Rivendell Knights

Had painted these Rivendell Knights over the weekend. Having painted couples of these sets before, I was aiming for a simple and quick paintjob here and I am really satisfied with the results!

Gundabad orcs

My recent commission - Gundabad orcs. A fairly simple paint work gave quite satisfying results. A light purple wash over the armour gives some enchanted evil feel to them.

Old stuff - Armoured Glorfindel Conversion

While there is not much painting going on at the moment, I am digging into pictures of some older stuff I have got. So here is a conversion of armoured Glorfindel on horse, made from Elladan.

For this conversion I have made a headswap from the foot Glorfindel model as well as some minor sculpting with green stuff on the horse. I have also made a larger base (as he was going to be used as War of the Ring Epic hero).

 

Ended up with having a great character!

Legolas Prince of Mirkwood and Yazneg

September has turned to be a pretty busy month for me so I had very little time for painting. One of the few things I have managed to do this month was Legolas Prince of Mirkwood and Yazneg.

I honestly say that the Prince of Mirkwood version of Legolas is one of my least favourite versions. The sculpt is pretty tiny, especially the face, also pose of the foot model is absolutely boring. The mounted version looks more dynamic at least, but still feels lacking something. Maybe that seemed to be a reason for delaying painting it for so long. Yet apart from some bits that might need some further work I am quite satisfied with the end result.

 

Unlike Legolas, I really loved Yazneg and he has turned out to be my favourite figure to paint so far in the entire Hobbit evil range. His bone carcass armour is a great fun to paint and it makes a perfect focal point for the figure. After painting him now I look forward to do some more Evil guys (which for some reason happens quite rare for me).

The Three Hunters and the Wise

One of my recent commissions was to paint the Three Hunters set in metal. At the same time I had the same set in resin laying about, so went to paint both at the same time; it was actually a great opportunity for me personally to paint and compare which material would seem better.

Both sets have ended up looking pretty identically. On the picture above I can no longer distinquish which one is which!

From the painting prospective the finecast set was easier to paint as the metal one needed some extra layers of paint to cover the surface and the paint would not always stick to it very well. But at the same time despite the identical looks in the end I must say that I do prefer the weight and the "feeling" of the metal miniatures slightly more. 

Also I have looked to find some pictures of another Three Hunters set I have painted a year ago. That one was made for the War of the Rings game, so I have made a custom base with a dead Hunter Orc on it; decided to post it here as well so this will be a triple Three hunters post!

 

The other figures to paint were the Rivendell versions of Gandalf and Elrond. I really liked this version of Gandalf the Grey as the pose gives an impression of great wisdom and power the old Wizard has.

While Elrond's face sculpt is not great, the other parts of the miniature were all fun to paint, especially ornaments on his clothes.

So here is the picture of all five going together!

Laketown Militia Warband

In my opinion, Laketown militia are some of the best models in the final Hobbit release wave. With their simple weapons and no armour these guys add some great medieval townsfolk character to the Middle-Earth setting. 

At the same time being made in finecast sets of 3 makes them probably the worst release as well, both in terms of their price and quality. Good job GW, thanks for making some of the cheapest units in the game in overpriced resin! This would of have been such a great plastic set! As a result, I think these guys are going to be rare on gaming tables, although it's just my guess. 

Anyway, since I have ever saw them, I just wanted to paint Laketown militia at any cost, and have finally finished the warband.  

I have first got a Captain couple of mounts ago just because I liked the model so much. After he was 

done, I thought he wouldn't make any sense without some of the warriors, so have picked up two packs of swordsmen (although most of them are definitely not armed with swords!) and painted them all up. I was following the standard GW paint scheme with adding some variety on similar figures.

At that point I had Bard the Girion's Heir painted for a commission, so there he is posing along the militia. Send him away, so he is missing from the other pictures. 

Last week I have finally added some archers and spearmen to the warband, and just finished them over the weekend. 

Really pleased how the middle spearman has turned up in his red clothes, been painting him with    Khorne red with adding some white for highlights. 

Finally, I like these guys because they could be also used as any other militia in Middle Earth. For example, I always had an idea of scenario where fishermen and peasants of Southern Gondor are  attacked by corsairs, and these guys are just a perfect fit (too bad you will have spend a whole fortune before you get enough of the "cheap" fishermen to balance your force). Also just placing Strider along them has instantly made it look like inhabitants of Bree are protecting their homes from the Black Riders, don't you think?

Warhammer Age of Sigmar Stormcast Eternals Army

Had some break from painting Hobbit/Lotr stuff and went for the Age of Sigmar Stormcast eternals army!

I was painting the figures on multiple occasions through two weeks time, and was aiming for a game-level standard. The colour scheme is obviously copied from the cover of the box - a very straightforward but effective way of painting the figures although might be a bit boring and repetitive after a while.

I have started from the hardest one - Lord Celestant, maybe because I knew that if I get stuck too long with him than I might just abandon the rest of the army and leave it in the same state as my Dark Vengeance set is now (shame on me). First I was painting the body of his dragon-beast and spent a while on figuring out how to paint its head until I have got a decent result. After that, painting the rest of the figure was pretty straightforward, just as you would later paint an ordinary Liberator.

I have also done some imitations of stars on the cloak - pretty basic, but would work fine for a gaming table.

Now after having the lord done, which was a great motivating factor, I went on to getting one unit of Liberators and Prosecutors. 

Just some nice and shiny unit. I didn't want to put any transfers on their empty shoulders as that would make them too much spacemarinish, and I am not really big fan of that.

Some of the most challenging things to paint so far for me where the wings of Prosecutors, as after background coats and several wash layers I was highlighting some of the "feathers" individually. When you do it on one wing it is fun, but after you realise that there are three pairs of wings to paint on both sides, it gets a bit boring.

Yet in the end the results look great (apart from few minor marks on the left wing of the head prosecutor, I have removed those but was too lazy to retake a picture)!

This is how the army looked after week one:

Lord of the Rings Death of Gothmog Diorama

All right, it has been one year since I have made this blog to document my painting projects, and finally, I have got around into putting my first post :)

As you can probably see the blog looks quite basic now, hopefully I will be changing some stuff when I learn more about it, but in the meanwhile I will be just going on with the pictures of the models I have painted (after all that's what matters!).

I just had a great chance to paint The Death of Gothmog diorama from the Lord of the Rings strategy battle game as a commission. This set was available as a collectors item from GW, but it has long been out of production. In fact it seems to be so rare, that there are almost no pictures of it being painted when you google it, at least that's what I have found out. That's why I though of putting up some pictures after I paint it.

The scene features one of the moments from the directors cut when wounded Eowyn is being attacked by Gothmog, but rescued with the arrival of Aragorn and Gimli who slain the orc. Legolas is missing from the diorama, at that time he is hunting Mumak. Well, at least not jumping up over falling stones!

My favourite figure is Gimly who is in a really distinct dynamic pose. I guess he could  be taken from this set and used as a single figure. The same is true for Gothmog, although he is just a moment from being cut to pieces by Aragorn, the figure on its own could make a great alternative version.

Aragorn's face looks a bit asymmetric though, pretty much messed up in the same way Cirion's face is, but luckily you don't see much of his face because of Gothmog standing before him, and the bits you get to see look quite decent :)

You might notice that on the picture some parts look shiny while others don't - this is because I     didn't want to wait to cover some parts with the matt varnish and decided to make pictures straight away!