Something's breaking through the Trees!

I had this particular Dragon standing on the back of my desk for some years now and with the Carmine Dragon screaming to be painted, I decided I really should finish the green one first.

Pict 445: Breaking through the Trees

Pict 446: Forest Dragon

Pict 447: Forest Dragon

Pict 448: Forest Dragon

Pict 449: Forest Dragon (Head)

It wasn't that much work to get him finished, but I never got around to it. Since he's got very large flat areas he was one of the first miniatures I tried my hand at wet-blending. The result wasn't the greatest which discouraged me at the time. Now, more than four years later, I only had to higlight the greens and get to the details like the horns and teeth.I'm pretty happy with the result as it stands but of course the blends could be better in some places. Thankfully the Carmine Dragon has more sculpted detail so that the big surfaces are broken up and will be easier to paint.
The miniature will most likely see play as an Adult Green Dragon in D&D, but if I'm ever able to play a Storm of Magic game I'll be happy to field him. Originally I had planned to do a conversion of Naestra and Arahan to ride the beast but right now I like the classic model for them better.

Pict 450: Gnoll Warrior

Pict 451: Gnoll Warrior

Pict 452: Gnoll Warrior

Pict 453: Gnoll Warrior

The second figure I painted this week is this Gnoll Warrior. He's the last piece of my Illithid Raiding Party set. The cast is quite detailed but in some spaces I had to resculpt parts after the fragile pieces had come loose when washing the moldrelease of. I used the picture in the 5th edition Monster Manual as a guideline - it's virtually the same Gnoll - and I liked how they introduced the red cloth as a splash of colour. I then added some verdigris to the bronze in order to contrast the red.

The Butterfly's Tally 2017

This post will be a longer one than the usual sunday's post as I'll be looking at not only what I got done this week but the entire year

Pict 318: Board of Miniatures

Pict 319: Board of Miniatures

As you can see with a glance at the tags on the right side of this text, 2017 was rather producitve. The focus of my painting was with the Middle Earth SBG, painting an army of Iron Hills Dwarves, one of Rivendell and getting a good start with the Hunter Orcs. Other than those, I also painted a few more Heroes and a host of Rohan Warriors.

Pict 320: Board of Miniatures

But I didn't paint stuff for the SBG alone - I also (re)painted some of my Asrai. But I added way more to that list early on in the year by having bought a lot of earlier edition Woodelves.
As you can see in the first picture of this post, the fantasy department of my miniatures grew with a few miniatures intended for D&D. Sadly I did't get to use them all, but it's nice to have them when preparing the adventures.

Pict 321: Zoanthropes

Pict 322: Zoanthropes

Pict 323: Tyrant Guard

Pict 324: Tyrant Guard

Pict 325: Sporemines

I also made progress with my Warhammer 40k backlog (especially with the Tyranid painting spree of the last few weeks). But I also painted a Chaplain Dreadnought for my Flesh Tearers and a whole army of Death Guard. As you can see, this week I added two Zoanthropes, a Tyrant Guard and some Sporemines and with that my total tally of painted miniatures is 317. I'm happy with that number even tough it's not quite a mini a day. But it is a new record for me!
Comparing this tally to 2016's - the ratio of painted miniatures to the ones I bought is better, but I didn't manage to paint more than buying. That means I'll have to do better next year - one resolution sorted! Other than that, I want to try and reduce the backlog of miniatures not only by painting them but also by selling projects that will never get done. I hope to be able to take inventory during the first week of the year, but we'll see how much time I'll have.

Pict 326: Tyranids (WIP)

Pict 327: The White Council at Dol Guldur (WIP)

These work in progress pictures will be the first things I'll paint in 2018: I do want to get some more Tyranids done to advance this project a bit. After that I do want to mop up some of this years projects, namely the Iron Hills Dwarfes (with the chariot and the crossbows) and the Hunter Orcs (including Hunter Orcs, Hunter Orcs on Fell Wargs and the Keeper of the Dungeons). Staying in Middle Earth I want to finish up the Balin's Tomb diorama of the Fellowship and a diorama of the White Council in Dol Guldur. And since GW released the Battle Companies book for the Middle Earth SBG I'm planning a Shire force as well - this will be a colourfull and well converted band to take on the challanges of The Quest to Fornost. Once the evil campaign is published in White Dwarf, I'll have to take another look at the evil companies and get to work on one of those as well.

