"Wraiths! Wraiths on wings!"

You may or may not recall that a year or so again I was lucky enough to get a ringwraith on fellbeast as fathers day present. I was very pleased with it and attacked it with my airbrush immediately.

As it happens these Christmas holidays have been spent watching the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit movies on a loop with my sons and I realised something:

I had painted the Fellbeast the wrong colour!

For some reason I had got it into my head the Fellbeast was grey when it was obviously from watching the film that it was actually blue. So, seeing as I had the airbrush out for something else in any case, I decided to get stuck in.

Quite a change from the original colour:

Here it is, scouring the landscape below for pesky hobbits: 

And here he is facing my brand new Gandalf the White

I think you can agree, this looks much more like it!

Winged Nazgul

This has been one of those miniatures I have wanted for a very long time; as it turned out, I got it as a Father's Day present.

It was basecoated with the airbrush with varying tones of grey and a fairly pallid flesh tone. The underside of the wings was built up with various flesh tones with a final Dark Flesh overspray - my tinking here that this wil probably be feilded with Uruk-Hai, so it main sense to try and tie them together with the palette.

Here's my Heath Robinson spray booth:

And here's some WIP shots:

There's a few little touchups left to do and the basing, but overall I'm, very happy. 

The Gates of Minas Morgul have opened...

"Before them went a great cavalry of horsemen moving like ordered shadows, and at there head was one greater than all the rest: a rider, all in black, save that on his hooded head he wore a helm like a crown that flickered with a perilous light."

Tolkien, The Two Towers

After all the recent conversions and sculpting, it was nice to get back to simple painting. These were a birthday present from my wife nearly six months ago and they are lovely miniatures. They really pack a punch visually, and fit really well with the Morgul and Nazgul aesthetic from the movies.

I used the weathering and corrosion technqiues I'd learned doing the AOS28 and INQ28 stuff to dirty them up and I think the marriage of those weathering techniques to a more realistic paint scheme worked well.

One thing I did do was, when I based them, I added a trail of dead grass where they'd passed. This, I think, was vert in keeping with Tolkien's conception of the Shadow.

Annoyingly, the effect is so sublte that unless someone points it out to you, you don't notice.

Finally, just for fun, I looked to see if they matched the look and feel of the Mouth of Sauron:

Nice, fun little project and it's always lovely to get back to Middle Earth.

The Witch King of Angmar

"Those who used the Nine Rings became mighty in their day, kings, sorcerers, and warriors of old. They obtained glory and great wealth, yet it turned to their undoing. They had, as it seemed, unending life, yet life became unendurable to them. They could walk, if they would, unseen by all eyes in this world beneath the sun, and they could see things in worlds invisible to mortal men; but too often they beheld only the phantoms and delusions of Sauron. And one by one, sooner or later, according to their native strength and to the good or evil of their wills in the beginning, they fell under the thralldom of the ring that they bore and of the domination of the One which was Sauron's. And they became forever invisible save to him that wore the Ruling Ring, and they entered into the realm of shadows. The Nazgûl were they, the Ringwraiths, the Enemy's most terrible servants; darkness went with them, and they cried with the voices of death." 

Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age, the Silmarillion

The Nazgul are, for me, the defining creations of Lord of the Rings; and the way they were shown in Jackson's films tallied exactly with how I saw them. I would go so far as to say that, for me, they are definitive. 

So faced with the Black Captain, leader of the Nine Black Riders, it seemed appropriate to spend a little more time on him than usual - especially as the pose and sculpt was so evocative. 

The basic painting was quite simple - grey base, black wash, thinned grey highlights, edge highlight and then black glaze to tie everything together.

The base involved a little sculpting to create different levels, some slate from the beach and gloss varnish and inks for the pool.

While I was on with the dark riders in various forms, I also put the finishing touches to this chap:

A tall and evil shape, mounted upon a black horse… The rider was robed all in black, and black was his lofty helm; yet this was no Ringwraith but a living man ... his name is remembered in no tale, for he himself had forgotten it.

The Mouth of Sauron.







Here I went for an overall grimier look; more tattered. I also used some inks to add different tonalities to the blacks. The implication has always seemed to be that he was an important man in some times past, so I wanted a sense of faded finery. This also included quite significant rusting on the barding of his steed.

Obviously this still has the base to do, but he'll probably just end up with desolate rock like the rest of my Evil Middle Earth forces.

And last, but not least, some decent photos of the Gandalf I acquired from somewhere. I'm quote happy with this one, over all.

Something rather interesting should be arriving in the post tomorrow so stay tuned for the next update...