Frodo Baggins

My dad has asked me to paint him a Fellowship of the Ring, so where better to start than with the Ring Bearer himself. This is the first Frodo I've painted that I've actually been pleased with, so I thought it was worth noting down the colours I used for reference:

Skin:

• Base: Cadian Fleshtone
• Wash: Guilliam Flesh
• Highlight: Cadian Fleshtone
• Lips: Bugman's Glow
• Eyes: White Scar & Abaddon Black

Hair:

• Base: 50/50 Dryad Bark & Rhinox Hide
• Highlight: 33/33/33 Dryad Bark, Rhinox Hide & Baneblade Brown
• Edges: Above + Cadian Fleshtone

Jacket

• Base: Rhinox Hide
• Highlight: Rhinix Hide + increasing amounts of Baneblade Brown
• Buttons: Zamesi Desert

Waistcoat:

• Base: Rhinox Hide
• Highlight: Skrag Brown

Trousers:

• Base: Skavenblight Dinge
• Wash: Nuln Oil

Backpack & Straps:

• Base: Dryad Bark
• Highlight: Dryad Bark + Baneblade Brown

Cloak:

• Base: 75% Caliban Green + 25% Rhinox Hide
• Highlights: Above + increasing amounts of Zamesi Desert

Metalwork:

• Base: Ironbreaker
• Highlight: Runefang Steel

Most of the above ideas were taken from the following videos, modified slightly for the colours I had available (particularly my lack of Gorthor Brown!):

• Frodo Baggins Painting Tutorial by Planet Mithril
• How to Paint the Fellowship of the Ring in 9 Colours by Games Workshop

A Rohan Stronghold (building the houses)

Last year I treated myself to an early Christmas present and picked up the Rohan Stronghold boxset. I spent part of the Christmas break building up the Rohan House kits and I have finally finished making my buildings so I thought I would share the raw pictures before I paint them.

I borrowed heavily from the internet for inspiration, so if anyone else is looking for ideas here are some sources:

• Zorpazorp's Stable, Blacksmith & Complex Houses - I didn't actually make any of these as I felt they were a bit kit-hungry (most use at least 2 kits for 1 building), but there's some great footage of how the kits were modded which was very helpful
• GW "How to Build" Video - This was the first video I watched and has useful tips for building, plus a few examples. Again, I didn't actually build any of their variants as they used multiple kits per building, but if you wanted to make the 4-kit Great Hall, then this has the details.
• Chaos Bunker's 'Ideas' Post - Some great pics of the Warhammer World exhibition showing various variants they made.
• Paintbrush Pirate's Assembly Guide - I built the simple farmhouse from this guide
• More example houses - I can't find the source for this, but I borrowed the idea of using porches to make stables from this Imgur post
• Paints on a 4 up's Inn & Stables - This was posted after I finished building my houses, but I would be very tempted to make this 2-kit Inn if I ever got more kits.

1 - Standard House

This house was made pretty much exactly per the GW instructions - the only variance is that I centered the front door rather than offsetting it to one side.

2 - Great Hall

This was my first modified building, and is a Great Hall, made out of 2 House kits. The idea from this one was lifted straight from a post on the GBHL group on Facebook so I take no credit for the design, but it came together beautifully. I really like the big hall that GW made, but 4 kits was a bit too pricey for my liking, and when I discovered you could make one with just 2 kits that was an automatic "yes"! 

The side walls are standard (1 wall + 1 extension) and the back/front is easily assembled (the base layer is one wall + 2 extensions, or 2 full walls if you prefer, the second layer is one wall + 2 roof infills and the top is a standard 2 roof infills). The only fiddly part was the porch at the front - I used the standard porch side walls and one of the standard triangular top pieces, but the porch thatching isn't made to be doubled-up in the same way that the main roofing is. The fix was easy enough - I fitted the bottom thatch pieces as normal using the guides and then cut away the bottom part of each of the top thatch pieces until it fit in the gap. The main entrance door is the standard porch door, but just glued straight onto the front of the building to give it a bit of grandeur.

3 - Blacksmith

This is my blacksmith, with a forge, largely inspired by the GW conversion featured in the War In Rohan supplement. The forge itself is from Mantic. I was in two minds how to do this, and in the end settled for the representation of a blacksmith's, rather than a realistic working environment - my blacksmith has an anvil I will add when I paint everything up, but lacks key equipment such as tools, but the space was too small to really build a proper forge set up and I decided it looked better as a fairly clean area. 

The main conversion was made by simply omitting the side wall extensions and building a square 'house' then I paired up a couple of horses head pillars for each corner and used them to support the roof, and used the window triangle to keep it all square. This building also has a shorter entry porch than normal (I used the porch roofing for house #5), so I just used the triangular pieces of thatch and the standard front door and then filled in the gaps along the side with a couple of the pieces that are designed to join two walls together. It worked quite nicely and helps give this building a long, thin profile on the table.

