Dr Grant's WIP [Forge World Ogres]

Phantom_Lord · **Posted:** Mon Feb 17, 2014 7:23 pm

Nice flowers!

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

Cheers guys, update time!

So I've been working away on my entry for this month's warband challenge (all Hero Desolation of Smaug themed warband) and just about got things finished. Here's the warband shot alongside the two new models.

I really enjoyed painting both of these guys, really nice models with a lot of character and detail. Gandalf was the first Hero I painted for SBG when I got back into the hobby 3 years ago and I think it shows, I've been meaning to paint a new version of him for ages but he just kept getting pushed down the painting queue. I think the Rivendell pose is my favourite Gandalf sculpt so it's great to finally get him painted up as part of Thorin's Company. And Bofur finally got painted!

Yep, 7 months after I started painting the company (estimating they would take me 6 weeks) I've finally finished them - HUZAAH! It's been a long, slow process but I'm really pleased with how they look as a group, I think some of them are amongst the best models I've painted so I'm glad I devoted this much time to them.

A few people have been asking for a group shot for a few months now and I'm finally able to provide! So here they are, Thorin's Compnay in all their glory!

Next up I'm trying to get Azog on foot and the White Warg dismounted done for use in my Hobbit scenarios. Here's a WIP of where Azog is at the moment, still lots of work to do but he's coming along

After Azog's done I might try and finish Yazneg and Fimbul on foot who were banished to the end of the painting queue about 4 months ago in a base coated and shaded state! After that (or before that depending on how I'm feeling) I'll then be getting stuck into some new Hobbit Warriors. Remarkably it's been 7 months since I painted a Warrior! I've got a lot of Heroes done that I'm really happy with but my number of painted figures in the last 7 months has been very low. I'm hoping to change that soon by launching into some Mirkwood Rangers, Laketown Guard and Grimhammers. Really looking forward to it to be honest, just got to remember how to bulk paint again...

Cheers as always!

Crucium Giger · **Posted:** Fri Feb 28, 2014 12:08 pm

Some lovely work on show, love Gandalf's blue hat and Bard in particular

Sticky Fingersss · **Joined:** Sat Oct 09, 2010 11:20 am **Posts:** 1776

Seeing wonderful work like this really makes me want to pick up the paintbrush again!

Harfoot · **Posted:** Tue Mar 04, 2014 10:19 am

Great work good Doctor, Gandalf is particularly inspiring. Look forward to seeing you Elfs and Grimhammers. The Grimhammers dont take long to paint and look really nice when done

samwise1688 · **Joined:** Fri Dec 13, 2013 10:56 am **Posts:** 9

great work here, bard looks awsome

Frogmortonjustice65 · **Joined:** Sat Jun 22, 2013 10:21 pm **Posts:** 129

would love to see a close-up of the company, particularly that Bilbo sculpt. Looks very good, you should be proud!

Gandlaf the Grey · **Posted:** Sun Mar 09, 2014 8:02 pm

Gandalf is my favourite, but then again, it would be...

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

Thanks for all the kind words guys - it really is very much appreciated!

@ Gandlaf - Thanks, I agree, he's so much better than my first attempt at Gandalf and I was keen to spend a lot of time on him to get him right - glad it seems to have paid off!

@ Frogmorton - Thanks buddy! Hah, people have been saying for months they wanted a group shot and now I put one up people want close ups! :-)

If you go back through the thread you should be able to find close ups of all the dwarves as I did them, they start on page 5 and Bilbo's on page 6 - enjoy!

Bad week for painting for me, got very little done, just about to set up the paint station again and try and make some progress with Azog. Hopefully have finished pics up this week.

Cheers guys!

Sithious · **Posted:** Mon Mar 10, 2014 6:31 pm

looks great. It is awesome when you can reach a milestone like Thorin's company complete. I don't think I will ever be able to say that. Everything looks great though. Hope you get more done this week.

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

WOW! Over a month since I've uploaded any new pictures, sorry chaps! On the plus side, I've not been idle, big update time!

@Sithious - thanks for the kind words, there's no doubt it's hard work, if you're spending time on them like I was then it's hard to keep yourself motivated but just try and take joy in each member of the company as you go and you'll get there, they really are stunning models and they look great as a group!

So I've had a really good hobby month, lots of painting (by my standards), lots of converting and a couple of tournaments. Unfortunately, for my WIP thread, I saved all the basing to be done at the same time so I didn't really have a lot to show.

