The Ruins of Osgiliath

As you may recall, I recently availed myself of the new GW offer on the ruins of Osgiliath for The Lord of the Rings. Two constructed sets actually appeared as set dressing on the dungeon crawl I did with The Eldest last weekend.

I am pleased to report I have now completed two sets.

Gandalf once again sticking his nose in to places where he probably shouldn't. 

The above all show the first set. As you can see, they've been painted relatively simply and given some simple weathering around ground level. I was relatively happy with them but felt they lacked a certain something. The answer actually came to me while I was driving to work and looking at the leaves littering the ground; there's nothing quite so melancholy as autumn leaves dancing in deserted places.

It also gave me a chance to try out a new toy:

This is one of those ideas that is so simple you curse yourself for not thinking of it first. It's just a device that you use to punch out 28mm scale leaves. How brilliant is that? If you want one, you can get them here. 

So I picked up some leaves while I was on break duty and had at it. 

I think you'll agree they finish things off nicely. 

Pop a few miniatures on and it really all comes to life. 

So here you can see two sets; as I mentioned before they fill up a nice bit of table space. 

The last set will go on hiatus due to my wonderful other half treating to something that's going straight to the head of the queue... but in the meantime, just because:

"I'm fairly sure that's Cromer..."

TFI Friday

I managed to sit down this evening - again accompanied by the strangeness that is Twin Peaks - to knock off a few jobs hanging around.

First off is my 11th Doctor - another from the redoubtable Heresy Miniatures. A wonderful likeness and great fun to paint.

Next up was some more work on the Witch King - and here we see why I chose the mace with the knob on the end:

A quick slap of paint and it becomes a palantir.

I also made a start on a rather lovely Necromancer I'm doing just for fun. 

Tomorrow I'm hoping to crack out the airbrush and start work on the Carnosaur; I'm massively out of practice, so we'll see how well that goes...

Works in Progress

A long hard week at work and so a collapse into painting in front of Twin Peaks was called for. 

I finished painting Balin's Tomb. I'm quite pleased with how it came out. I know that, in theory the books should all be in the Dwarvish alphabet but I went with the mix. 

Thanks to the wonderful advice of Mr Roy I checked out a guide on painting marble. I tried it but, alas, it was beyond my skills. I went back to a more traditional stone texture. If you zoom in you can see that I've kept a bit of the marble patterning under the drybrushing. 

And I know that there shouldn't really be fresh blood, but I like the recipe Mr Awdrey gave me so much I use it wherever possible. 

I also got the basecoat and saying on this chap from the ever reliable Heresy miniatures. I've gone with the series 5 costume for those that care about such things. Mainly, it has to be said, because the series 5 jacket had no checks. The jacket is done here but there's obviously work to do on the rest. 

And I also managed to get most of the paint off the Carnosaur. It took two goes and then the application of a pick to scrape out the remainder. I know I joked in the last post but this really was ridiculously thick. 

Time and Relatives

Managed to sneak away from family chores for 10 minutes to finish off the TARDIS. No painting - well, apart from one tiny bit - just good old fashioned modelling skills. 

A simple print out and watered down PVA allowed me to add the signage. Except for the phone placard; on this version, it was too small and looked, frankly, awful. So I painted some abstract letter forms which will do for my purposes. 

Bloodbowl team tomorrow. 

Return to the Doctor

Just a quick one today. After looking at the pictures uploaded last time, I realised there was something missing from the Third Dcotor:



It took me a while to put my finger on what it was until I was watching some Who while doing something else:

I hadn't done the lining on the cape. That little splash of vivid colour that Jon Pertwee used to flash around with a flick of his cape.

So I cracked the brushes out today and tidied up the face and added the lining:



I think it makes a massive difference to how much the mini pops.



Again, quite happy with the shading on the black.

I also did the final glaze on Dr Hugh - incidentally, Heresy currently has a 25% off sale so there's never been a better time to treat yourself - and tidied up his face as well:




He still has the white toe-caps on his converse to add.

I'm in to the last stretch of the holidays now, so I realistically have time to get two things finished. My plan is to do the second Bloodbowl team and some medieval cavalry.

Stay tuned!

More Temporal Travellers - HAI!

This time from Crooked Dice:

Although you can't tell it from my paintjob - I'm going to have to revisit this one - the likeness is very good for Jon Pertwee.

He's joined by the ever faithful Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart:




And they're off for a trip to Cromer.



I also found, tucked away in the garage, the Heresy Doctor Hugh:

He needs another couple of glazes on the back of his coat to finish off.

Thoroughly enjoyed painting all of these and now trying to decide whether to go Victorian or Medieval for the next batch. Or maybe the last Bloodbowl team? What do we think?

The Two Doctors

I treated myself to some shinies from Heresy Miniatures and spent a lovely afternoon watching Doctor Who and painting.

Here's the results:




The Doctor Payne figure is probably one of the nicest miniatures I've painted in a long time. From a painting point of view I decided not to do the usual highlighting on the jacket but to instead concentrate on the weathering. I think the result does the job quite nicely.


The temporal northern vagrant was painted in a much more traditional fashion; the trousers and jacket were highlighted with different shades of grey and toned with blue and brown respectively. The different temperatures don't really show on the photograph but work in person.




The TARDIS is from Ainsty Castings. I have some decals to print and stick on next week (currently I have no ink for the printer!).

I am expecting some more shinies tomorrow so expect another post soon. In the meantime, if you like these two buy them from Andy at Heresy. He's a top bloke and a phenomenally talented sculptor. Now if only he'd get on with that Capaldi he keeps promising....