Morannon Orcs

 I painted up the 36 Morannon Orcs from the Pelennor Boxset with the aim of working on my accuracy and speed painting skills - originally I was aiming to spend about 5 minutes per model but I missed that target and spent about 12 minutes each for a total of  just over 7 hours. That's still considerably faster than anything else I've painted to date so I'm pretty pleased with my experiment. I could have saved about an hour by priming with Silver Spray but didn't have any.

I went with a fairly simple scheme and painted the entire army was one large batch, applying each colour to every model in turn. I've always painted in small batches before (maybe 6-8 models) so doing 36 in one go was rather different, but I actually really liked it as I could see the progress being made and everything got finished at the same time.

Broadly, the timings per model worked out at as follows:

• 2 mins to base silver, wash & drybrush
• 2 mins to base red & wash
• 2 mins to base grey, wash & highlight
• 2 mins to base faces, wash & highlight
• 1 min to paint, wash & highlight hair & fur
• 2 mins to paint & highlight straps (fiddly!)
• 1 min to paint & highlight wood areas

The Paint Scheme for future reference was as follows:

• Prime with Abaddon Black Spray

Armour

• Basecoat with Ironbreaker
• Wash with Reikland Fleshshade

Red Cloth

• Basecoat with Memphiston Red (2 coats needed)
• Wash with Druchi Violet

Grey Cloth

• Basecoat with Skavenblight Dinge
• Wash with Nuln Oil
• Highlight with Stormvermin Fur

Skin - Variant 1

• Basecoat with Baneblade Brown
• Wash with Agrax Earthshade
• Highlight with Baneblade Brown

Skin - Variant 2

• Basecoat with Doombull Brown
• Wash with Agrax Earthshade
• Highlight with Skrag Brown

Skin - Variant 3

• Basecoat with Catellan Green
• Wash with Agrax Earthshade
• Hightlight with Elysian Green

Hair

• Basecoat with Eshin Grey
• Wash with Nuln Oil
• Highlight with Dawnstone

Fur

• Basecoat with Mournfang Brown
• Wash with Agrax Earthshade

Wood

• Basecoat with Dryad Bark
• Highlight with Steel Legion Drab

Straps

• Basecoat with Dryad Bark
• Highlight with Gorthor Brown

Basing

• Apply coat of Stirland Mud
• Drybrush Tyrant Skull
• Add Tufts (Warpainter Scrub Grass small / standard tufts)
• Paint Base Rims Steel Legion Drab

Painting the Army of the Dead

These guys were a pleasure to paint as they require absolutely no detail work at all!

Painting Recipe is as follows for future reference:

• Prime with Skull White (Corax White) Spray
• Basecoat with Corax White (just filling in anywhere the spray missed)
• Wash with Hexwraith Flame and apply patches of Coelia Greenshade to break it up
• Drybrush with Ulthuran Grey

Basing

• Stirland Mud
• Drybrush with Tyrant Skull
• Add Grass Tufts (Serious Play 6mm Mini Tufts / 4mm Tufts in 'Winter')

February Update

A little late with this one but February was a very quiet month on the hobby front, mainly because I spent most of it preparing for, being in and unpacking from a trip to Singapore!

I did manage a last-minute entry into my local GW's painting competition. The conditions were that it had to be a hero and had to be painted this month. I picked Boromir, Captain of the White Tower and had a go at some freehand on his banner, I'd wanted to paint this for a while but been intimidated by the freehand so the contest was a good push to actually get it done.

I was a little short on time at the end so I kept the flag relatively simple (although I couldn't resist all the colourful bits by the spear). This was about 6 hours work all told (2 on the banner, 4 on the model) and I'm pretty pleased with the results given that I've done relatively little freehand to date.

January update part 2

I found a bit more time for painting today and managed to finish Boromir - I went with a nice muted palette and I'm quite pleased with how he turned out. The cloak shades from Abaddon Black through to Eshin Grey and I think it gave quite a good approximation of leather.

