Update on last week's projects (Tyranids, Arnor) and new stuff

This week was a little better in terms of hobby time. I managed to finish the Tyranids from last week and progressed the Arnor Warriors somewhat. I also got to prime some more miniatures and I got some more paint on some of those.

Pict 371: Pyrovore and Ripperswarms

And here they are: The remaining Tyranids from my new New Year's pledge. The Ripperswarms look great with that many bugs on one base but they are really fiddly to get to all their claws when they are glued down like that...
Let's see what I'll go to next 40k-wise... Right now I'm pretty focused on LotR and D&D miniatures, but I hope to get together with one of my 40k friends to paint and I suppose I'll be getting to more Tyranids by then.

Pict 372: Arnor Warriors (WIP)

These Arnor Warriors are coming along as well. They have all their washes done and I'm now in the process of highlighting the colours back up. The faces are done already and they shouldn't take to much longer.

Pict 373: Giant Spiders (eBob)

And here are some new figures. Well, not entirely new since I already showed them when I had assembled them. Now that the weather was good enough to get some priming done, I also put them on my table to paint. Thankfully they painted up really fast and I very much enjoyed differentiating them.

Pict 374: Noldor Captain

And lastly here is another miniature for my Noldorim. I got him of eBay just this week and I painted him up quickly to use him in my battle company since I'm using the armoured Celeborn as one of my warriors and he doesn't quite fit in with the rest of the company since I introduced some other colours to differentiate the Sindar Celeborn from my Noldorim.

With all those minis painted up, my ratio of painted to new miniatures is barely in the green again! Let's see what I get up to this coming week - as stated above, I'm pretty into the Middle-Earth SBG and D&D and there are some great miniatures in boxes that just wait to get some colour.

A second Pyrovore and more Arnor Warriors

I didn't have to much hobby time this week again, but I made some progress with the Tyranids I had started at the tail end of the last year. And I managed to throw down some colours on my remaining Arnor Warriors, but sadly I didn't finish anything to put on my painted tally.

Pict 369: Tyranids (WIP)

With these Tyranids, I'm getting ever so nearer to completing all of Tyranid backlog. With the state that they are in, only the caprapaces and teeth are missing and I'm looking forward to getting them of my table.

Pict 370: Arnor Warriors (WIP)

And here are my Arnor Warriors. I followed the recipe I tried out the previous week. As you can see, I built all the variations of arms / bodies and as with the test piece, two more have added feathers to denote their status. The one with the two feathers will be the lieutenant for my Battle Company. I'll have to raid the familiy tree of the Atani to give them names.
The Warriors have all had their base colours and now await the washes and highlights. Other than that, I also converted and prepared some more miniatures but I didn't manage to prime them due to bad weather.

Starting the Arnor Battle Company and kreepy Gribblies

Time was at a premium this week and thus I only finished one miniature. But I also prepared some more figures to paint in the coming weeks.

Pict 366: Warrior of Arnor

Pict 367: Warrior of Arnor

The miniature I painted this week is this Warrior of Arnor. He'll be a proof-of-concept to test out my colour scheme. It was a bit difficult to get to grips with the creative freedom for the livery - Tolkien didn't say mutch at all about them and so I was able to come up with my own. I used the established Númenor and Minas Tirith schemes and also used mainly black. To add in a splash of colour I went for a dark red - I really like the combination and use it in many of my armies such as my Noldorim. I experimented with this one as well and tried my hand at the woodstructure on the back of the shield. I like the effect I achived, but the surface should be really smooth - here I had to work on a moldline before adding the lines. The warrior was converted a little bit and got himself a single feather on his helmet to denote that he'll be one of the Sargents of my Battle Company.

Pict 368: Giant Spiders (eBob)

On the modelling front, I built three more Giant Spiders by eBob. Two out of the three went together really well, but the last one was a pain... I broke of five of the legs during posing it on it's rock - one of the legs even broke twice. But with patience, I got there in the end.
They'll see use as Mirkwood Spiders in SBG and I'll hopefully will get to use them with Dungeons and Dragons in the future as well. My group kinde fizzled out, but I'm to blame for that as well as the shortage of time to prepare adventures. But I hope to get back onto that horse as soon as the opportunity presents itself.

Gundabad sends Reinforcements

I made some good progress this week and painted my remainging Gundabad Berserkers as well as the Gundabad Orcs and the Keeper of the Dungeon.

Pict 359: Gundabad Orcs

Pict 360: Gundabad Berserkers

Pict 361: Gundabad Orc Warriors

I'm glad I wrote down what paints I used on my Gundabad Berserkers last year. That way I could refer back to my list this week to match them up. I had already used a similar way to paint the Gundabd Orc and I reapeaded what I had done with these new Orcs.

Pict 362: The Keeper of the Dungeons

Pict 363: The Keeper of the Dungeons

The Keeper was done in a similar way to the other orcs. With his odd bone armour and bear's feet as well as the blood in his beard he had some other colours introduced, but I keept him in line. He looks different than the way GW painted him as well as the version from the film but that way the force looks more cohesive.

Pict 364: Thráin the Broken

Pict 365: Thráin the Broken

Staying in Dol Guldur, I also painted Thráin the Broken. This was a quick one and I might get back to him to try my hand at freehanding some ornaments on parts of his coat. But for now I'm happy with him and look forward to using him in scenarios.