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!

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!