Dr Grant's WIP [Forge World Ogres]

Dr Grant · **Joined:** Fri Aug 03, 2012 1:50 pm **Posts:** 1339

@hannanibal - It is an epic pose, far and away the best of the 3 Lurtz sculpts. It's not the one given away with BGIME though. BGIME gave away the sword and shiled Lurtz with issue 5, the same sculpt that was released with the Fellowship range in 2001. The Amon Hen set had the slightly rarer Lurtz with his bow pointing down, I'm honestly not sure when/where this sculpt was released (I'm sure there's a lot of people on this forum who could answer that very quickly) but it's easily the rarest of the three and normally commands a fair old price on ebay.

So I managed to get everything done in time for the East Grinstead tourney on Saturday - even if I was gluing the static grass onto Lurtz's base at 2:30am Saturday morning!!!!

Here's the finished batch of 12:

and a close-up of each feral sculpt to hopefully give a better idea of how they look:

Finally a close up of Lurtz. I'm really pleased with the way this figure turned out. Painting the eagles and Radagast last month made me buy a whole new selection of browns which varied my choices when painting his clothing, ultimately creating a far subtler colour scheme than the first pass I took at Lurtz 2 years ago, hopefully I've done this amazing sculpt justice:

I'm particularly pleased because around 3pm on Friday Lurtz was still in the state you see in the picture with the crossbowmen above. I managed to finish the ferals and crossbowmen earlier than expected and spent about 2 hours working exclusively on this figure to get him finished before my regular opponent came over the play some practice games around 6pm. I had to leave the gaming table about 4 times to paint different stages of his base but I think it was worth it in the end!

As for how the tourney went, I'm hoping to have my report written up and on the forum in a day or two, for now I'll leave you with this pic of the army I took along.

Next on the painting table? 9 Uruk crossbowmen, I dream of the day this mountain of uruks has been flattened to dust...

Dr Grant · **Joined:** Fri Aug 03, 2012 1:50 pm **Posts:** 1339

After a little more digging I think the model was released in November 2005 as 'Lurtz with bow'. This was the month after the MInes of Moria starter set and Fellowship Journey Book were released and presumably was part of a wave to renew interest in the Fellowship. Not sure what happened to the mini to make it so rare though, again, perhaps one wiser than me can help?

Ukfreddybear · **Posted:** Sun Jun 30, 2013 11:41 pm

I think its probably because he didn't sell well. Unless you had the LotR collectors guide, many didn't even realize that an alternative lurtz was available, and most that did were satisfied with their amon hen version. I think he'd been discontinued by 2008.

Harfoot · **Posted:** Mon Jul 01, 2013 7:37 pm

Great Isengard army Dr. I do like the Lurtz, it's always nice to paint a limited edition figure

Gandlaf the Grey · **Posted:** Tue Jul 02, 2013 4:21 pm

I can appreciate how you feel about the never ending Uruks. In my plans is a Helms Deep diorama that will have maybe 200 Uruks, at least. Ive already bought them but the thought of that mass production would drive me insane.

Ukfreddybear · **Posted:** Tue Jul 02, 2013 4:36 pm

I need to revisit my Uruks. when WotR first came out I batch painted around 150 in just 3 nights. The downside is I only used about 6 different colours so they all need finishing off and hightlighting properly. The irony is I didn't actually use them for the trial game, and I've not played WotR since as I thought it was terrible.

madfrog2000 · **Joined:** Wed Jan 23, 2013 5:07 am **Posts:** 179

150 orcs in 3 days OMG! I need to do that haha iv got like 200 odd!! to paint!

Dr Grant · **Joined:** Fri Aug 03, 2012 1:50 pm **Posts:** 1339

Gandlaf the Grey wrote:

I can appreciate how you feel about the never ending Uruks. In my plans is a Helms Deep diorama that will have maybe 200 Uruks, at least.