Still, onto the good stuff! First up, I finished Azog on foot

Overall I'm pretty happy with him, make no mistake I was painting him more out of necessity than desire. I love the mounted Aozg model and wanted to get this one done as a dismount. I think he looks OK but I struggled with his skin and scars more than I did with the mounted version. Still overall I'm pretty pleased and it's another model down!

Next up - Mirkwood Rangers! My big plan for tournaments this year is to be using Battle of Five Armies themed lists made from the new Hobbit range. I started off going to the Mansfield tournament with an all Hero BOFA list but things would only really get going once I painted some troops and I've finally been able to get stuck in. I worked out that before I did these guys I hadn't actually painted any warriors in 7 months! I've been working relentlessly on loads and loads of Hero models which has been great for my collection but not so good for my backlog reduction. With all that in mind it was great to get stuck in to some warriors again and try and remember how to batch paint! Here're the results:

I have to say I'm really pleased with how these guys turned out, I loved the models before I started but painting them just made me fall in love with them even more, they're absolutely stunning models full of character and they were a joy to paint. I must admit I still went slower on them than I did on my Rohan/Isengard/Moria stuff in the past, they were just too nice to rush through and I ended up spending a fair bit of time on them and adding more highlights than I would normally add to standard warriors. All in all they took me about 3 weeks (painted in 2 batches of 5) but I think they were well worth the extra time and effort. I think they've set the standard for my painting this year and I think I'll be doing the same with my dwarves and Laktowners when I get to them. The models are expensive these days and I think I'd just rather spend a little bit more time on them so I'm really happy rather than rush them to get more painted models on the table and regret it later.

So, alongside painting the rangers (when I needed a break from painting green!) I was working on some dwarf conversions. I love the Grimhammer models and wasn't at all keen on the rag-tag militia look of the Warriors of Erebor sprue, to me the WOE sprue represents the dwarves fleeing the mountain in disarray and I wanted my BOFA dwarves (which will also later form the core of my Army of Thror force) to have a far more uniform approach as they do at the battle of Azanulzibar in AUJ. So, heavily inspired by Southern Dunedain's fantastic conversions, I set to a couple of boxes of Grimhammers with a knife, hobby drill and superglue in an effort to convert them into Warriors of Erebor. At this stage I need to say a MASSIVE thanks to Mertaal for the Warriors of Erebor shields which really finished off the conversions - top, top bloke and I'm VERY grateful! :yay:

Again, they took a while (I think each conversion took about half an hour) but I think the effort was well worth it and I'm really happy with the results:

So, having finished the Rangers I've started getting stuck into these dwarves and 'm pretty happy with how they're coming along. I'm putting the same level of effort into these as I did the Rangers and have just finished highlighting the metal last night. When you bear in mind that they're nearly ALL metal you might have an idea of how long that took! I think I spent about 25 mins per dwarf doing the metal so I was essentially paining Leadbelcher for 5 hours last night!

Still, that's done now and on the plus side I'm really pleased with how they're looking and there's not too much more to do on them, basically just belts, robes and beards. I'm planning on taking them to the Desolation of Stockport tournament next weekend so I should hopefully finish them this week and have some pictures up before the weekend!

Really enjoying painting at the mo, variety is the spice of life! Thanks as always guys and I promise it won't be so long before the next update!

Gandlaf the Grey · **Posted:** Sat Apr 05, 2014 5:27 pm

As updates go this is a fairly big one to say the least.
Nice work on the rangers and the dwarves are also looking good. Have you considered painting in batches of 3 ? It would break up the boredom of one colour.

SouthernDunedain · **Posted:** Sun Apr 06, 2014 9:23 am

mate these are just stunning! cannot wait to see them in the flesh...your painting just gets better and better!

Éomund · **Posted:** Mon Apr 07, 2014 5:14 pm

The grimhammers look very nice!!
where did you get these axes from? and the spears?

Crucium Giger · **Posted:** Wed Apr 09, 2014 11:28 am

The Dwarves look great, looking forward to seeing them with a lick of paint on (especially after seeing those rangers which are top notch).

