2nd Age Elves...an Update

Well, its been a while since my last post, but I have not been idle. Just been doing a lot of painting and other things, including a new computer. Here we go, with some 2nd age elves.

First an update on the repaints. I have been slowly working through these elves as previously mentioned.

Up next, I finished the sculpting on some of the conversions I purchased.

 

And the finished product on all three:

 

 

Up next is one of my conversions from Mr. UKFreddyBear over at Majestic Bear Miniatures. I was really happy with the conversion work (converted from an archer) and I can only hope the paint work did it justice. Took me probably 9 hours to paint and base this guy. The runes at the base of the cloak say "House of Elrond"

 

 

 

The inspiration for the shield came from the extras on the FOTR DVD. While discussing the museum-like nature of Elrond's house and some of the pieces therein.

 

 



Elves of the Last Alliance

It has been all about elves recently. I have been gradually going through the first miniatures I ever painted and repainting these guys. I remember when I got my first set in 2002. I saw the set at the store and remember going back and forth as to whether or not I should buy them as they seemed so small. I had a desk set up in the basement and I would paint there using a lot of Testors gloss enamel paints for aircraft. Back then I was just happy to have the right colored paint on the right spots. So below is a side-by-side of circa 2002 painting and 2013 painting.

 

I hope that its obvious that the mini on the left is the old one! To date I repainted three of the original 16 elves.

 

Next up, a fellow One-ringer was kind enough to sell me his elf conversions, 20 elves in all.

 

 

Most need a bit of sculpting before they will make it to the paint station, but one was in good enough condition to be painted after a bit of filing and sanding.

 

Next is to start my trials at sculpting. I am still waiting on my wedge and cone clay shapers to arrive in the mail. Between tutorials on the internets, and conversations and loads of advice from UKFreddyBear, hopefully I can pull off some decent work.



Mordor Orc Captain 2

The other Mordor orc captain in the scavenged Gondor armor.  The shield was interesting. The GW picture of it is rather inconclusive as to if it is wood or metal. I used DMS's as a guide and decided to go with wood. However, there was no woodgrain texture that stood out well on the model, so all those lines are done freehand. Took forever!

Mordor Orc Captain

My latest addition to the collection. I stumbled on to an excellent lava tutorial on Chest of Colors. I really liked the results and I wanted to have a crack at it. So I painted up this orc captain and mounted him onto a base of cooling lava. More pictures on the Mordor page.

Rohan Banner Bearer

I worked on this guy through out the week. Finally got around to posting some pictures of him. A lot of fun to paint. I think I will put him up on CMON.

More pictures on the Rohan page. Comments always welcome!

Ringwraith with lava base

Below is another conversion from Majestic Bear Miniatures. You may have seen a very similar wraith on the "Articles" page of his website. This wraith was painted up by one Mr. Dead Marsh Spectre. I thought the pose and the base were awesome, and I had been wanting to try my hand at creating lava and also working on painting light reflections on some of my miniatures. This was my first attempt. I am pretty pleased with the way it turned out, but I also see some room for improvement. At any rate, many thanks to Dave for the excellent conversion, and to Kev for originally coming up with such an inspiring base.

As always more views can be found on the MBM page, and also on the Cirith Ungol page.

 

Armored Glorfindel

Last but not least, my armored Glorfindel model. I am sending one of these off to UKFreddyBear for a conversion, and thought that I should paint up the original version. It just so happens that this months painting competition on the One-Ring is the Elven Havens. So I thought I would enter it and see what happens. It is a beautiful model, and was a lot of fun to paint. Its subtle, because I had to mud up the cloak, but there is also some freehand gold on the bottom of the outside of the cloak. I tried something new with the metallic on this one. I actually mixed in some plain colors with the metallic to get highlights into the chainmail and the gold. I think it helped make the gold look more shiny! I opted for a 40mm base so I could do a little more with it. The rock was just screaming to have a mini standing on it, but its way to big for a 28mm base (the molds are designed to go with O gauge train sets)