A Rampant Dragon!

Glaurung is based and ready to plunder the halls of men...and Dwarves come to that. He was renown for transfixing his victims with a look from his burning eyes. My Glaurung certainly looks the part with his glowing stare.

Illustration of Glaurung that I used for Inspiration.

The Elven general is finally in place.

Well finally the vacant place on the base has been filled after almost a year of hiatus. I have had this guy undercoated for ages but last night I got him in place at last and It feels good. He still needs a little tweaking with but hes good to go.

The Elven King is from Reaper Miniatures, the banner men and guard are from Mirliton miniatures.

TROOOOOLLLLL!

Painting LOTR Trolls

 As well as dabbling with my Elven folk today I got the chance to do a bit more on one of these great troll figures. Unlike the GW sculpts, this troll is large enough to show the actual 'rhino' like skin cracks. This should be fun because It's one of the features of these beasts but very hard to do with the GW range.

 I started by painting the troll in a light sandy colour, this will form the base for the thick hide. After this I wet brushed on layers of darker paint being careful not to get any in the cracks of the hide.

 Above is a more up to date scale guide to the LOTR trolls I have been talking about. Only the one in the middle is an actual war gaming piece, the others are collectors items. However, they still make great gaming pieces in their own right.

 After I had played around with the darker shades I started to focus on the difference between the light coloured chest and belly and the thick hide of the back. This model is so detailed that I decided to give the back a light dry brush to pick out the details of the skin. The armour is yet to be done. Also this model has brilliant eyes, must better than I could paint, so I made sure to leave them alone and Is the reason I didn't undercoat the model.

   

                                  

 Elrond chances his luck against a giant mountain troll, I just don't know where you would start do you?

Fill It full of arrows from a distance I hear you cry.

 Another scale shot showing the GW battle troll and the larger Eaglemoss lead chess piece. It's a great model well worth tracking down on eBay.

Under the stary banners

 Elven lords arrayed for battle under their fluttering banners.

 Looking at these Macro close ups I keep thinking maybe I should have painted their eyes...maybe something I go back to later If the mood takes me. I plan to be quite hard on myself and skip little details like this and concentrate on getting the numbers painted first.

Also I don't know if my eyes are up to a task like that any more...

 I do like how the varnished armour stands out on this figure, my new rule is any plate or scale armour will be given a lick of Klear floor varnish to make it shine. Also all elf weapons will be treated the same way.

Elf Heros and their commands

 Managed to paint some more today and got to finish off a few more bases of Elves. The guy above is a very heroic looking chap and so will be given a command. In my mind he could be Glorfindel in the time of Gondolin before its fall, with his high looking armour. On all of these new Elves I have given their blades a wash of blue and purple ink to make them look a little more magical.

 I loved this guy the moment I saw him on eBay, as It turns out the seller was a bit of a tw@t and It took a long time to secure him. So after all the fuss and bother I was glad to see him in the flesh. I think he is a Kevin Adams sculpt and certainly looks very middle earth with his curved sword. In my mind I have him down as Elrond Half Elven.

 I do enjoy making up these Elven standards. I have taken off the thick lead flags that came with the figures and decided to make my own with paper. This allows me to have long swirling banners which I think looks better with these fancy fair folk. It was painted to reflect the stars and the light of a Silmaril. It will go on Glorfindel's base and be his banner.

 Elrond in place with his standard and selected banner guards. I released when I was varnishing these Elves, that their armour and weapons looked better when they were gloss varnished. The Windsor and Newton Matt varnish is very, very matt and so I went back a painted the armour and blades again with' Klear' floor varnish. This varnish isn't too gloss and just gives a nice sheen to things. The blades of the weapons looked better for it too. I like the idea of my Elves being brighter and a bit more sparkly than my drab, dull Orc hordes.
Lovely clean blue Elven magical blades compared to crude, rusty weapons of the Orcs.

Dark Elf Assassin

A Dark Elf assassin creeps closer to his prey, the enemy general.

Yes that's right, my head is still full of HotT battles and scenarios, to the point where it keeps me awake at night with ideas. I know it will be ages before I can start putting the armies together but it doesn't stop me from drawing them. My house move has been delayed for two weeks which is annoying because everything has come to a standstill. It's hard to sell a house when there's a Zing-zong battle fleet chewing up the spare room!

All my paints are now in storage together with my bases and most of my lead. So even If I wanted to paint I couldn't. However, my mind is still full of fantasy armies and battles and sometimes It spills out, hence the picture. Just a quick doodle on Photoshop but hell, I feel better for it. Now I can get on with some work.