I also bought a new desk lamp this week with a nice daylight bulb to make painting easier and I'm definitely appreciating the better lighting. I still need to work out how to best use it with my camera though - I managed to take the shot below which gives a much more pleasing view of the model, but out of 30 odd snaps it's the only one that came out that nicely and I'm not sure how to reproduce it as yet!

January Update

My aim this year is to do some painting at least twice a week, and so far that seems to be working quite well - whilst I haven't turned out great volumes of work I have been much better at putting aside some time to paint.

I've been continuing to work on the Fellowship models I started before Christmas and I'm getting along fairly well with two more completed, and two basecoated - once those are finished I will finally have a full fellowship (some 15 odd years after I first acquired them!)

Legolas & Frodo are now complete - I'm very pleased with Legolas and feel that I've managed to keep him relatively well saturated this time (when I painted him previously he looked like he'd been dressed in pastels by a well meaning aunt). I'm also quite pleased with the gold detailing on his quiver & bow which I did in NMM, because I apparently don't own any gold paint. It's not perfect but  I think it's reasonably convincing.

Frodo on the other-hand I'm not very pleased with as he looks rather like someone hit him in the face. I think it's the third time I've painted this model and I still really dislike the sculpt, I may look into getting a different pose for him at some point but for now he's done. That being said, part of my dislike for this model may be because I always found Frodo a bit useless in LOTR, so maybe one of him is enough!

Boromir and Aragorn have been basecoated and washed. I'm aiming for a dark-green coat on Aragorn because I've always found the bright-green GW scheme a bit too glaring. The leather on Boromir's shield looks lovely so I'm not going to muck around with that too much but otherwise both characters are due for a lot of highlighting.

A Great Eagle

We spent a lovely week in the Lake District last week so I haven't done much painting recently - I did however finish off the Eagle I started before we left.

I'm rather pleased with how this fellow turned out - as previously mentioned I followed a tutorial from Tale of Painters and whilst it seemed to take forever to paint the feathers the results were well worth it. I did however give up on the black-tipped beak after two failed attempts to blend the black into the yellow. I settled for painting the whole beak yellow and washing it with Agrax Earthshade which seemed to work okay. I also washed the talons with Agrax as I felt mine needed a bit more shading.

The base is built around a fallen pillar from one of the Games Workshop LOTR terrain sprues. I cut it in half to fit it on the base and then added some pieces of slate around it and a showering of sand and small rocks painted as follows:

• Soil: based with Dryad Bark, washed with Agrax Earthshade, dry brushed with Gorthor Brown then Steel Legion Drab.
• Rocks; based with Skavenblight Dinge, washed mainly with Nuln Oil and a few touches of Athosian Camoshade, dry brushed heavily with Stormvermin Fur  and lightly with Longbeard Grey
• Pillar: based with Dawnstone, washed mainly with  Athosian Camoshade and a few touches of Nuln Oil, dry brushed lightly with Administratum Grey

The base is finished with a few touches of flock around the rocks arranged to look like creeping moss/plants and a few patches of static grass.

A short digression

We had some doors fitted today which meant I needed to be at home but not doing anything in particular - whilst the fitter installed 2 new back/side doors I settled down to paint hundreds of individual feathers on this eagle.

I've followed the Tale of Painters tutorial for this chap with a minor change to the greys as I was lacking one of the shades they used. Overall I'm really pleased how he's looking so far - the body feathers are all finished now but his head/talons still need more work.

Goblin Heroes

This weekend I finished the highlights and detailing on the goblin heroes - I made a couple of changes to the Shamen as I went along and I'm pretty pleased with the final results. My conversions are a little clumsy in places but I think that overall they work.

The Goblin King

     

This fellow is the unmodified GW model - he is slightly larger than the other goblins and makes an imposing leader for my forces

Goblin Captain with Bow

This goblin captain has a slight case of sausage fingers but the overall effect is still pleasing - I thought I had made a tiny little hand but it seems it needed to be even smaller.

