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

Moria Goblin Prowlers (1 of 2)

This weekend I painted up another batch of goblins - this time I went for some of the prowlers I converted as I was interested to see how my modelling held up after painting.

Overall I'm pretty pleased - the first one I converted looks a bit dodgy:

He looks a bit like something is sat on his face

And the hood is rather angular

but the rest came out quite nicely:

Head tie	Hood
Full Hood	Bandana
Sash	Head tie (rear)

The shields were painted with Leadbelcher then washed with Nuln oil to get deep shadows, I then highlighted with Ironbreaker trying to get a scratched look around the edges and finally washed with Agrax Earthshade to get a nice rusty tint.

Moria Goblin Spearmen (1 of 3)

Over the past week I've painted up two sets of goblins. For ease of painting I have decided to do them in batches of 8 - I've tried various sized sets in the past but 8 has proven to be the right balance of 'making enough progress' and 'not getting bored' for me.

The first set I painted up was a batch of spearmen, I picked these guys to start with as the sculpts are very similar so they're very easy to paint en-masse.

I decided to keep to the traditional GW colour scheme for these guys but opted for a slightly brighter green than I usually see to keep them close to the goblins of the films.

Colours: Elysian Green, Memphiston Red, Abaddon Black, Skavenblight Dinge, Dryad Bark, Leadbelcher

Following a base coat with the appropriate colours this gave some very basic looking goblins:

Which I washed with Agrax Earthshade to magically add some depth:

And then highlighted with appropriate lighter shades of each colour:

Ogryn Camo, Administratum Grey, Screaming Skull (teeth), Gorthor Brown, Ironbreaker, Stormvermin Fur (straps) Skavenblight Dinge (hair), Wazdakka Red, Yriel Yellow (eyes) and Dawnstone (base)

The bases are painted with Skavenblight Dinge then washed with Nuln Oil and highlighted with Dawnstone to represent the mines of Moria. 

Looking at the finished models I'm fairly happy with these guys considering they're the first I've painted for about 10 years; that being said there's definitely room for improvement so it will be interesting to see how I (hopefully!) improve