Unpublished 2012

Here are some shots (taken by none other than Reagan Lee ) of minis I painted earlier in 2012 but for some reason forgot to put on the blog. 

I really like GW's Lotr Rangers minis as they're full of character and they gave me a chance to work with warm colors that I really like. Faramir's rangers are even better than the plastic ones as they're more detailed and the quality of sculpts is slightly better.

I used Micro Art Forest bases - they are awesome and I cannot recommend them enough. I've used many different resin base/base inserts but those from MAS are definitely the best in terms of quality.

Faramir and Damrod leading the rangers

Duinhir, Arathorn and Halbarad

And that's pretty much it for 2012, it's been a pretty good year in terms of hobby for me but I'll write a separate entry with summary in January. 

Happy New Year to everyone who visits Independent Painters, I'm really happy that some people find the blog interesting enough to stop for a while and check out new posts as they come and even more grateful for the comments that are left. See you in 2013 - in hobby terms I'd call it the year of... Hobbit.

Farewell to arms

The first snow has fallen, which means that you should

Winter doesn't bother me, in fact I like this season of the year. The only problem with it connected with the hobby is that I rarely have good lighting for taking pictures of my works. I decided to try taking pics in artificial lighting. Here's a quick pic of the setup I used:

Nothing really complicated as I simply used two white sheets of paper as diffusers on lamps pointed directly towards the mini. There's still room for improvement but the effects are encouraging (none of the pics in this post have been touched up) so I guess I'll stick to this method for the next few months.

I've finally finished working on the Gondor army. I have to admit I was a bit fed up with painting armors and barely visible faces. The Trebuchet was particularly tedious and after preparing it for painting I was actually put off painting for a few days. It's such a shame that GW keeps on producing mediocre products and at the same time assuring us that they deliver a product of the highest standard... Anyway, after lots of bending. repositioning, tons of GS and painting this is how it turned out:

I prepared a small scenic base (I made something like it a while ago for the King's Champion). I think that it adds some kind of action element to this rather static set.

Next up are the Guards of the Fountain Cours. Probably the most royal looking infantry unit in the entire Gondor force. I used a nmm golden trim on the edges of their cloaks and a yellow trim with a pattern to tie them to other units I'd painted earlier.

Last but not least are the Men at Arms. I've painted them before and always left the ornaments on their helmets silver. This time I wanted to follow the codex color scheme more closely and painted them white. I think it worked pretty well as it made them look more special than regular WoMT.

 Now I am going to start working on a Moria army. I'll begin with the biggest beast that it has - the Balrog.

Army of the Dead

I had thought that it would be a quick and easy job before I started working on this bunch. White primer, some washes, drybrush and all's done. Well, in the end it was a bit more complicated than that.
I started by preparing the bases - adding larger stones/boulders and sand. The minis were primed separately with AP grey basecoat. I followed it with a light spray of white, which added some basic highlights.

Then it was washing time. After a wash of Vallejo Green Shade, I glazed them with thinned down Guilliman blue. The only exception was the king's coat which was given a very light touch of red. I had to be careful here as adding too much of it would result in a pinkish shade which wouldn't work well at all with this one.
I decided that they need a bit more depth and worked a bit more with Vallejo Green Shade. After that it was just a matter of bringing them back to bright colors and making them look more ethereal. I used P3 Underbelly Blue with increasing amounts of white for that, finishing off with a very light touch of pure white. The hairs and beards were painted using more natural colors and I think that in the end it worked out well too.

In the end what was supposed to be a quick and easy paintjob has proved much more complicated. The trays were meant to tie them with the rest of the Gondor force, while still giving them a slightly different look. OK, enough talking, here are the pictures.

Plastic warriors of the dead are quite nice with lots of features to make each of ten models look unique and the plastic is really strong and doesn't break easily. The metal ones (especially the riders) are just fantastic and I really enjoyed picking out the details on these miniatures.

Now I'll probably paint at least a few Malifaux minis but with the end of summer holidays and September being the busiest month for me, it might be hard to find as much time as I'd like to spend doing that.

Knights of Dol Amroth again

This time plastic mounted versions. I wrote about earlier that initially I wasn't too impressed by these as they seemed too bulky and less detailed than the old metal versions. Now that I look at them, on finished bases and themed movement trays, I think they're not that bad after all.