To be fair I'm not that far off now, I've only got those figures I cleaned up a few weeks ago to go, probably around 20 more Uruks total. All told that'll give me something like 200 Isengard figures for a 2500 point SBG Isengard army.

Rohan is weak my Lord, and ready to fall.

Work continues apace on the crossbowmen, hopefully post a pic in the next few days.

BillFerny333 · **Posted:** Fri Jul 05, 2013 5:10 pm

Army is looking incredible. I really like the skin tone you used on the feral uruks. Excellent work.

MOTN · **Joined:** Wed Apr 10, 2013 6:05 pm **Posts:** 147

Wow what a great looking army!

Every mini looks consistent with a solid painting technique, and the basing is cool.

Grungehog · **Posted:** Fri Jul 05, 2013 7:04 pm

Is that an all metal army per chance?

Dorthonion · **Posted:** Fri Jul 05, 2013 7:44 pm

Fabulous painting. Those feral uruks look especially good (great sculpts).

king elessar 2615 · **Posted:** Thu Jul 18, 2013 1:30 am

Those eagles are really beautiful models which have been painted wonderfully and have been further elevated with the use of the trees, keep up the good work

Dr Grant · **Joined:** Fri Aug 03, 2012 1:50 pm **Posts:** 1339

Gah, long time since an update, suffice to say I have not been prolific...

Firstly, thanks as always for all the kind comments, glad you guys seem to like the stuff I'm working on.

@BillFerny - Thanks, it's not quite as pink as it looks in those pics but I wanted to paint the skin slightly differently on my elites. All my bog-standard warriors just get a Dark Flesh highlight, the Beserkers get a bright red highlight that's meant to look vaguely bloody and the Ferals get this slightly pinky tone. I think it helps differentiate them on the table whilst maintaining a cohseive appearance to the army. Only frustrating thing is that it's a mix of Dwarf Flesh and Dark Flesh so when you're painting a big batch like this you have to keep mixing up more paint!

@Grungehog - In that picture it is an all metal army, I've got plenty of plastic Warg Riders, warriors and scouts but everything I took to that tournament was metal - I must say I thought It looked nice on the table.

Anyhoo, onto the promised crossbowmen, well, they've taken me 3 weeks in total but they're finally done

They certainly took longer than I'd hoped (at my normal rate a batch like this would take me about 2 weeks) but I can only put that down to things. 1) The weather's been so magnificent here in Blighty that it's hard to justify sitting inside painting when you could be out enjoying the sun 2) I got absolutely no enjoyment whatsoever out of painting these figures

I needed them done to give me the maximum choice at 1000 points but, having painted 11 crossbowmen already, I found this an utterly dull and depressing set of figures to work through. It was definitely an obligation to backlog clearing rather than a desire to get them finished. Ultimately I'm happy with them, they look perfectly fine for bog-standard troops but I'm very much relieved to get them done.

I've started on my next batch already, much more excited about these, in light of this month's 'White' painting challenge I jumped over my final batch of Ferals/Beserkers and got this eclectic group cleaned up:

I must admit, the White challenge was just a nice incentive to skip the elites as after the last few weeks I wasn't keen to slog through more troops, these four should be a much more enjoyable experience. I potentially need Saruman on horse for a tournament at the end of August and Sharky was added in as another potential entry for this month's painting competition. I had Ugluk lying around and, whilst I painted up a version of him about 2 years ago, my Uruk painting style has come on a long way since then and I think I can do better. I'm hoping to paint him to the same style/quality as my new Lurtz above. Finally, the Rider of Rohan has been lying around undercoated for ages, I won him in an ebay bundle deal a while back and he was cleaned up to be painted alongside Eomer back in June but I ran out of time. This just seemed like a good chance to slip him in and get him done, I also think it's handy to have a couple of similar models on the go so you can let the paint dry on 1 whilst moving onto the next so he's also there to help painting Saruman's horse.

