Nostalgia

A long time ago I got into the hobby via the wonders of Advanced Heroquest, and its little add-on, the Advanced Heroquest paint set.  Included in this box was a sprue from the Warhammer Fantasy Regiments box set (a wonderful box including 60 plastic miniatures released for WFB 3rd edition).  For those who never got to see this motherlode of plastic, this sprue had a dwarf, a wood elf, a dark elf, a skaven, an Orc and a goblin, with shields and alternative heads and weapons.  The dwarf was the first miniature I ever painted, and soon after bought myself the Regiments box.  In honour of my introduction to the hobby all those years ago, I decided to paint up a sprue of these guys.

The forces of Evil

I tried to paint these guys in an "old school" style of painting - kind of like they used to do in 'Eavy Metal back in the day.  So as well as blending and layering there's some use of drybrushing too, particularly on the metalwork:

The skin on the Orc I'm particularly pleased with - a little darker than I would usually do for an Orc.  The worst thing is that I don't remember properly how I did it.  I know it's Orkhide Shade as a base, but then I can only guess that it's a wash of Devlan Mud followed by Orkhide Shade up through Gretchin Green?  The metal has some Bestial Brown daubed in before the highlights were drybrushed on, to make it look a little rusty.  

The forces of Good (and a Dark Elf...)

These three are some of my all time favourite miniatures, particularly the Dwarf (I should have filled the divots in his hammer before painting, but never mind).  The Wood Elf's face is still a pain to paint even now, but at least he gave me some good practice painting "difficult" eyes...

Put up against the latest Dark Elf Executioner, the Crossbowmen is about 2/3 the size, it surprised me how much they had grown over the years.  This Dark Elf was painted before the assassin, hence the use of the "turquoise abomination" - I don't want to repaint that now...

The Shields

My favourite parts of these models, they really are fun little things to paint.  The Dark Elf shield is a bit dull (do Dark Elf Crossbowmen have shields these days?), but the rest have some nice character to them, particularly the Orc and Goblin shields:

The Orc one is my favourite, I'm not sure if the moon is meant to be orange, but it felt like a "Late 1980s/WFB 3rd" colour so that's what I went with.

As always comments and criticism welcome!

In other news, it looks like Blogger had a bit of a problem this week - apologies to SAJ as I can't remember what he asked on my Pedro post, before some of the comments got deleted.

Assassin's Creed...

Hmmmm, an oddly "Assassin" themed couple of weeks for me.  I managed to complete the first Assassin's Creed (if you're not a video gamer that might not have meant much to you) last week and have just started the second one, which ROCKS.

Added to that, alongside a couple of painting projects I've got on the go, I completed this chap (still a lamp short at the moment, so apologies for the pictures...):

Acting on Pete's good advice the turquoise was dropped  in favour of the leather looking colour (and gold for the knee spike) which definitely works (cheers mate!).  The cloak was built up from Chaos Black through Charadon Granite and finishing with Dheneb Stone, which although not traditionally dark enough for a dark elf assassin has worked out rather nicely..  The leather pieces started with Scorched Brown and blended in with Tausept Ochre as the top highlight.  It's a nice dynamic miniature that was actually fun to paint, and he would work well as a Blood Bowl player too!

My Dark Elf army now consists of 7 miniatures, good going for me...

In other news the owner of the Eldar Bonesinger was very pleased with the paint job I did for him, which was very rewarding.  I'm giving some thought to doing it as a little side line to make some extra cash, I just need to work out if I have the time...

The first Warjack is still ongoing, the good news is I have a red recipe I'm happy with, so hopefully he'll be done by next weekend

A quick update...

Not too much going on this week, a couple of projects ongoing, but nothing that I can share yet.  My first Warjack is proving to be a bit of a pain, but I should make some progress on it this weekend.

While my motivation is at a low ebb, I had a crack at this chap:

I'm not happy with the turquoise, I think I'm going to get rid of that on all my dark elves and replace with something more appropriate - any suggestions?  I'm happy with the cloak and the face, I've gone for a paler skin tone on this chap, and I've just noticed I've forgotten to do the eyebrows...

Comments and criticism welcome!

Busy, busy, busy...but not painting

Argh, not much painting done recently, doing some long days at work and not really feeling like painting when I get home.  Add this to getting a little burnt out on the Eldar, and I don't have much to report unfortunately.  To get my mojo back I'm painting a few different (and pretty old) things, which I'll hopefully have some pictures of soon.

Anyway, just so this isn't a boring picture-less post, here's an old project that I've made some progress on recently:

I'm pretty happy with the way these guys look, the greeny-blue is possibly a little light for Dark Elves, but it doesn't look too bad.  These are my favourite of all the Dark Elf models, I just love the look of them.

Gluing those damn swords on are a royal pain in the backside though...

Painting again

Well, after a break of just under a week, it's time to get painting again.  The plan is to start finishing off all the stuff sat half finished in my painting station.  If possible I'd like to get 3 done a week (minimum).

Here's the three I want to get done this week:

The  Dark Elf is nearly done, just the face really, plus some freehand on the back of the cloak.  The Uruk-Hai Captain needs highlighting and detailing, and the Space Marine Sergeant is barely started.

I doubt these will be entered into any painting competitions, they're more for me to get back into the swing of things...