The Knights aren't glued to the mounts as I wanted to make adding a rider to the mount more flexible.  

The saddles might seem a bit too flat but these elements are almost completely covered by knights' tunics so I didn't worry about that and focused more on the edges that are visible.
They add a nice touch of blue to the otherwise slightly too uniform (at least in my opinion) Minas Tirith army and should make a nice addition to other heavily armored units.
Not much more to say really so here are the pics of the whole six.

I probably don't need to add that the banner bearer was my favorite to paint - the pattern there is really nice and it did take quite a few layers of paint to get it looking right.
Now, onto some undead warriors!

Dol Amroth reinforcements

I finished another batch of minis for the Gondor army. This time I painted a few metal Knights of Dol Amroth. The lighting conditions aren't perfect as it's a bit cloudy today so the quality of the pics isn't great. What comes out the worst are the swords, especially the blades. For some reason the camera focuses on these too much and they look too sharp, as if they were covered with some kind of dust.

Once again, plenty of metallics on these and I was glad to make use of Army Painter silver colors. I'm quite happy with how the white clothes turned out and they way dry pigments work with them, quite realistic effect I think.

And here's a true leader for this unit - prince Imrahil. The pics don't show it very well but I used different shades of blue for shields, cloaks and horse's caparison. What I like in particular about this mini is they way his face is sculpted very well detailed and full of expression.

I also started working on a unit of Mounted Knights of Dol Amroth. I used Plate Metal Spray on the Knights and mounted them on temporal bases for painting and basecoated the horses with grey, lightly spraying over it with white.

The plastic KoDA seem a lot bulkier than the metal ones and the details aren's as sharp but I guess they'll look good enough after painting.

The army of Minas Tirith

I've been working on this batch of minis for a while now. I actually started at the beginning of June. It wasn't the best time for painting as I was very busy at work and then left for two weeks for holidays. In fact, I did most of the painting during the last two weeks.
Batch painting is a good solution while working on armies or larger units but it's a tedious work. Painting many miniatures simultaneously can be an effective way of getting the job done though.
One of the reasons it took me so long is that I wanted to maintain a solid quality throughout the whole force. As a result I would spend hours working on the same elements, making sure they all receive at least a few highlights, washes where necessary and glazes for the extra depth effect.
First off, the Warriors of Minas Tirith:

They're the core of every MT army. The quality of the sculpts is generally OK but there's one thing that bothered me a lot while I was working on them. The helmets are nice but their faces are sculpted in a very uneven way, they are slightly deformed in the area around their eyes, which makes painting this element very tough. And getting both eyes look right is sometimes a challenge here. One of the warriors with sword and shield in the front line has this bad look that just screams: "I am constipated!", so after taking the pics I repainted his mouth.
And of course no army can go on without leaders so here's a pic of the command (with a special guest appearance by Boromir):

They have more details that make them stand out from the rest so I paid extra attention to make sure they pop at first glance. 

And some cavalry, 12 of them in total. I used three different shades of brown for the horses. Looking at the pictures, I can see that I should have taken more from a different angle to show that properly. Another thing I noticed was that the tree symbol on Boromir's chest plate is a tad too dark and his lance is a bit crooked. I highlighted the tree better but left the lance untouched. This one has a long journey ahead of him so it's probably better to leave him like that and let his new owner do that - the metal parts can be bent pretty easily but they tend to break easily too after they've been touched too many times.

 

 The riders aren't glued to the backs of their mounts as this would make packing them into a parcel tricky.
I was hesitating whether to follow the official color scheme completely or make some minor changes and in the end did the latter. I painted the saddles using brown instead of black. I think it played out pretty well as otherwise the riders' tunics would blend in with them.

And last but not least - the main hero in this force - let's give Boromir some spotlight.

Really great mini with excellent details that make him stand out from the crowd as the leader, while at the same time with enough characteristic elements to keep him tied well to the rest of the force. The banner was a challenge. It's a big, entirely flat surface so filling it with details painted with freehand wasn't easy.

And that's pretty much it as far as armored Minas Tirith army is concerned, at least for the time being. I am going to paint some more miniatures soon (Army of the Dead and Knights of Dol Amroth) and will be posting an update once I start working on them. I also still have some unpublished pictures of the minis for Gondor that I painted a while ago - I'll post them here soon.