Elevenses

Some decent photos of the 11th Doctor:





And the Witch King:

BY THE BEARD OF ODIN!

A whopping great parcel arrived, heralding the culmination of my first experience of Kickstarter. Yes, Blood Rage has arrived.

The board is a thing of beauty with a lovely finish; I trust in the work of the designer so I'm sure the game will play well. But the miniatures... oh, the miniatures.

Just look at them.

Aside from the game pieces, this is going to form the core of both a Dragon Rampant and SAGA force. They're all beautiful, the larger monster pieces especially. I'm really looking forward to painting this little lot.

TFI Friday

I managed to sit down this evening - again accompanied by the strangeness that is Twin Peaks - to knock off a few jobs hanging around.

First off is my 11th Doctor - another from the redoubtable Heresy Miniatures. A wonderful likeness and great fun to paint.

Next up was some more work on the Witch King - and here we see why I chose the mace with the knob on the end:

A quick slap of paint and it becomes a palantir.

I also made a start on a rather lovely Necromancer I'm doing just for fun. 

Tomorrow I'm hoping to crack out the airbrush and start work on the Carnosaur; I'm massively out of practice, so we'll see how well that goes...

Drums In The Deep

As promised, decent photos of Gandalf.


And yes, I know I stuffed up with eyes.

The cloak was done the same as Saruman, with a building up of glazes over traditional highlight to give a softer gradation of colour.


As I was on, I did the same thing with the Cave troll.





Oh, and I also tidied up the last bit of the TARDIS as well.

Carnosaur Part 1

Well, this is turning into a more complex project than I had anticipated, so it seems worth creating a little blog within a blog - one of those project blog/plog things - to keep track of it.

So, to recap:

The carnosaur arrived and it looked like this:

I've stripped it until it looks like this:

And the next stage was to pin and glue the various limbs. As always with older GW kits, you tend to find that one side of the various fits tend to be quite tight but you end up with a yawning chasm on the other. On this kit, pleasingly, the outside edges with the textures tended to be solid. However, pinning seemed to be necessary to add some security.

Then, tonight, it was time for some greenstuff and sculpting. Alas, my sculpting tools have vanished so all I had to work with was a broken smoother and a scalpel.

The next step is to undercoat it and make sure it's smooth enough for airbrushing.

Works in Progress

A long hard week at work and so a collapse into painting in front of Twin Peaks was called for. 

I finished painting Balin's Tomb. I'm quite pleased with how it came out. I know that, in theory the books should all be in the Dwarvish alphabet but I went with the mix. 

Thanks to the wonderful advice of Mr Roy I checked out a guide on painting marble. I tried it but, alas, it was beyond my skills. I went back to a more traditional stone texture. If you zoom in you can see that I've kept a bit of the marble patterning under the drybrushing. 

And I know that there shouldn't really be fresh blood, but I like the recipe Mr Awdrey gave me so much I use it wherever possible. 

I also got the basecoat and saying on this chap from the ever reliable Heresy miniatures. I've gone with the series 5 costume for those that care about such things. Mainly, it has to be said, because the series 5 jacket had no checks. The jacket is done here but there's obviously work to do on the rest. 

And I also managed to get most of the paint off the Carnosaur. It took two goes and then the application of a pick to scrape out the remainder. I know I joked in the last post but this really was ridiculously thick. 

A slight digression for Dragon Rampant

this very evening, the Good Lady 'Er Indoors presented me with a wee gift. It turns out that the chap I bought all those Lord of the Rings miniatures off had something else at the back if his cupboard and it's a miniature I'd always coveted: the old metal carnosaur.

Now, as it happens, I've been thinking about Dragon Rampant, Dan Mersey's upcoming re-jig of the Lion Ramoant rules for Fantasy, and working out what I can field. As part of my 'evil' force I'll be bringing my old Dark Elf Cold One riders out of retirement.

In keeping with the lizard theme, then, the Carnosaur will make a fine steed for my general.

As it turns out, this one was also painted with a trowel. Before I begin stripping and painting it, I thought I'd share the pictures of this poor creature in its current, slathered state. It really is a lovely model and deserves better - I hope I can do a good job.

This last one really shows how thick the paint is. Sheesh. 

Stormcrow

Just a quick update. Gandalf is pretty much finished - I've tidied up that scary eye since this was taken - and I'm rather happy with how he came out. 

The cave troll is almost done. My only regret with this chap is that I didn't tidy up the join lines on the hammer but he's certainly a decent tabletop standard. 

And I've started work on Balin's Tmb. The tricky thing here is how do you paint White Marble? Here you can see where I've drybrushed with a large brush to work some texture into the white. 

Shading and detailing to do this week. As always, decent photographs at the weekend when I have some light. 

I also think that the finished Gandalf shots might be the post that cracks 10k views which would be nice. 

Team Names

No Bloodbowl team is complete without a name, obviously. So here's the signage for the two teams I have painted from the base set.

Thanks to everyone who suggested names - and I am disappointed that I couldn't make some variation on 'Turnips' work after Tamsin's suggestion - but an especial thanks to the redoubtable Roy who came up with the Orc team name.

The Longest Yard

I promised decent photos of the human team so here they are:



So this means that the target I set for myself over the summer - of completing the Wars of the Roses and the Bloodbowl projects - has been met. I now have two complete teams which means it's time for the Good Lady 'Er Indoors to live up to her side of the bargain and play a game with me...

Now... anyone got any ideas for team names?

Bits and pieces

Starting on the various elements of the Middle Earth haul, I first considered the Witch King of Angmar. As much as I love the design aesthetic of the films, that bloody stupid mace was deeply annoying. So it was with quite a sigh of relief that I noted the one I had was broken off.

A rummage around the bits box turned up various swords and other bits and pieces but then I saw this.

It looks totally unsuitable. But I have a plan. 

So the snips and files came out...

And so did the glue. You can also see the greenstuff I used to smooth out the join on the left arm. 

While faffing on with that I also blocked in some colour on Gandalf and used a couple of glazes to add some shade and light to the various greys of his outfit. 

And then looked at the Cave Troll. One of the joys of large figures if you're as cack-handed as I am is that it's pretty much the only time one can indulge in some proper wet blending. 

I also finished off the Bloodbowl team so I can take pictures this weekend. All in all, a productive start to the weekend. 

Huzzah!