Blowing one's own horn

I decided to take part of my day off to do a tiddly bitmore on the beast of Gorgoroth. As I find chains the most annoyng thing to paint, I did them first, to remove the risk of frustratingly spoiling a carefully painted skin.

 

As the colour scheme for my force of Cirith Ungol is an eerie blue (Shock-horror! L.o.t.R. forces of eveil using a cold colour? Surely not!), I wanted to subtly include some blue on the beast, other than just the pieces of cloth. So I got out what will, I think, be a much used pot of Asurmen Blue wash which I liberaly applied to the first coat of grey, before doing two highlight coats. It's a very basic way of doing things, but I can no longer afford to spend quite so long paintingminis, so I opted for quick but effective solution. The infantry will simply be dipped.

 

 

Joe the Barbarian, who might actually manage to finish a model before 2013!

A beastly comeback

What ho! Having at last decided to give my self a kick up the backside and get back into the hobby, I knew that only something worthy of an announcement would suffice. What better task to undertake than to put together the Best of Gorgorth which the Frog, Shas'El'Hek'Tryk, gifted me for my birthday ("Because it's my birthday, and I wants it.") some 8 months ago.

 

We all know the inherent problems of Finecast, so I'll spare you the details. Let's just say that it didn't slot together very well. Happily, a quick answer was at hand. As any good English solution to a problem, it involved tea. It turns out that, when plunged in freshly boiled water, Finecast becomes perfectly malleable, without actually melting away any of the details. After that, all that was needed was a bit of liquid Green Stuff and Milliput to plug the last gaps.

 

Joe the Barbarian, the hardest part now is to keep on finding the time to do it. But all we have to do is decide what to do with the time that is given.

I could Haradly say no!

Before returning to Old Blighty, to live in London, Shas'El'Hek'Tryk made an offer I couldn't refuse, as he finally gave in to my requests to paint the first units of his Haradrim army for him!

Armed with a test model he gave me, I set out to replicate to my best his colour scheme, keeping in mind that I don't use an all-Citadel palette, whereas he does.

Here is his test model (left) and my first attempt (right).

I was thrilled when he gave his approval and promptly went straight into the next batch of 5 lancers. Some have more detailed faces than others, owing to the position of the spears. There are no doubt some imperfections, but these are just cannon-fodder. Happily, there aren't any cannon in the Lord of the Rings.

Joe the Barbarian, a Rosbeef who's glad his Froggy nemesis will actually own a painted army.

Arise! Arise, riders of Theoden!

To celebrate landing a new job, I decided to finish these 6 riders of Rohan, which had been lying around on the painting desk for quite some time.
These minor, yet highly effective, conversions are the fruit of the Frog's labour. Shas'El'Hek'Tryk really made a good job of it.

Moving to London this week, I went to look back on my Rohirrim force as it stands, before launching fully into my next challenges: Mordor, Saxons, Normans and... painting a Haradrim company for our favourite Shas'El, who has finally granted me permission to go ahead with starting his army. It must be said, in his defence, that he has spent the past year or so trying to figure out (ha! figure... pardon the unintended pun) how to save them after an unfortunated undercoating incident which left his minis looking as if they'd just been in a sand storm. I did point out that it was rather fitting for desert dwellers.

Enough chit-chat. Here are my Rohirrim so far (minus the few archers and Theodred).

Joe the Barbarian; a Rosbeef who's heading back to live in mad-cow country.