Hit the Road

I guess everyone who has a blog finds himself or herself beginning an entry by "I haven't been writing much lately" or anything that has the same meaning. So instead of going with the flow I'll just briefly mention what has been taking much of my free time - preparing for my driving licence test. I took it today and I passes (my first attempt, yay!). It wasn't easy and it was very stressful too but somehow I managed to complete it. Now only 3-4- weeks of waiting and I'll finally be able to hit the road !



Now back to hobby stuff. I finished this one a while ago but haven't got round to uploading pics to the blog.



I painted Mouth of Sauron using pretty much the same techniques I used for the Nazgul earlier on. The main difference is that I used Dry Pigments (Vallejo) for Rust effect. I wanted him to look a little different and I thought this kind of effect might suit the model well.



Now I'm going to work on some dwarves. In fact, I've already painted quite a few of them and I'm working on some more at the moment so you can expect pictures soon :)

Winged Migration

I thought I'd post something that's not hobby related this time. Here's some great music from one of the most beautiful movies I've ever seen, the Winged Migration.

Check out the whole playlist, truly magnificent music.

#9 The Witch King

Last but definitely not least, the Witch King. Once again, kudos to whoever sculpted these two. Really great models and painting them was a lot of fun. Not much to say about this one as I used pretty much the same techniques as before and focused mainly on keeping the highlights on the robes as smooth as possible.



The foot version is a bit tricky as the chain of the flail is very fragile. In order to make it stronger, I glued it to the top of WK's helmet.



And that's almost it as far as Mordor is concerned, at least for the time being. I'll post some pics of a final miniature later this week and then I'll start working on another army. To finish off, here's a nice version of a classic Metallica's song.

Walls and Terminators

Finally ! After 3 weeks of wandering around many,many places around I'm allowed back to my aparment. Enough to say that I had summer flat renovation done. As per usual workers had slight delay with it and presented their part of work week later that agreed. Then I had to do some work with wallpapers and electric instalation ;) A little break from working with 28 mm stuff. It was strange to do everything i real size :) I couldn't resist to take some "before" shots of walls in my room. As you can see they are striped naked of everything.

I decided to go with some subtle yet contrast choice of colours. So in GW's nomenclature I've choosen Liche Purple and somewhat of Fortress Gray with couple of borders.

Now to more interesting subject. I'm starting (soon I guess) a 40k project which includes Terinators. Lots and lots of them. There's gonna be 3 squads of them; 10 Assault Termies with Thunder Hammers, 10 with Lightning Claws and 10 Standard Terminators with range weapons. I also bought box of Grey Knights to use parts of that box to mix in with rest and make more customised set of "mech-look' units. I also intend to make some parts from scratch , like artificial limbs for example to enchance mechanical feel of group. Some painting tricks also ought to do their part (more metal parts, some different types of metal). Anyway I hope to get on the way slow and steady ;)

To finish my comback a pice that phonetically relates to my area of expertise for last days ;) Great piece by Offspring (and a bit of my beloved hockey with it :) )

#8 The Shadow Lord

I didn't really like this model at first. I guess it can be partly explained by the fact that it used to be the most popular Nazgul among gamers in Poland and I've seen dozens of poor renditions of this model. I'm not a gamer myself but I noticed that at some point The Shadow Lord was a must in pretty much any Mordor army. In such cases it's hard to look past painting.



When I got the model I wasn't too impressed at first. It seemed too pompous with arms extended above its head. My initial opinion changed as i started working on this one. It's another great Nazgul sculpt with very high level of detail. It seems a little thinner (especially the foot version) compared to other ones but that's probably because it's sculpted this way and the cloak isn't too heavily folded.



I spent a little more time on the runes. I googles for Mordor runes and came up with a picture that showed how "Mordor" should be written in runes (not sure how "real" was it but I liked it anyway). I used the picture for reference and wrote the word several times along the edges of the robe of both foot and mounted version. While they add a lot to the miniature in terms of overall impression, i's easy to overdo with them. I noticed that in the codex version, the sheath of his sword is also covered with runes but I thought that painting them there would make this one look like a Christmas tree so I left this element out.
I'm not sure but I guess I could say this one's my favorite Nazgul so far.

#7 The Betrayer

Another nice Nazgul model. This one has a few features that make him easily distinguishable from the other Dark Riders; the scarf-like extension of his cloak, something that looks a little like a turban and last but not least, the gems.



Painting him was quite enjoyable and it was easy to add more character to this one - I simply painted these elements using different, more vivid colors (well, apart from the turban - I left it black). I think that gems are the element that makes the difference here. Adding some shine to them gives the impression of richness and creates a bright focal point on a dark miniature.



Now, onto the Shadow Lord. I changed my mind about this model but more about it tomorrow. I'll leave you with one from my favourite contemporary guitar virtuoso. Maybe not his best, but I'm trying to keep the 'black' present in the titles of songs I attach while writing about the Nazgul.