Weathertop

The lost watchtower of Amon Sul. 

Another piece of Middle Earth scenery, this time a hard foam product from Ziterdes bought from Mighty Lancer games. It arrives ready painted and with flock attached but the paintjob is really just a grey spray. 

Fine for pick up and play - but we can do better. 

First a quick highlight drybrush and then a black wash. Then some more drybrushing and it's already looking good. 

Then some weathing pigments, fixed in place with airbrush thinner.

And then some modelmates Moss effect

And finally a few grass tufts to finish. 

The ForgeWorld one costs a couple of hundred quid. I reckon this one looks pretty good for 35 or so. I'll definitely have a look for some more of their stuff. 

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.

Lands of the Horselords

I've been using the lockdown to catch up on a few projects. This one was close to my heart - it will come as no surprise to long time readers that I'm deeply in love with Rohan from Lord of the Rings so for Christmas I was lucky enough to get some of the new scenery .

And how lovely it is!

I followed the GW suggestion for paints more or less exactly as I really liked how close it was to screen accurate. It had the added advantage of getting me used to using contrast paints as tints and glazes.

What you can see here is one house and one set of palisades. That's easily enough fencing for a 4x4 table. 

Obviously I will be buying a couple more of the houses. I have a plan for a stable....

Overall, great kits, easy to build and very flexible. Highly recommended for general fantasy use. 

Saurman the White

We've been here before. But the new plastic kit of Sir Christopher Lee was too good to resist. 

This kit was painted entirely - apart from the Eye of Sauron in the palantir - with Contrast paints. I used heavily thinned Skeleton Horde in the robes, with unthinned for the darkest recesses, and various whites, blacks and flesh tones.

Like all the recent Middle Earth Kits this was an absolute joy to put together and paint and looks incredibly dramatic on the table. 

The kit also came with a mounted Saruman

From a purely gaming point of view this was something I was sorely lacking as I quite like to run a pack of Warg Riders and having Saruman being able to ride along with them opens up a whole world of possibilities... 

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.