Eagle Trio

Well, after nights of painting (well, only an hour or so each night, but that's all of my spare time!) I've finished the third of the Gamezone Great Eagle sculpts. This one I decided to do again by googling images of eagles. Some eagles have white underbellies and heads so I went for that look. The techniques were identical to the previous eagles, so I won't do WIP shots this time, just a montage of eagles =)


I had to tone down the white because it was just too, too white. I showed my wife who agreed that I'd done it just like the eagles in real life, but that it just didn't look right. I know artists complain about that a lot with sky colours, they can paint it exactly how it looks in real life but it looks fake on paper for some reason! Note: I am NOT comparing myself to an artist! Just saying that real life is all too awesome sometimes!


Without rambling too much more, here's my Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game Gamezone Great Eagle and his friends =) As always, if you click on the picture (or right click and open in a new tab or save as or whatever you'll get a better picture than the smaller ones here).

As you can see, I used another of my lord of the rings terrain pieces here, one of the standing up statues. I think it'll look cool next time I've got them at my brother's place I'll take some shots with the other statues.


Okay, here's the original one - Gamezone Great Eagle II is the name of the sculpt. He's facing off against Buhrdur for a size comparison.

And here's the previous eagle, Gamezone Great Eagle I troll for comparison again.

And here's newbie, Gamezone Great Eagle III here showing the white underbelly. I used a sepia wash and then re-highlighted white on top so that it wasn't quite so dazzling.

Here's the three eagles fighting three trolls. The eagles have all been posed high enough or tilted enough that they shouldn't get in the way with most minis. Obviously the second one I painted (sculpt I diving with claws out) is quite low, but even he actually has relatively high wings.

Here's an overhead view to get an idea of how much area the wings cover from above.

And here's the newbie fighting Durburz with some dwarves nearby for scale. They really are imposing!

Even face to face with a troll they're quite large!

Frontal attack! Note the clearance under the wings.

From the side...

From the top again, sorry, showing off my hard work!

And this shot is to show the bases, one upright statue, one collapsed statue. On the game board with other statues around I think they'll work really well to tie in with the theme.

My new future plan (finances and time allowing) is to get Radagast, Treebeard and an Ent or two to make a good-guy monster army to counter my bad-guy monster army. It'll only be a few models, but I think it'll be great fun =)

Eagle Eye View

Well, after lots of spending time whenever I could get it, I have finally completed my second great eagle. This is another Gamezone Eagle. Like the first eagle (and, I think, any metal mini in general) it was a complete pain to put together, but at least I had the knowledge that they come out looking pretty good so it was far more bearable this time!


Like last time I did a google search for lots of images and decided on a red-tailed hawk.


Here's the underside completed apart from a few other finishing touches I did later.

As you can see there is lots of banding on the feathers and I had to paint the bottom first before setting it up on the base, which I used some more Lord of the Rings terrain on.

I've had a few comments and messages lately about my armies. 


Firstly I'd like to point out that I paint straight from the pot. 


Secondly I need to say that I paint my armies in whatever colours I like. I don't even want to get into any more discussions about my "lack of realism" or that I'm "doing it wrong". I don't even know where to start with that level of stupid.


Thirdly I tend to only do WIP stuff if I haven't already done that style before, and I am trying to label my posts better for ease of finding details!


Anyway, on with how I painted the eagle, now that you've seen the underside, I'll go through the same process on the top. Firstly it's Scorched Brown on the main body and front of the wings. White on the wings. Vermin Brown on the neck and tail feathers.

Then it's another two or three layers of white on the wings, a drybrush of bleached bone on the neck, a drybrush of bestial brown on the body and another layer of vermin brown on the tail.

A layer of red gore on the tailfeathers and a very thin line of sepia wash edging each feather. Yes, that is tedious, but that's nothing compared to the stripes to come. A brown wash is also done over the whole body and neck.

Next it's several layers of brown washes in lines along the wings and on the wing-tips. Yes this does take a long time. Yes it is wise to be listening to something while you work and to stretch every few minutes. Yes, I do think it's worth it in the end =) The tailfeathers also get some brown wash to dull down the red.

With a bit of a bleached bone (really light) drybrush on the tailfeathers as well as some more brown wash lining the tail was done. The body had a few random feathers picked out with bestial brown before getting some more brown washing. The wings had another brown wash on the tips to darken them up and voila! One more giant eagle!

Here he is on my boring home board...

And here he is fighting Durburz. I deliberately posed him at such a height that the claws are right for goblin grabbing =)

And here are the two Giant Eagles (or Great Eagles if you're that way inclined). Both Gamezone models.

And from a higher vantage point...

 Lastly, while I'm here, I put some of the dwarves in my lightbox then mucked around with some super simple editing (level balance and unsharpen mask).


Here's Boggle the Shieldbearer...

And Etako Ironfist...

If only it didn't show blemishes as well =)

Anyway, there you go for now! One eagle to go!