A Day of Basing

I finally found some time to base up those old fantasy figures I have been dabbling with lately. The two Dwarf bases were done the traditional way, painting PVA inbetween the figures than dipping the base in sand. Painted with Foundry's sand a, b and c from their paint range. The Goblins, due to their crowded base were just dipped in static grass after the PVA treatment. Grass tufts and stones were then added to bring a bit of further detail to the base. This is the way I normally work, just by using the static grass with extra colours of static grass added for contrast. Silflor grass tufts are excellent for adding character. I'm not really one for spending too long on my bases and always tend to take the quickest option. The sandy Dwarf bases are my exception because the figures took a little longer to paint. I am just a lazy baser I have come to realize to my shame.

Dwarf Adventure Party

"Where's North from ere?"

Goblins!

Based at last!

Fun with Goblins

I thought I would have a little fun today as I'm struck down with a bad cold. What better way to cheer yourself up then get mucky with Goblins...

 An early Gnoll figure

These are very old sculpts again from the early 80's and like the early Dwarves, have loads of character. I am going to base them ready to play Hordes of the Things, so with a 60mm wide front. To get more on this 'Horde' base I'm going to make it deeper than usual, at 60mm rather than 40mm. A true horde of unwashed critters to swarm over anyone who stands in their way.

 Basic base colours before a wash of brown ink was added.

 They are painted quickly using just base colours. Mostly WWII German uniform colours for skins tones, then washed with Delvan mud ink wash from GW. Nice and quick and effective.

The red/brown skin tone is musket brown from Foundry.

 To get the true feeling of the base being a horde, I added a few extra tiny Lesser Goblins at the back. It's numbers that count with Goblins.
The figures are old Citadel Greater Goblins/ Gnoll sculptures. I like them a lot and will try to give each Goblin horde it's own identity. This group has one side of its face covered in  white warpaint.

German uniform grey and greens made really good skins colours for these chaps.

Dwarf Adventure party WIP

 Right well then, here they are, a party of greedy Dwarves. As with all adventure parties...when word got out of riches to be made, the number of the party seemed to double. I had planned on around four with one fully loaded pony, but this later grew to seven (funny enough) and an extra donkey for good measure.

Even though the armoured Halfling was painted and varnished and ready to go, he had to be left behind due to space restrictions. In other words...they left without him!

 I had great fun planning and putting together this base. I tried to tick off all the boxes that would make a good adventure party, so we have a cook, a thief and an old adventurer who has seen better days. He looks like he moans a lot but every party needs one of those. A bit of hired muscle and some brainy types.

 Out in the day light at last. A very rare female Dwarf armed with a meat cleaver and various food stuffs.

 Here is a side view showing the lightly armed thief with his swag bag and dagger, the fact he is next to the pack pony and the loot, has not been lost on the rest of the party. Keep an eye on that one.

 I liked the fact that the pack pony had a crossbow in it's bundles, very dwarven I thought.

 As you may have noticed all of the figures are ancient citadel sculpts, these two in particular are very old. I recognise the fella with the poleaxe from the Dwarf King's Court box set. Although this one has been resculpted with a pack on his back. He is the old worrier and fits in nicely with the character of the base.

 A throng of Dwarves, the party is lost in the rabble.
 To paint them I used Foundry Flesh A and B only to shade their skin. I practiced leaving black undercoat when I painted them and was pleased with the effect. The eyes took a little time compared to what I'm used too. After I had laid down the base colours I gave them a wash of GW brown Ink and then highlighted with the base colour again. Nice and quick and simple. Leaving the black undercoat was something I have been planning to do for ages and finally got a chance to try it with these Dwarves. I think it's very effective from a distance and put a lot of fun back into the painting process for me. I also had great fun painting the faces and leaving crease lines around the eyes to age to the characters.

 I thought I had better give the party some beef, so at the last minute recruited the guy with the axe to take point on the base. Anyone attempting to cut their way to the swag will have to come under his swift axe strokes first.

Then there's the brains of the outfit, The two experienced and wise looking gents discussing which way to take next. Some of these old eighties figures are just overflowing with character and it's great to dust them off and use them after all these years.

 They're off through mountains cold to dungeons old, with more than a little back up it would seem. The adventure party has been mounted on a 60mmx60mm base to give me a bit more room to play with. In HotT it's just the frontage you have to worry about which is 60mm. I'm not quite sure what game I'll end up playing with these mini's but as long as the frontage is the same I don't really think it will matter too much.

Next up I need to base the last two bases painted, the boring bit I always think and so leave it until I have a few to do...yawn.