Well I finished this guy last night. I took quite a while blending colours on his face, and came up with a better way of doing it - one which I may discuss later. Wasnt too hard really, although I dont think the red is as good as it could be. I do, however like the discusting blob of flesh by his shoulder.

When I originally finished this there wasnt enough difference between the clothes and the skin. I ended up lining the division with black ink, which flowed nicely just into the gaps, and now it looks much better.

Did this at the same time as Legolas, but as that's not finished yet I'll save him till next time.

Labels: LOTR

When the family were in Games Workshop at the weekend, while Roo was ordering his Gandalf, Zed decided that he wanted to buy something. Of course this was a bit of a dilemma, because what do you buy a 4 year old that he can make himself?

Finally we came across an orc bike (sorry don't know the correct term for it) which was a plastic model. Zed carefully cut the pieces from the sprue and helped glueing it all together. But then he asked me to paint it for him. I didn't really know where to start, but a dry brush over the unercoat of various shades of metallic paint produced the results shown. I was really happy with the outcome, especially as it took less than 10 minutes to paint, and so was zed.

Of course I now have to do the Orc to ride it - which I'll wager will take me a lot longer.

Labels: W40K

This must be a record, it only arrived yesterday. You can tell by the way the base is still wet that I was in a rush with this one. Qhite pleased at how it turned out. Was very satisfying painting it turquoise to start with to get the rusty brass effect. Then off to games workshop to get some Dwarf bronze (and some greys) and stood by proudly while my boy ordered a Gandalf from the mailorder trolls. (I've never had the guts to do that. Dont know where he gets it from.) Took a long time over the reds, although I didnt have the red that the paint guide suggested to use as the base coat. The final highlights of the red involved mixing a bit of Vomit brown with bllood red , which I didnt think would work, but really did. This looks better in real life than on the picture, but really finished it off.
UPDATE: Finished the base and updated the picture.

Labels: LOTR

On an absolute roll with these issues, got home at 5pm and they were on the doormat. I was releived to see that there were only two metal figures in this delivery again. As you can see by the picture I have completed all but two of the supplied pieces... Well, maybe not, for some unfathomable reason I decided to make the card pieces up, to give me a set of easterlings, which came with issue 77.
But back to issue 76 first. This came with a Legolas, which I'm not sure if I have or not, but armed with my quick setting epoxy I managed to get this cleaned and mounted and then painted in about 30 minutes. The issue, however, begins with the start of the Return of the King Campaign, with sections on Shelob's lair and the assault on Osgiliath, then a Capture the Fleet game with a Corsair ship which Aragon arrives on. Then there is a really good section on painting Legolas, with some pretty stunning close up photos of him being painted. This is a really nice article which makes up for the awful one at the start of the series. And then you can 'scratch build' a fantastic Corsair ship that was used in the game earlier. Wonderful looking sails on this - amazingly made out of paper towels.

Issue 77 turns to the Easterlings and the Black gate into Mordor. It starts with a battle for Gondor Scenario, then a The End of All Things game, where the hobbits have to finally destroy the ring. This game uses some cut out fellbeasts which come with the issue. Then it turns to the gate and what is happening to the rest of the Armies. Then you get to paint the Easterling captain which you satisfyingly get to undercoat Hawk Turquoise, which I did tonight - the same day it arrived! But then stumped at first base, I needed Dwarf Bronze then, which I dont have - oh well. Finally for this issue you get to make the black gate, with working hindges made out of a Pringles can...
Finished the evening by basing a few of my models, and generally sorting stuff out. Got about 7 primered models out, about 25 basecoated, and 4 more nearly finished. I've got to get some batch work done soon to get a handle on this.

Labels: BGIME Review

Couple more issues of BGIME arrived today. Review to follow, but just to get this in the right order, here are two finished models. The first is the King of the dead that I failed to sell as an unpainted item on ebay, so I painted it. Not sure of the grass on the base, its a bit too green to be around such a denizen of death, so I added some brown lichen to the area to look like a dead twig. Buy the painted model on ebay here: http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=330000756189 (thats if anyone reads this...) The second miniature is the painted conversion using the conversion sprue form issue 75 which I showed you unpainted in the previous post. Quite happy with this one, although I didnt like his goatee so gave him an all around beard instead. Quite straight forward in the end, but looking at the photo it looks like I might need to touch up the fingermark on the back of the shield. I may also have over done it with the lichen on this one - looks like he's trying to scythe his way passed the killer asparagus....

Labels: LOTR, Miniatures

So I decided to try a couple of conversions with my sprue that I got from BGIME issue 75..
I've had some warriors of Minis Tirith for a while now which Alex gave me, so I decided to put an old head on one of them, and convert one of my orcs into Golmoths Leiutenant. First thing I liked was that the heads came with a built in pin, which is very useful because it saves drilling the head at the wrong angle and bursting out of the back of the poor guys skull. As these were to be attached to plastic models, I had the satisying task of nicking off the models' existing heads with some wire clippers. Then both of the replacement heads were bald, so I had to shave off the remaning hair with a scalpel. Then a lovely easy drill into the plastic with a pin vice. The pins in the head were every so slightly too big for the drill I had, but because of this, and that they were going into plastic, they gave a real snug fit that wouldnt have required glue.
I glued then anyway, just to be pedantic. These sprues were so good you didnt need to fill any of the joins with green stuff, there were no gaps. Finally I gave them both an undercoat (which ruinied the existing paint jobs - oh well)
So just to paint them now - but I must say these were very easy conversions to do. I'll start to investigate some of the other conversion sprues that Games Workshop sell via mail order.

And on the subject of Shiny.. a couple of nights ago I also glued Captain Mal's arm to his body, so as I needed to get out the spray paint tonight I cleaned him up and undercoated him as well. More black models to finish!!

