I painted Arwen over the course of a week as a fairly last minute third entry for Golden Demon 2017. I couldn’t go without trying to defend my LotR/Hobbit title from last year!
I had wanted to paint Thranduil, King of Mirkwood but sadly received a poor copy (curse you, finecast!) so had to pull Arwen (in metal) off the subs bench.
Not much to say about this one really. I do enjoy the simplicity of the Lord of the Rings miniatures and they always present a challenge due to their diminutive stature.
I’m quite happy with the freehands that I pulled off in a very small space. I’ve added a bit of texturing to the purple robe and the ochre streamer things. I wanted to try and capture the lustrous quality that Arwen has in the movies, so I elected to go with a very pale base coat for the face (almost white) and then added shading and colour gradually. I’m reasonably happy with the end result but it’s not an approach I’d normally use!
Arwen comes in a dual pack, so I will have to paint the mounted version at some point!
Up until a couple of weeks ago I wasn’t sure if I’d attend Warhammer Fest. Although I always enjoy chatting to my fellow painters and the studio guys that I know, I find I no longer have the hunger that I used to for winning painting awards. After factoring in the cost of attending, I was leaning towards not going.
It has now transpired that I have another good reason for going (which I won’t go into here), so last week I bought my ticket. And of course if I am going then I may as well enter golden demon! Happily I still had my recent Blood Angels librarian and High Elf sea lord sitting around, so I already had one more entry than I managed to take last year (when I was only able to get Legolas painted in time).
Since these pieces now needed to be competition standard, I spent some more time working on the base for the sea lord. Online reaction to this piece has generally been very good, but I got some great feedback from a handful of my facebook friends regarding the poor standard of modelling on the rocks.
I will freely admit that I’ve never particularly enjoyed basing. I really appreciate the amazing work that so many people in the community put out in this area, but I’ve never felt that this is where my talents lie. I love super clean, precise painting and this doesn’t really sit well with the approaches needed to create believable looking scenes. But I wanted to make the piece as good as it could be, so I took the feedback on board and had a go at improving the cliff face with the aid of some milliput and reference pictures on google. I’m sure it’s still not great, but I hope it’s better than it was.
Sea Lord before modifications
And after!
I was happy with the librarian as is, so my thoughts turned to whether or not I could get a third entry done in time. It seemed only right that I should attempt to defend my title as Lord of the Rings/Hobbit champion from last year, so I needed to get my hands on a simple miniature that I could paint fairly quickly. After perusing the GW website for a while I settled on Thranduil, King of Mirkwood.
Now at this point, particularly observant readers may be thinking that the purple robed lady in the first picture is a funny looking Thranduil. And yes, I have to report that unfortunately my plan to paint this lovely looking miniature was undone by the abomination that is finecast. It has been a good long while since I bought any resin from GW and having heard reports that it has improved recently I foolishly thought I’d give it another go. Sadly I received the all too familiar mix of bubbles, warped parts and chunks of resin obscuring details.
Happily I had hedged against this possibility and also ordered Arwen in good old solid dependable metal, so she will be my final entry. More pictures of Arwen coming soon!
So there we have it – three entries ready for golden demon next Sunday. I honestly have no idea how I’ll get on in the competition. The standard seems to be driven ever higher each year and I’ve already seen pictures of jaw dropping work from the likes of David Soper and Michal Pisarski that make me think I’m in for a serious schooling! But regardless, I’m sure I’ll have a great time meeting up with everyone. Looking forward to it!
In the depths of winter, when a chill wind howls and the world has turned to white, any adventurers foolhardy enough to have strayed from the warmth of hearth and home may catch glimpse of the mysterious Frost Queen. Some say that she was once a fair maiden, but following a great tragedy she grew increasingly emotionless and aloof. Ultimately her heart turned to ice and she is now an adversary to be feared: cold, ruthless, and utterly sadistic, her touch is death to those that stray too close.
I’ve designed and painted lots of ships and 15 mm miniatures over the last year and consequently I’ve been neglecting 30 mm a bit. But I’ve been keen to keep progressing in this area too, and I wanted to take some of the lessons I learned making the Dragon Maiden and maybe try to do something a little bit more original.
I can’t actually remember what prompted me to go with this idea – I probably just thought that a winter themed mini would be fun to do! I did a bit of googling and sketched some concepts and this is what I ended up with. I think I was partly inspired by some of the old Lord of the Rings miniatures and I wanted a simple mini, without any weapons or overtures of war.
As ever, being far too tight to shell out for pro software like Zbrush, I sculpted the Frost Queen in Blender. My main challenges here were to do a better job on the face and get a bit more practice with cloth. I think I did do some things better than the Dragon Maiden, but as soon as I got the print in hand I could see things I wanted to improve! I won’t go on about all the faults here, but suffice it to say that I see many…
I didn’t do anything special when it came to painting. It was a bit of a no brainer to stick to cold colours, and the long flowing robes are obvious candidates for a bit of colour transition. I avoided any temptation for freehand and texturing in order to keep it quick, since I have other projects waiting. I think I turned this around in about 15 hours, which is pretty fast for me! The snow on the base is Valhallan Blizzard from Citadel. First time I’ve tried it but it seems pretty good to me. 🙂
I’ve entered the Frost Queen into Shapeways’ heroes and villains sculpting contest. No idea how I’ll get on with that, but fingers crossed! If you want a Frost Queen of your own then you can buy one here.
Ahoy, me hearties! The Kingdoms of Men and High Elf fleets have continued to expand, and I now have 3 classes of vessel designed, printed and painted for each navy. I’ve settled on 1:900 scale for this project, as it’s a good trade-off between getting some great details and keeping the cost down.
I designed the ships in Blender and had them printed at Shapeways in the high definition plastic that continues to impress me. It’s possible to make out the individual bolts on the elven weapons and I’ve even been able to add little wheels on to the gun carriages on the human vessels.
Considering these miniatures are printed on a high end Envisiontec DLP machine, the cost is very reasonable. It’s still more expensive than I’d like though, so I’ve taken steps to minimise this as much as possible: hollowing out the undersides of the hulls, connecting multiple ships together so they get charged as a single part, and substituting the sea bases for a less expensive FDM material.
The ships are now up for sale in my Shapeways shop. There is even a nifty tool that lets you look at the models in 3D. The next step is to add some flyers! I’m thinking a griffon for the humans and a phoenix for the elves.
I’m looking forward to playing some more Galleys and Galleons with these now!
Gareth Nicholas Blog 