Goblin Captain with Sword

Seen from the right angle, this captain is fearlessly leading his troops into battle, but from the wrong angle he's about to fall over backwards! Still, the conversion worked out pretty well so I'm happy enough.

Goblin Shaman #1

This chap was the only shaman who I didn't modify beyond my original plans - having checked the rules he should be armed with a spear by default but I think I could probably convince another player to accept that he can poke his enemies with his staff in a sufficiently spear-like manner.

Goblin Shaman #2

   

This little fellow gained a hood and had his quiver modified a bit further since my original sculpting session - my attempt to carve down his helmet into a head covering was entirely unconvincing when painted so instead he is now fully shrouded. His quiver was given a bit more length and a bulbous base to turn it into a more convincing flask/shoulder sack and basically make him look less like an archer who'd lost his arrows!

Goblin Shaman #3

Finally, this shaman picked up some tassels on his spear and a well-worn cloak to complete his attire. I'm actually really pleased with how this turned out as I was considering scrapping him altogether at one point and now he's probably my favourite of the three.

The Goblin Horde

With the heroes completed the Goblin horde is now ready to march to war - all that remains is for them to acquire a cave troll and I will have a full army painted.

Some progress on Goblin Heroes

Our Easter got a little side tracked by an unfortunate family injury resulting in several days spent at hospital / with parents however I did manage to fit a little painting in this afternoon and I have now basecoated and washed my Moria Goblin heroes. They still need highlighting and detailing but it's good to make some progress on these guys at last.

Moria Goblin Spearmen (3 of 3)

We had a busy weekend and I only managed to get these fellows to their initial washed stage by the end of Sunday, however I had a bonus day off today and I managed to finish their highlights this afternoon.

That's all the rank & file troops painted now, with only their leaders and the cave troll left to go - they look quite nice all ranked up on the table together.

The bases are for display purposes, and not for gaming, and I will be painting these up and theming them to match the army. They are a non-standard 6x2 so that each SBG warband can be displayed on it's own base - I elected to cap my warbands at 11 troops, rather than 12, so that every swordsman can have spear support (and so that they look pretty in my display cabinet!)

Moria Goblin Archers (3 of 3)

This weekend I finished up my last batch of Moria Goblin archers - just one more set of spearmen left to paint and I'll have finished all of the foot soldiers.

Life continues to conspire to keep me from my painting thanks to a recurring cold, but hopefully it will let up soon and I can get my first army finished up.

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.

Moria Goblin Spearmen (2 of 3)

Finished up another batch of spearmen this weekend - much the same to the last lot, although they took less time to paint for similar results. I think I'm painting a little more efficiently now - I'm working from skin to outer clothing and worrying less about getting paint on areas I haven't painted yet which means I can spend more time making very sure I don't catch any 'finished' areas.

I'm sticking with my original painting strategy of base/wash/very-unsubtle-highlights to ensure the whole army is consistent but I think that I may try to step it up a bit for my next army and try to introduce some blending of colours and other more interesting techniques.

Moria Goblin Prowlers (2 of 2)

I unexpectedly found myself with some time on my hands today and managed to complete my second batch of Prowlers for a total of 15 - that's all the Prowlers done and ready to make up the front lines of my 3 close combat warbands (each of which will be completed a with captain/shaman and a rank of spearmen)

A few detail shots of some of the conversions I made:

Hooded cloak (down)	Hooded Cloak (up)
Front: Eyepatch	Rear: Pouch

Moria Goblin Archers (1 of 3)

This week I painted up a batch of archers. Nothing particularly different from the previous two sets except I used a couple of extra colours - some Ceramite White & White Scar to do the arrow fletching and some Doombull Brown to do the quivers and their straps.

I think my faces are improving a little - these guys seem to have more expression than the last ones did.

Front Detail

Rear Detail