Labels: LOTR, Miniatures

Well after my last house taking about a year to complete, I created this pictured one in about 20 minutes. It's not that I have suddenly been gifted with brilliance, more that I've suddenly realised what to type into Google.
I discovered the work of Peter Fitzpatrick, who is a gamer, but has produced a couple of really nice looking pdf files in colour that you can print out and turn into gaming scenary. They are really nice. Heres the hovel which I was very impressed by. Its slightly too small to match my bree house, but the quality is very high. I'm probably going to use this as a pattern to do a similar one the same scale as my existing house.
Anyway the files can be found on a link from this page.

Labels: Modelling

Stressed out today. Had some news I was sort of suspecting but it annoyed me when it arrived, so after doing the things I needed to do I hid away from the TV and did some painting. Yesterday I had mounted the king of the Nazgul and some other figures that were still in blister packs (mostly hobbits) and then undercoated them this evening. When I searched through the undercoated miniatures I did I also came across pigsy (Gothmod from issue 56) as well. So here was the plan. Take my duplicate King of the Dead and get him painted to try him on ebay, while doing the witch-king and Gothmod.

The King of the Dead was relatively easy to do again, with the two bluey grays (Space wolves being one of them, never can remeber them both at once) and then some rotting flesh for the face and a silver and gold for the sword, helmet and buckles, and vermine brown for the hair. Then I used a wash of black and green ink, followed by straight green ink towards the bottom of his cloaks/clothes. While I was waiting for the ink to dry I played about with my Rohan house in the background, which has been partially finished for too long.

Using the same greys I drybrushed the stone foundations, which I have previously painted with textured paint. I did this with a 1/4 inch paint brush and for once it worked. Then I used the same for the thatch, this time with vermin brown. This picked it out a treat, and so I continued with the bigger brush to add a highlinght of bestial brown to the scorched brown of the wood. Unfortunately, this did not pick out the colours and detail as well as it did on the Bree house. I've also been undecided about how to finish the top of the foundations, but going with the flow I decided to do a sand and grit base as I would on a miniatures base. Lots of PVA and sand later I set that aside.

So now I turn back to the king of the dead, and decide to base him with the sand and glue as I have it out, but get hit with disaster. The ink has still not dried (madly, considering the heat) and it wicks all up his cloak.. I cant easily remedy this so I wash it all off under the tap, but this has the desired effect removing only the sand, pva and ink and none of my earlier work.

You can see the four items I worked on tonight in the picture. None of them finished. I followed issue 56's painting guide for pigsy, just about finishing the armour, and then highlighted the witch-king using black, regal blue and shadow brown mix. Tidied up, and went to bed, sucessfully distracted.

A grusome front cover for a grusome issue. This comes with a metal conversion sprue which is really interesting.
The theme of this issue is Heros of Middle Earth. The concuding article on battle companies is followed by a piece on larger battles and then some company scenarios.
There are then 3 pages of conversions based on the sprues. These are more ideas than full blown guides. One of the sprue pieces is a metal crossbow to use to convert one of the uruk-hai pike men. As I have loads of these that break sooner than looking at them, it is a nice way to breath some life into these damaged models. There are some fists, some wands, some weopons and some heads to change some of the plasic pieces. One great looking one is an old blokes head to put on one of the gondorian models. I'll definately try that one.
Finally theres a new head to add to a plastic ork to turn him into a hero, he has an emergency back up head attached to the spike on his helmet for good measure. All in all a very useful sprue.
The model section just explains about dioramas, and shows you a few. Again not really a guide.
Good set of issues these two. Only 15 to go!

Labels: BGIME Review

Well I'm glad that for once I managed to get a few posts in between deliveries of the magazines. This one is quite good though with a metal Lord of the Nazgul figure, with a nice pointy hat!
Articles are provided on Battle companies, and then a witch-king and fell beast scenario. Details of how to paint the model, which looks a strait forward hours work - might try that quickly tonight along with my king of the dead.
There then follow a bit about terrain and boards, including a 'Where do you store them' comment. Then some example battlefields, the Bree looks lovely and the Shelob's layer is quite nice.

Labels: BGIME Review

So I finally finished my Bree House – well nearly… After painting the polyfillered base with green textured paint, I gave it a coat of goblin green and then flocked it. After that I painted some more PVA on, and flocked it with a darker brown material to add some interest. Then I repeated the process again to add some static grass to some areas.
Bushes were added around the sides of the house, using lichen. At this point I realised that the one wall without a window looked a bit bare, so I put a pile of polyfiller there so that I could paint it brown so it looked like a pile of mud or fertiliser.

The bricks posed a problem. I find it really hard to dry brush large areas, and wanted to do this codex and then fortress grey, but had run out of the former. So I ended using shadow grey, and a lighter version (Space wolves Grey?) over the black base coat. It still doesn’t have the definition that I find it easy to get from a smaller model. When I try to dry brush a large area it always seems to show the brush marks too much. Does anyone else have any suggestions?

I really like the oak beams on this now. I wasn’t sure how they would look, with only a Scorched Brown basecoat. However when I dry brushed these with bestial brown it brought them out really well.

I’d like to try and make another one of these, but this has taken me so long I probably better not.

Labels: Modelling

I've not done much on this house. I was really pleased with the top half of it, but the plasticard bricks that I stuck on the bottom half just did not look right with the wood on the top. I've been humming an harring about what to do with it but I came up with the idea of painting the bricks with some textured paint, and this has turned out much better.

Since that I've decided to polyfiler the base a bit more, so the grass effect that I might add later looks better. This might give me the encouragement to get it finished. Although now I am blogging for something to do while I'm waiting for it to dry....

Labels: Modelling