I'm genuinely excited to be painting these guys which is a very nice feeling after the last few weeks. However, I'm going on holiday in about a week's time so I doubt I'll get them finished before then, I'll post a WIP pic before I go to show my progress but probably won't have them finished until mid-August, ah well, until then my friends!

P.S. If anyone was interested in seeing how my army got on at the East Grinstead tourney my report is over here:

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=26183

Dr Grant · **Joined:** Fri Aug 03, 2012 1:50 pm **Posts:** 1339

Ha, I guess everyone else was about as excited by my crossbowmen as I was! :-)

Hopefully the next batch'll be slightly more exciting as I've managed to get all 4 of those figures done.

First up the Rider of Rohan. Nothing special here, just a left-over warrior to boost my Eored. Managed to get him finished fairly quick but was still pleased with the result, held him up next to an old ROR I'd done and the painting was far neater. Nice to know I'm making progress! Realised near the end that I'd forgotten to paint his shield, ah well, I'll get that done as and when.

Next up is my new Ugluk, as I mentioned I'd painted him before but thought I could do better and I'm really pleased with how he turned out:

Here's a pick of him next to the version I did about 2 years ago. Hadn't realised how much my painting had come on so it's really nice to see the progress, the colour tones on the new one are so much subtler, really chuffed with him.

And finally the big ones, Sharky and Saruman for the White painting challenge:

Again, I'm really pleased with both of these figures, they're both a lot 'whiter' than my first pass at Saruman (see page 1 of this thread) who, whilst I'm still really pleased with, was very much Saruman the Cream. They were both really fun models to plaint, tons of character in both and they're gorgeous sculpts (is Saruman the character with the best range of sculpts? I think he'd certainly get my vote). As expected though I really struggled with the white (which I suppose is the whole point of the challenge) particularly on the mounted model. I start from a Kommando Khaki basecoat and a brown wash which works for my cream Saruman but I think if you're going to try and work up to 'white' white you need to have the shadows in grey rather than brown, ah well, it's all a learning curve.

Anyhoo, my plan had always been to enter mounted Saruman into the painting challenge but now I'm all confused as I think Sharky's actually painted better. However, Sharky has far less white on the model and so is a worse contender for the challenge maybe?

So, my question to you Dear One Ringers is which model do I enter. The competition closes today so you have about 3 hours to give me your much valued feedback and then I'll make the call just before midnight! Which model is painted better? Which is more appropriate for the White painting challenge and, ultimately, which would you be more likely to give your vote to? I know which I think I should enter, let's see if we agree! My entry is in your hands!

Sharky

Saruman

Thanks chaps! Off on hollday for a week or so now but I'll be back mid-August to start work on Thorin's Company for the August painting challenge - really can't wait to get to grips with those gorgeous figures, God knows which one I'll enter though!

ElfLover · **Posted:** Wed Jul 31, 2013 9:03 pm

Because of the people saying they'd be swayed by the most white used and because they're both evenly painted I'd say go with Saruman

crixalis · **Joined:** Wed Mar 13, 2013 12:45 pm **Posts:** 170

I think that Sharky may be the marginally better painted (though both are great), but Saruman might be a better pick for the competition due to the extra white

I really love the dirt on the bottom of their coats, nice touch. Good luck whichever one you go for.

SuicidalMarsbar · **Joined:** Sun Apr 24, 2011 1:14 am **Posts:** 1712

Great job on all of them, can't wait to demolish them in 4 weeks

xxx

Dr Grant · **Joined:** Fri Aug 03, 2012 1:50 pm **Posts:** 1339

Thanks for the tips guys, everyone on here said Saruman, everyone at hone said Sharky. I've decided to go with Saruman for the reasons you suggest, in doing so valuing the opinions of The One Ringers over the opinion of my wife - always dangerous!

Thanks for the comments guys, lets see how the White Wizard gets on!

Crucium Giger · **Posted:** Thu Aug 01, 2013 11:21 am

Lovely stuff, really like the paint job on Sharkey.

Dr Grant's WIP [Forge World Ogres]

Who is online