Black Pyramid Grey

Well, thanks to some botched dentistry I've been flat on my back having had two procedures in one day culminating in a tooth removal. So the painting has been non-existant, as you may have noticed from the lack of updates.

Today I'm off the heavy pain killers so did some nice gentle painting =)

Here's how it was last week after a spraypaint:

I bought a very cheap tube of black and another of white for this job as well as a couple of large brushes. All together probably not even $10 worth of supplies.

Mixing the black and white to grey and doing a heavy drybrush resulted in this:

Another big squirt of white to the mix for a medium drybrush and then the rest of the white in for the final highlight drybrush and here's how it is at the moment:

Pretty happy with it really, quite quick and easy to do. Now I'm deciding whether or not to do a black wash along the brick lines (or over the whole thing) to further differentiate them.

Will make up my mind tonight and either call it finished or do a wash tomorrow.

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!

Incy Wincy Spider

Well, my giant spider didn't take a giant amount of effort, thank goodness! Maybe it's just after eagles and trolls anything else seems easy!

I did a search for black spider on google, then saw one or two with yellow markings I particularly liked so did a search for black and yellow spider. 


A few pictures I liked sat on my computer monitor as I painted it up.


Anyway, super simple, chaos black with a codex grey drybrush followed with a black wash then a gloss coat on the non-furry bits. The yellow was just Iyanden darksun, golden yellow then a thin stripe of bad moon yellow. Don't know what their new names are sorry!


In no particular order are the, um, rear end of the spider...

What you see from the other side...

The top of the spider...

And a front-on view as you're about to get munched by a large dog sized spider...

As always, the lighting is terrible, I'll try to get some shots on the board properly at my brother's house sometime for you.


So now I have a nest of spiders! In the old rules they were 25 points each, so four gave me an even 100. Now that they're only 20 points each I just HAD to get one more =)

All I need to do now is get the new Ashrak (or whatever he's called) that can upgrade the spiders to super poisonous!

Buhrdur Part 5

Well, although I didn't spend lots of time on him today, it was all nice finishing touch type bits, so that was fun =)


He's complete now. I know I could probably do more, but staying with my philosophy of only using paint from the pot etc, he's pretty much finished.


I'll probably do a few touch-ups when I get a base for him (just ordered one today from GW, so won't be long). Also ordered some bases for my two new eagles =)


Anyhow, I'll try to take him over to my Brother's this week for photos on a proper board.


Here he is in all his angry furiousness. Again, the photo is taken close to a big white bulb, so it's way more washed out than it should be. Hopefully the photos on the battle board will be better!

Back view...

Left side.

Right side...

Close-up. In case you'd been wondering about the odd colours, from the get-go I'd decided I wanted to do a little freehand on him. Since he's got the same defence as a normal cave-troll I figured the leather patches couldn't be very effective as armour. So instead he's stitched in some mementos of previous encounters. On this side you can see a red eye in the style of a Harad army (I'm sure he'll face them at some stage hehe) and a bit of banner from one of the Rohan's horselords.

Totally washed out by the light is one of the white tree emblems you see on Minas Tirith troops.

And a cropped version of the top photo, again, pretend it's not quite so washed out and remember that even from a short distance the colours blend together better!

So there you go, that'll be it for now, I'll update in a few days or a week or whenever I get the base in the mail, glued and painted =)


Now I just need some more wargs and to paint my spider to get a 700 point army of all monsters - muhahahaha!

Buhrdur Part 4

Well, quick post because it's past my bedtime!


Firstly this morning I gave him a good wash...

Then during a son-nap and after he went to bed I did a layer of highlights...

Slightly fuzzy shot, sorry!

Anyway, you get the idea I hope! More progress tomorrow hopefully, though he's looking pretty good to me!

Buhrdur Part 3

On this Easter 2012, may the Lord God richly bless you today as he did all those years ago in sending Jesus for us all.


I got a little more painting done, nothing much except painting the layers that need two or three coats to fully block in.

Pretty much everything got a second coat except for the grey fur back, scorched brown straps and base.

Not much difference here except I've neatened up some colour splashes and Boltgun metalled over the Tin Bitz.

So that's the full first coat done (usually takes me the most time) next it's washes (super fast) and then... well I guess I'll take one step at a time!