Progress with the Wood Elves and the Rohirrim

This week I finished the Nymphe and the Giant Eagle I showed last week. Other than that I made some headway with the Rohirrim foot troops and I busted out the Green Stuff to convert myself a White Warg in case Azog gets dismounted.

Pict 271: Nymphe

Pict 272: Nymphe

As ever: first up is the aforementioned Nymphe. I very much enjoyed painting this miniatrue, trying to use a birch as reference. I live near some trees of the sourcematerial and took the time to look at them for a bit. The Nymphe will not match any of my units of Dryads but they will have be redone anyway. 

Pict 273: Giant Eagle

Pict 274: Giant Eagle

Next up is another Ally for my Asrai: a Giant Eagle. I used pictures of verraux's eagles as reference for this miniature because I wanted it to be darker than the ones you usually see. The pattern on the white parts of the wings looks rather striking but it doesn't really resemble the verraux's eagle. I like it nevertheless and I learned quite a bit since I hadn't painted feathers for quite some time.

Pict 275: Rohan Warriors (WIP)

Here is the next picture of the Rohan Warriors I showed last week. I finished the basic colours and gave everything a wash of Agrax Earthshade so that I will be able to get to the highlighting within the next days.

Pict 276: The White Warg (WIP)

Lastly here's a conversion for the White Warg I started during this week. I simply used a Wild Warg Chieftain and gave it the head of a Fell Warg. I elongated the throat a bit with piece of wire and filled the resulting gap with Green Stuff. I surprised myself with the structrue of the fur I managed and I do look forward to painting this one in the coming week as well!

Edward Scissorhands for the Death Guard

This week the Real Life took over so that there is not too much progress. I only managed to finish painting one lonely miniature I baptised Edward Scissorhands!

Pict 267: Death Guard Chaos Lord

Pict 268: Death Guard Chaos Lord

 This miniature is originally one of the Chaos Chosen from the Dark Vengece box. I really liked it when it was released and got it as th only one of the Chaos part of the box. This week I decided to repaint it for my new Death Guard army. I delibered how to use it with the Codex and only found two ways: Either use it as a proxy Possed Marine or a Chaos Lord. I finally decided to go with the Chaos Lord because the miniature has an appropriate amount of detail and I don't own any other Posessed so that a single one wouldn't be that usefull.
Only thing missing is the basing - I ran out of Agrellan Badland when I finished the Plague Marines. I wanted to show the Lord nevertheless but I'll have to swing by my FLGS and pick up some paints.

Pict 269: Nymphe (WIP)

Pict 270: Giant Eagle (WIP)

Next up are two WIPs for my Wood Elves army. I had a spare Dryad lying about and converted her with some mor branches out the back to use her as a Nymphe. I wanted to try and go with a birch theme for this one since I never had done it before. I'm not quite happy yet but luckily I'm not done yet! The Giant Eagle is also quite far along - the feathers are almost done I only want to get a bit more of a brown pattern on the white parts and then I can finish up the details such as the beak and the claws.

More Asrai and Noldorim

I finally tackled on of those projects that stood around half-finished! Besides two more Wardancers, I got around to paint some Highelves for the Hobbit SBG. Other than that I started batch-painting some Rohirrim to bolster my mounted forces with some footmen.

Pict 263: Shadowdancer, Shadow Coil

Pict 264: Shadowdancer, Shadow Coil

Since I painted the unit of Wardances some weeks back I have been eying these miniatures. Since they are only two miniatures, the awesome poses were able to convince me to slip them into the painting queue. With the Shadow Coil done I now painted all the mail order exclusive miniatures - I find they break up a normal unit of wardancers nicely and are unique enough to be counted as Champions or even Shadowdancers.

Pict 265: Noldorim

These miniatures are part of a 400 point Highelf army that I worked on for about two years. I built the force around the two heroes Elrond and Lindir, both on foot in Heavy Armour. I very much love the idea of a Nature's Wrath every turn - but to get that the dice have to play along... For the colour scheme I took notes from the Rivendell Knights - I'd like to have a consistent force and thus my Highelfs represent the Noldorim of the Third Age.
With this project completed I also surpassed my painting tally of last year! So anything I paint will add to my new record even if I wont be able to reach my lofty goal of painting up more than I buy.