Harfoot · **Posted:** Thu Apr 10, 2014 3:46 pm

The Dwarfs wont take long to paint DrG, in my experience. Just about to start the Mirkwood Rangers, have 2 weeks to get them ready for a game. Hope they turn out as well as yours. You say yours took 3 weeks, i tend to paint for 3 hours every night and 12 hours over a weekend, what about you?

Sithious · **Posted:** Thu Apr 10, 2014 7:52 pm

The color harmony on those elves is awesome, the green with a hint of turquoise, playing off the warm brown while complimenting the blue, just brilliant.

Obviously the conversions are great, Always worth effort to convert and unify an army.

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

Thanks for all the great feedback guys, it really is very much appreciated, particularly when coming from great painters like yourselves.

@Gandlaf - Yeah i've experimented with various batch sizes, I used to paint in 10s or 12s to get things done quickly but now I'm spending more time on the basic warriors I've reduced it. I painted the Rangers in 2 batches of 5 which worked well but when it came to the dwarves I was really up against it time-wise so had to get them all done in one batch. The trick for me is striking the balance between having too many to keep your sanity and too few to make a batch paint worth-while, I think doing batches of 3 would frustrate me as (even though they'd be done quicker) as each time I finished a batch I would have less to show for it. 10 was certainly too many for my liking this time round, I stuck with it to get them ready for the weekend but I'll definitely be going back to 5s or 6s next time round.

@Eomund - the spears I got from ebay, they're just brass rods with the heads flattened into points, I'm not sure what company they were from but if you search ebay for '28mm wargaming spears' you should find a good few hits. The axes are from the Ebob weapons pack - really good value.

@Harfoot - My painting time really varies based on real life to be honest. I can normally guarantee about an hour per evening, often stretching that to two. Weekends are completely variable, last weekend my wife was away on a Hen weekend and I spent about 12 hours across the weekend painting. next weekend I'll be back at my folk for Easter so I'll get none done. As an average I probably paint for two hours on Saturday and Sunday for an avarge total of about 10 hours a week if I'm lucky. I tend to step it up a bit in the run-up to tournaments (the wife's very understanding!) but it really is incredibly varied.

Well, I'm delighted to say that, for the first time in ages, my next update came in on time! I got the grass glued down on my Warriors of Erebor conversion bases in the early hours of this morning and was able to snap some pics! I'm really happy with how these came out, I spent a lot of time on them so they'd look good alongside the Rangers and I'm really pleased with the results. Like the elves, they were something very different for me, I'd not painted 'Good' armour (i.e. shiny and well kept rather than rusted and dirty) in a very long time and was hesitant about them being too shiny. I got off to a good start by following one of Garfy's awesome tutorials (link at the bottom of the post) for the armour before heading off in my own direction for the robes, beards, weapons etc. I knew I wanted the robes to be blue for a long time, I think the standard GW scheme just looks too boring and monotone for my tastes; Thror is dressed in blue and Thoirn wears blue and has a sky blue hood in the book so I thought blue would be a nice, strong colour to use for the beginnings of my dwarf army. I originally envisioned them as being a dark blue (how frustrating is it that with all their new colours GW don't make a navy blue?!?!?) but ended up highlighting lighter and lighter until I reached the light blue which you can see in the models which I really liked.

I snapped a lot of pictures to show off both the paint jobs and the conversions, I figured that no-one on The One Ring has ever grumbled about too many pictures of models! :-)

Hope you like!

All in all, they were yet another set of models from the Hobbit range that were an absolute joy to paint and by painting 10 of them, my total painted models for the year jumped up fairly significantly. Somewhat bizarrely, I worked out that thanks to me spending so long on Heroes recently, in the last 3 weeks I've painted more models than I had in the previous 7 months! Just the way it goes sometimes I suppose but it's really great to be seeing a significant new force developing on my painting table - it's another step towards my Battle of Five Armies force at least!

Hope you all enjoy the pics, I'll be packing them up in a few hours to take them to the Desolation of Stockport for the weekend and see how they perform on the tabletop.

Next up - Laketown Guard!

Garfy's tutorial that I followed for the armour:
http://taleofpainters.blogspot.co.uk/20 ... -grim.html

Éomund · **Posted:** Fri Apr 11, 2014 3:28 pm

wow, i really like these!! really cool models and you made them even better!!

orc-archer · **Posted:** Fri Apr 11, 2014 7:20 pm

These dwarves rock! Brilliant conversions!

Dr Grant's WIP [Forge World Ogres]

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