A busy weekend

Some friends of ours got married this weekend so I didn't have much time for painting this week. I did make some progress on my final batch of goblin archers though and I've painted their basecoats and washes; hopefully I'll find some time this week to add the highlights and finish them off.

Moria Goblin Archers (2 of 3)

My cold has fortunately receded somewhat and I was able to get a bit more painting done this weekend - these are the partially painted archers from last week, now completed.

They are painted exactly the same as the last batch except that they are washed with Athosian Camoshade instead of Agrax Earthshade - I accidentally spilled about half my Earthshade and attempts to re-dilute the remaining paint with water resulted in some rather nasty white deposits when it dried.

The only other item of note is that this batch features a conversion I have so far worked into every force I've done - 'the guy who insists on holding his [bow] sideways' conversion (second from the left).

A quiet week

Not much to show this week - I was struck down by a rather vicious cold on Wednesday which knocked out my painting time almost entirely. I got a little bit of painting done at the start of the week but I'm only 3 colours into the basecoat on my current batch of Moria Archers. Fine motor control has apparently gone out the window at the moment so I guess I'll get back to these guys later next week.

I did manage one other bit of hobby-related activity this week by way of a trip to my local Games Workshop; my birthday is coming up next month and my parents have kindly (resignedly?) agreed to buy me some models. I thus have a nice selection of elves and men headed my way. They'll be forming part of the Last Alliance and Helms Deep armies I'm planning to work on.

Somehow a couple of boxes of Haradrim Raiders also snuck into my order (from my own funds) because I've been wanting to get some for ages and they're in stock again (and clearly they must therefore be bought immediately... even if I'm not exactly sure what I'm going to do for Harad yet....)

Gundabad Blackshields (1 of 1)

This week I painted up my Gundabad Blackshield conversions and I'm quite pleased with how they've come out. They are a little bit monochrome compared to the rest of the army, because you mainly see their white cloaks and metal shields, but I think they look suitably imposing.

They were however not very easy to paint - in the future when I sculpt cloaks I will pay more attention to how they connect to the models. Now that I think about it, when GW do cloaked models they always fill them in so that there are no undercuts... I did not do this and it made it a bit of a pain to paint the areas under the cloak.

The fur cloaks were base coated with Gorthor Brown then repeatedly drybrushed with Longbeard Grey and finally given a light dry brushing with White Scar. I think it gives a fairly good 'dirty white' fur effect.

The shields are by no means perfect, but I quite like their rugged looks. The backs are the least good as they are entirely flat - fortunately this isn't particularly obvious as the figures cover most of this surface!

The eyes also proved tricky because as far as I can tell any detail that may have been sculpted inside the helmet was lost in the moulding process (except for a nice big mould line down the middle of the face!). I treated the mould line as the nose and painted in the eyes as best I could, but they're a bit more cartoony that I'd like and for some reason they all came out lopsided. Getting them this good took me several attempts so I decided to settle for what I could do - the imperfections are very obvious in this photo, but from a more normal distance they look fine.