4 - Farmhouse

This is my farmhouse build,  a simpler building for a rural Rohirrim with a covered outside area, maybe for storing grain or over-wintering a few animals. 

The basic building structure is the same as for the blacksmith above, but I left the endwalls open and cut down a couple of walls to make half-height surrounds for the area to show it's a permanent set up (the walls are left-overs from building the Great Hall, you could also use fences instead). I used a couple of fence pieces to indicate the yard area, but wanted to make it so a model could actually get through the opening by the main door, so I extended them with a few bits of balsa wood.

5 - Stables 

I think of this as a house for a richer Rohirrim, who likes to keep their horses close to home - there is a stable for 2 horses attached to the main house, and they have a good sized yard to turn them out into during the day.

The house is built as normal, but the door is glued directly to the end of the building, rather than being attached by a porch. I then used two porches (one borrowed from the blacksmith - #3 above) to build out the stable attachment (the roofs glue together very nicely for this). The backwalls are the standard porch walls, but I had to double-up on the joining pieces to get the length right for the roof. The end piece is a spare side-wall extension (also from the blacksmith). The front walls are the other two porch walls, but cut in half to make gates for the fronts of the stables, and I put a horses-head pillar in the middle to add a bit of support for the roof, and to make it look like there are two stalls. It's surprising how much difference doubling-up the porches makes to the footprint of the building and it adds a nice bit of variety to the layout.

The Nine

 

These guys were really a finish from last year, but I only based them yesterday, so they snuck into 2022. I appear to have lost all my painting notes for these guys (the poor things sat there about 4 months waiting to be based), but the black cloaks don't look that great, so it's not a great loss! I shall have to have another go at painting black when I get onto the mounted versions...

Hobbit Hole

 

My first finish of 2022 is a Hobbit Hole for my Shire-folk to live in. I received the Forge World kit as a Christmas present and have used the Christmas / New Year holiday to get it all put together, and I couldn't be happier with the result.

I made the hill from 3 layers of  cheap expanded polystyrene, cut to shape with a stanley knife and fastened together with a hot glue gun. The base was then cut to size from foamboard and the edges were chamfered with a knife. To make the piece more hardwearing I covered all exposed surfaces with polyfiller then gave it a day to dry.

Next up was texturing the terrain - the path is made from greenstuff, and I used a roller from GreenStuffWorld to give it a cobblestone texture. The fence is made out of balsa wood and held together with hot glue - this was fiddly and took a lot longer than anticipated so I would try and find a better way to do this in the future.

To add a bit more texture to everything I covered the hill and base level in PVA glue and scattered a mix of modelling grit and other cork bits for texture. After that had dried for a few hours I brushed a layer of watered down PVA over the top to secure it in place.

I painted all the terrain with a mix of black & brown craft acrylic and then dry brushed it with a 'early gray' wall paint - it looks very stark here, but this is just to provide a base from the grass and it will be much more subtle when it's buried in flock!. I primed the hobbit hole with some brush on primer, then painted in Mechanicus Standard Grey.

I originally attempted to follow the painting guide in the Scouring of the Shire supplement for the hobbit hole pieces, which suggests dry brushing up from Mechanicus Grey to Administratum Grey and then using washes to colour the different areas (wood, tile etc), but the results were horribly washed out so I scrapped that plan and started over (I should have taken a picture, but was rather irritated with it at this point, so did not!). I ended up repainting the whole thing the normal way with the colours listed below and it came out much better the second time around.

Finally, to finish everything off I applied a liberal selection of grass tufts, lichen and flowers to make the garden at the front and to add a few bits of height to the hill. Once those were fixed in place I brushed glue over the rest of the exposed hillside and scattered a mix of various flocks over a bed of PVA with a few clumps of static grass for variety. Some of the lichen wasn't too keen to stick so I used a bit of super glue to keep it in place.

Tomorrow, after everything has dried, I will seal it all in place with a solution of water and PVA applied from a small spray bottle.

Painting Summary

Wood

• Base Dryad Bark
• Drybrush Baneblade Brown (light)
• Wash Agrax Earthsade

Bricks:

• Base 50/50 XV-88 & Dryad Bark
• Wash Agrax Earthshade
• Drybrush Baneblade Brown

Tiles:

• Base Mournfang Brown
• Highlight by adding varying amounts of Skrag Brown & Doombull Brown (for variation on tiles)
• Wash Agrax Earthshade

Wall:

• Base Baneblade Brown
• Wash: Agrax Earthshade

Windows:

• Base: Dark Reaper
• Wash: Nuln Oil Gloss
• Frames: Krieg Khaki

Door

• Base Castellan Green
• Drybrush Loren Forest Green (heavy)
• Drybrush Elysian Green (light)
• Wash Coelia Greenshade
• Drybrush Elysian Green (light)

The flock, flowers and lichen were all things I already had - there are about 5 different blends of flock, 3 lichens, and about 10 different flowers / clump foliage. Most came from Woodland Scenics, Warpainter.net and Serious-play.co.uk