DU BEKAR!

This is a gorgeous piece and I've been on with it on an off for a few months. It's been so long in fact that they were started with normal paints and had some final effects added with contrast paints which were released in the meantime.

The base was airbrushed and given a gloss varnish for the ice. 

From a modelling point of view, the only compexity was magnetising the weapons for Azog. In the film he is armed with the stupid great block you see here. However, I dislike it intensely. So...

1mmx2mm rare earth magnets recessed into both sides of the wrist, allowing me to swap them out as required. 

Overall, very happy with how this turned out as a display piece.

The Company of Thorin Oakenshield

I've been chunking away at getting these painted for my eldest. As always with Middle Earth miniuatures I've thoroughly enjoyed painting them although tracking down good reference shots for the whole costume has been a little tricky. I'm not done yet but I'm getting close to halfway.

Thorin

Balin

Dwalin

I'm particularly proud of his tattoos on his head

Bifur

Bofur

And, of course, they need someone to hunt them: Azog.

This last was my first experience of Finecast. It will also be my last.

Tom, Bert and William

I picked these up second hand for my son - as they're his favourite things from both the film and the book of the Hobbit - and set about painting them up.

I painted them in a similar way to the Goblin King with layers of skin glazed on to top of each other to give some depth. Overall, I'm very happy with how they came out.

I also dug out and finished up some Fighting Uruk Hai for the new Lord of the Rings rules.

The Slaughtered Lamb

This has been a month of scenery and terrain work for one reason and another. First up was a surprise birthday present from She Who Must Be Obeyed which was a bit delayed in terms of delivery.

It is, of course, the Lake Town House from the Hobbit. It's a great kit; either end of the house is double sided, so there are immediately four different variant houses you can build. The kit is also designed to make it easy to combine multiple kits into a single building.

I decided this was going to become my generic fantasy pub, The Slaughtered Lamb. This would work for Middle Earth gaming but also all my other fantasy needs. Painting was a piece of cake, just the usual layers, wash and then a drybrush of green ochre to show where the wood had faded.

The sign was actually done quite neatly but then faded down to the point where it was almost illegible.

This is a cracking little kit - at £25 is at the upper end of single building scenery prices, but I've paid that for 4Ground MDF stuff before. And I've also got a quarter of a sprue of barrels and baskets and other sundries left to use.

The Great Goblin

Ever had one of those little projects that becomes more complated than you expected? I picked up a miniature of the Great Goblin in one of the £10 middle earth job lots I keep buying on eBay. I figured it would be a relatively quick job; after all, how hard can it be to paint Barry Humphries?

This is tricky one to paint. Because he's an entirely CGI character there's a few things which are difficult to replicate; mainly the slightly translucent skin.

In the event, I decided to use a variety of glazes to build the skin up over a dark wash. This allowed me to put in stretch marks, spots, veins and warts which would then appear to be under the final skin layer.

As always I mixed glazes using Vallejo's Galze Medium which is worth its weight in gold. First I'll show the finished article and then a few WIPs to show the build up the glazes.










And here you can see the various layers of glazes being built up.

And that's about it finished. Really very happy with this. Looking forward to the next little project...