Castellan of Mount Gundabad

And now here's another update.  My nephew came over not this past weekend, but the weekend before that and had a model I hadn't gotten my greedy hands on yet.  Good ole' Castellan Bolg that was recently released last month.  He asked if I would paint it for him, and it looked like a fun model, so I gave it a go.  Here are the results....

I think they turned out pretty good.  Painting pale orcs is something new to me, so I experimented with the skin tones for about a day, trying to find a color palette that looked good to me.  I eventually went with the Vampiric Skin triad from reaper as it had that purplish undertone that looks really good with a diluted Reikland Fleshshade.  I actually prefer the reddish eyes on the feral wargs as I think it gives them a more sinister tone.  I also spent some time on the rocky bases (and an entire tube of cheap superglue).

One thing you might notice if you look closely, is his left eye has no pupil.  I didn't realize this until I looked at a few pictures of the movie version of Bolg.  I had actually already painted the eyes on the foot model and had to go back after I had finished the model.

Hopefully you guys enjoy the pics.  Now I need to get cracking on my Adepticon monster army which I haven't even started.... Yikes!

Hobbits and Dwarf Vault Wardens

First post of 2015 after a 4 month hiatus.  Yep, I'm still around.  Just haven't really had the time or motivation to paint anything since.... September?  Yeah, that sounds about right.  Well, I'm back and at it again.  I was hoping to get more done over my winter vacation, but alas, I really didn't paint at all.

Rather than do the 3rd annual year in reflection and list of what I'd like to get accomplished, I'd rather forgo all that non-sense and say I didn't get really anything I wanted to get done accomplished last year and rather than set goals for 2015, I'm just going to flow naturally and whatever gets done, gets done.

So lets look at what I have done.  First up are some hobbits that have been sitting on my desk for months looking rather pathetic with a primer and dust coat.  Here we have Old Hobbit Paladin Took,  Fredegar "Fatty" Bolger (who's waistcoat mysteriously doesn't fit his wide girth), and the lean and mean Lobelia Sackville-Baggins, the bitch who tries to auction all of Bilbo's stuff and steal his hobbit-hole while he's out on high adventure.

I decided to prop these 3 up on rocks due to the fact that they're all characters rather than generic hobbits, and eventually I would like to do a massive hobbit army and finding these particular models on the battlefield will be a little easier this way.  I had fun painting these models and they were the perfect models to shake and dust off my brushes after a 4 month hiatus.  I tried to keep them in the same color schematics as Games Workshop.  I think they turned out pretty good even though they are finecast.


Next we have 2 Dwarf Vault Warden Teams.

I might go back and add some dwarven runes to the two shields.  Again, they're finecast and I think they would've turned out better if they were the metal models.  One thing I've noticed is the older LOTR models are not the best quality when done in finecast.  I also wish they had the other pose available for this unit.  When they switched over to finecast, they got rid of the other pose these guys come in.  I think I bought something like 6 teams, so I'll eventually be able to do a huge older Durin's Folk army if I so please.

Hope you guys enjoyed the photos.

Beeeeeoooooorn!

I actually got something accomplished all in one weekend that didn't spill over into Monday thru Friday.  It's also actually been a few weeks since I painted any miniatures exclusively for myself.

So I picked this little kit up last weekend and cracked it open last Thursday night.  For a finecast set, I was actually impressed with the quality.  The resin itself felt like something from Forgeworld instead of that brittle shit I've gotten used to with Games Workshop Finecast.  Minimal greenstuff was needed and cleaning it up took less than an hour.  As far as the newer Finecasts go, I can honestly say the QA department is actually doing they're jobs.  Kudos to you GW QA guys.....  though your price-points still suck.

That being said, lets take a look at Beorn in man form and bear form...

These two models were a joy to paint.  I experimented with the skin tones on Beorn the Man, using a darker skin palette then I'm used to.  I wanted his flesh to be a bit more tanned and bronzed than when I usually paint flesh.  I ended up using some glazing techniques to tie it all together towards the end as my brush strokes were a bit too visible for my tastes.  My goal was to get him looking as close to the box cover as I could with a little bit of a dark tone.  I think I succeeded in this.

As for the bear, well I though his base was a bit too plain, so I sculpted the stone from the cork and covered my seams with some fine sand giving it a very realistic texture.  The bear mainly consisted of a little dry brushing and very minimal layering on the face, tongue, claws, and teeth.  It's a very easy model to paint and even a beginner could get fantastic results with little effort.  I put the flower on the base to add a little color to the piece and I think he turned out pretty good.

That's it for now....

OOP Warhammer Watchtower

This entry will be a less wordy than my usual entries on this blog partly due to the fact that it's almost bedtime and I wanted to put this up sometime this weekend.  I decided last weekend to do a terrain project since my pile of unfinished terrain is starting to stack up.  I chose to do the OOP Watchtower.  I was hoping this would be a quick project, but alas, it took me over a week to finish.

I went back in time with the photography on this one due to the fact that it really doesn't fit good in my light box.  I don't think the cluttered desk takes away from the piece, but you be the judge of that.

 

It was a fun project to paint.  The little bits here and there were a little frustrating, but for a piece I mainly dry brushed, it turned out much better than I thought it would.  Thanks for viewing my work.