Scenery: Arcane Ruins and a start on the Garden of Morr

These past weeks I took my resolutions to heart and painted more scenery pieces: the Arcane Ruins I had started and the statue from the Garden of Morr kit. Other than that, I also painted two more Highelves and a few more bits.

Pict 981: Korhil and Chracian Noble

Pict 982: Arcane Ruins

Pict 983: Arcane Ruins

First up, here are the Arcane Ruins I showed in my last post. It was great fun to put the different colours onto the stone but the piece really came to life with the different flocks.

Pict 984: Garden of Morr Statue

Since the Arcane Ruins were so much fun and a great success, I also painted this Statue from the Garden of Morr / Sigmarite Mausoleum kit. I added a base and some more flagstones made from plastic card to blend it in some more with the other terrain pieces. I also scraped of the sculpted on foliage and flowers. They are neat details but they don't fit the other flocks I put on.

Pict 985: Arcanite Markers

Another small project were these Crystalfield bases made by Tabletop Art. I had them in mind to use as objective markers for ArcWorlde when I read the rulebook. Oftentimes in this narrative system you will find yourself fighting over scraps of Arcanite, a magical crystal and these bases fit the bill perfectly.

Pict 986: Korhil and Chracian Noble

Pict 987: Korhil and Chracian Noble

Pict 988: Korhil and Chracian Noble

And here are two more High Elves. Korhil Lionmane, Captain of the White Lions and a fitting Noble from Chrace armed with and axe, a shield and a lion pelt. These white lion pelts troubled me - at first I tried to shade them with Seraphim Sepia but that made them look to dirty even when highlighted. Now they simply use a mix of Steel Legion Drab and Screaming Skull without any washes. And one more thing might be the Noble's shield - I want to put on some heraldry or an elven rune but for now I was not able to decide on any device.

Pict 989: Unithorn and Garden of Morr (WIP)

With the Arcane Ruins and the Statue, I almost made good on one of my New Years resolutions. I prepared the first of the Garden of Morr mausoleums, once again adding a base. And to the left here stands another ArcWorlde miniature: the Unithorn, a bigger summoned monster of the Wild Elves line.

Testing Colours for ArcWorlde Wild Elves

This first week of the year I still had a bit more time to paint and got started on my resolutions with a set of Arcane Ruins. I also tried out the colours for my Wild Elves and their summoned creatures.

Pict 976: Wild Elven Warrior, Woodfiend and Lichenhawk

Pict 977: ArcWorlde Wild Elven Warrior with Bow

I really had great fun choosing the colours and painting this model. At first I tried a lighter skintone but the went for a darker grey anyways. The red war paint is a bit held back because I was afraid to ruin the model and I did not want to go over all of my nicely painted skin. But other models from the line, especially commanders and mages will propably be covered in more warpaint. After painting I also wrote up my recipe so that I wont forget how I did the model.

Pict 978: Woodfiend and Lichenhawk

The Woodfiend was the first of the summoned units I painted and it was surprisingly easy to paint. I had not experimented with a glow from the deeper parts of a miniature before. Glazing different reds went pretty well however! The Lichenhawk was done following the same steps and I'm looking forward to replicating the scheme on the bigger monsters as well.

Pict 979: Arcane Ruins

I also painted this part of a set of Arcane Ruins. I like the beige sandstone but I could have gone a little lighter with the streaking of the washes. When painting the main part of the ruins, I might just try and only tint the colour of the stone instead. I bought the set of scenery years ago and it sat primed on my shelf for almost as long. So painting this is a big win! And again, I made a note of my recipe for this ruin - I will use a similar way to paint other GW terrain as well and who knows when I will get to that...

Pict 980: Arcane Ruins (WIP)

Speaking of Arcane Ruins, here is a WIP of the rest of the set. As for now it has pretty much only had a few layers of Steel Legion Drab. This took quite some time considering the size of the kit. The next step will be drybrushing several additional layers but after that, it will be sone quite soon!

The Butterfly's Tally 2020

As is customary, in this first post of the year, I take a look back at what I did last year and make resolutions for the new one.

Pict 971: Uruk-Hai Army

Hobby Tally 2020

If you want to have a look at the tallies of the past: The Tally 2017, The Tally 2018, The Tally 2019

And these were my resolutions for 2020:

• Paint all of my Infinity models
• Paint the Uruk-Hai army to a playable level of 600 points
• Paint 25 miniatures for D&D, concentrating on the Critical Role miniatures
• And of course paint more models than buying them...

Pict 972: Sekban Naval Unit

Quite obviously I did not manage to paint all of my Infinity miniatures. In fact I bought some more and only painted the five Sekban in June. Since I played almost no games of Infinity, I lacked the motivation to do more, even with the release of a new edition of the game.

Pict 973: Uruk-Hai Army

Pict 974: Lutz and Friends

The Uruk-Hai however are quite a different story! The same week I finished the Sekban, I also put the finishing touches on a phalanx of Uruk-Hai Warriors. But the stand out for this project will have to be my conversion of Mauhur. All in all, I painted about 1850 points. Great sucess!

Pict 975: D&D Miniatures

Almost all of my miniatures could be used in D&D, but some of them are specifically to play RPGs. I'll have to add in the Shadow Deep miniatures as well as Valten and Bertrand's Bowmen of Bergerac to reach the 25 I wanted to do. But I will still count this resolution a sucess even if I did not paint that many CR miniatures. My highlight here has to be the Hill Giant - I'd venture to say he's my best painted miniature, barring maybe the Unicorn from the end of 2019.

And lastly, as you can see with a look at the Tally to the left, I once again failed to buy less miniatures than paint them. I did however sell quite a few as well and thus improved my ratio of painted to unpainted miniatures nontheless. And 283 painted models in total is also quite an impressive number!

Last year, I also decided to swich my postings to every other week. This shedule worked better with my life outside the hobby and I pretty much kept all of the dates. I count this as a sucess as well and will stick to this shedule in 2021.

Hobby resolutions for 2021

Seeing as I could not quite keep my resolutions this past year, I think I may have been overzealous especially with the goal to paint all of my Infinity miniatures. So for 2021, I will try and keep it simple: As per usual I want to paint more miniatures than buying new ones. Other than that I will only add one more goal. I want to paint a 4x4 gaming board and at least 4 pieces of terrain to play smaller skirmish games on.