The Lady of the Woods

[...] and she grew to be tall beyond the measure even of the women of the Noldor; she was strong of body, mind, and will [...] Even among the Eldar she was accounted beautiful, and her hair was held a marvel unmatched. It was golden like the hair of her father and of her foremother Indis, but richer and more radiant, for its gold was touched by some memory of the starlike silver of her mother; and the Eldar said that the light of the Two Trees, Laurelin and Telperion, had been snared in her tresses.
—Unfinished Tales, "The History of Galadriel and Celeborn"

I popped into Vapnartak before the current strangeness - which everyone seems to have agreed, in a very British way, to refer to as 'all this' - started and picked up a couple of Middle earth miniatures at the Bring and Buy. One of them was Galadriel, the lady of the woods.

I decided to paint her up between other projects - basically as something to fiddle with while waiting for bits of Titan armour to dry - and as a result decided to experiment. Would it be possible, I wondered, to paint a miniature using nothing but Contrast paints to a good standard in less than 30 minutes?

Here she is.

White undercoat, one splash of contrast in each area - only three colours used - as a tiny bit of gold for the circlet. 30 minutes. It's a pretty good result, I think you'll agree.

Here she is with the other members of the White Council I have; quality wise it's difficult to spot the difference between her and the one of them that took nearlty six hours of patient layering or the one than required painstaking wet blending.

Shepherd of the Forest

This is a rather special Ent. After building the plastic kit I had a head and a couple of right hands left. That's obviously the basis of another Ent but how to make the rest of it?

Basically, every time we went for a walk over the year, I collected some sticks. Always deadfalls - after all, Treebeard would not approve of me cutting  healthy trees down. 

Walks in Yorkshire, Wales, the highlands of Scotland - every part of  the countryside of mainland Britain contributed some elements. 

Then it was a matter of construction. Some drilling and pinning and a lot of Gorilla Gel.

I added a couple of branches from Dryads to break up the outline.

Almost by accident it appears that I made an Ent with attitude. Just looking at him you can hear the Beegees.

I then fastened him to the base and green stuffed the root structure round the feet.

I painted him using the one of the greatest strengths of contrast paints, I think - the ability to easily blend them to get natural colours. 

The leaves were painted in the traditional way and then I added some foliage from my stash.  

And so here is the current army of Fangorn Forest. 

Very happy with this one and obviously it has a lot of sentimental meaning to the family as it represents our travels in the countryside - something I think Professor Tolkien would have approved of. 

Stalkers

I took advantage of the Games Workshop Made to Order offer a month or so ago to treat myself to some Morgul Stalkers for Battle Companies games.

These were painted entirely with the new Contrast paints except the metallics. This time I experimented with mixing some different colours together or layering them for different skin tones.

They are rapidly becoming a must have tool in my arsenal as they replicate my usual painting method but without having to zenithal Prime or mess about with different thinners.

My Precious

As part of a second hand deal a couple of weeks ago I got a painted Gollum from Lord of the Rings. He's one of the characters I've always fancied getting just to paint so I immediately set about stripping him.

He's been painted with the new Citadel Contrast paints - very thinned for the skin using the Contrast medium which really allowed the detail to come through. I then used unthinned paint for the darkest recesses. 

 The water was done with the water effects I've been using for the ship bases which I think finishes him off nicely.

Oliphant!

"Grey as a mouse,
Big as a house,
Nose like a snake,
I make the earth shake,
As I tramp through the grass;
Trees crack as I pass.
With horns in my mouth
I walk in the South,
Flapping big ears.
Beyond count of years
I stump round and round,
Never lie on the ground,
Not even to die.
Oliphaunt am I,
Biggest of all,
Huge, old, and tall.
If ever you'd met me
You wouldn't forget me.
If you never do,
You won't think I'm true;
But old Oliphaunt am I,
And I never lie."

As I mentioned earlier, the boys and I spent the Christmas holidays watching the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings more or less on a loop. The youngest - age 4 - was very taken withe the Mumak. So very taken, in fact that he immediately started asking for one.

It's a fascinating model - for years, one of the biggest that GW made and almost an entire army in its own right. So I didn't mind using my hobby budget to buy one. The sculpt is showing its age - there was quite a lot of filling needed. Once constructed, I broke out the airbrush for the base colours and highlights and followed it up with some drybrushing for texture.

It was a relatively fun little project and led to a happy customer.

Next up, another project for my other son and then - finally! - something for me.

A Thing Which Has Not Happened For An Age

" 'I am not going to tell you my name, not yet at any rate.' A queer half-knowing, half-humorous look came with a green flicker into his eyes. 'For one thing it would take a long while: my name is growing all the time, and I've lived a very long, long time; so my name is like a story. Real names tell you the story of things they belong to in my language, in the Old Entish as you might say. It is a lovely language, but it takes a very long time saying anything in it, because we do not say anything in it, unless it is worth taking a long time to say, and to listen to.' "

"They found that they were looking at a most extraordinary face. [...] But at the moment the hobbits noted little but the eyes. These deep eyes were now surveying them, slow and solemn, but very penetrating. They were brown, shot with a green light. Often afterwards, Pippin tried to describe his first impression of them. 

   'One felt as if there was an enormous well behind them, filled up with ages of memory and long, slow, steady thinking; but their surface were sparkling with the present; like sun shimmering on the outer leaves of a vast tree, or on the ripples of a very deep lake.' "

One of the most wonderful surprises I got for Christmas was an original metal Treebeard. I started work on it almost immediately.

Sticking it together was the usual pain, requiring a lot of pinning and a Heath Robinson construction to prop it up while the glue dried.

Then came the greenstuffing. Oh, so much greenstuffing. Still, at least sculpting the bark is easier than sculpting scales.

Painting was largely drybrushing and washes to build up slightly different wood tones.

The biggest decision I came to was to leave off the sculpted leaves and replace them with model foliage to give a more realistic finish. I think this was definitely the right choice, especially when I added some leaf scatter in some places.