Pict 266: Rohan Warriors (WIP)

Finally here's a WIP picture of the next big project: foot slogging Rohan. This army relies on throwing spears to soften up the opponent. I'm looking forward to using this one in games as well!

More dancing Asrai and finally finished the Ogres

So this week was productive in terms of numers of painted miniatures and I'm really happy to have surpassed 200. Not to many more and I'll surpass last year's tally.

Pict 256: Wardancers

Pict 257: Wardancers

First up: Here are the Wardancers I started last week. I just finished them right now and the basing materials are still drying. I really had a great time painting them and once the first few highlights were down they came together rather quickly. I tried out some different shapes with the freehands, but didn't go to crazy. There are still about ten more Wardancers somewhere in a box but I might switch it up with the Asrai... I had started with the Warhawk Riders but I plucked them from their mounts again to ad some more flowing capes.

Pict 258: Gundabad Ogres

Pict 259: Gundabad Ogres

And here are the Gundabad Ogres finally finished. It took a while but now I'm happy with their skin. The yellowness of last week disappeared quickly with two glazes. After I was done with all those I added a little Reikland Fleshshade to deepen shadows such as under the knee or between the fingers. As a finishing touch I added the leafs to the bases.

So that's what I painted this week. The plan still stands to finish up some more projects on my desk, but right now I'm torn and don't know what will be next. Usually I'd try and show a WIP but since there are so many I'll surprise myself.

D&D, Woodelves and Gundabad Ogres

I didn't get to paint that much this week, but I did convert and finish two Flameskulls to blow up my D&D players. Other than that I made progress with the Wardancers and I started with the progress of finishing projects that clutter my desk.
 

Pict 252: The paint table

Pict 253: Flameskulls

I made the Flameskulls from the big skulls that come with a box of Gor and afixed the flames from braziers that come with the citadel wood. These bits made some bigger skulls than a normal Flameskull would use and I like to imagine that these Flameskulls were made with the skulls of ogre mages.

Pict 254: Wardancers (WIP)

Pict 255 - Gundabad Ogres (WIP)

These two pictures show my progress with the many projects that are currently on my table. The Wardancers have had their base colours blocked in and the washes are down as well.
In order to relief the clutter on my desk a little bit I plan to finish up the miniatures that are half finished right now. I started with the Gundabad Ogres that only are missing the skin. As you can see on the picture the Ogre on the right looks a bit yellow - I hope to correct that with thin layers of highlights, but it's not that bad in person - maybe I should play around with the whitebalance on my camera. Painting skin with several translucent layers is tricky and it only starts to look good once you near the end...

The Death Guard finished and I started with some Wood Elves

I finished the Plague Marines this week right in time for GW to release some new stuff for the Death Guard so that my paint queue never gets to short. Other than that I cought the Warhammer Fantasy bug again and decided to paint myself some Wood Elves.

Pict 245: The Death Guard

Firstly I want to show all of the Death Guard from the Dark Imperium box - finally I painted them all and I have to say I really like the way they look as a group. I think that's one of driving forces for me to hobby - it's very satisfying to me to see the army completed.

Pict 246: Plague Marines

Pict 247: Plague Marines

And here are some close ups of the Plague Marines. They didn't take so long since I painted them as a group. I very much enjoy the sculpts and look forward to getting some more Plague Marines.

Pict 248: Wardancer

Pict 249: Wardancer

Next are the Wood Elves I painted this week. The Wood Elves are one of my first loves - they were my first WHFB army and I very much dig their fluff and their feel in the game. On top of that I think the miniatures are some of the best miniatures ever produced by any company. Especially the line for the 6th edition of the game will always have a place in my heart, but I am fond of the earlier miniatures as well.
I started this painting frenzy of Wood Elves with one of the exclusive Wardancers. I will either use him as a Champion or as a Wardancer Highborn (or a Shadowdancer when playing 8th edition). I am still not that confident in my ability to freehand and thus there is only a little bit of warpaint. Other than that I am very pleased with how the miniature came out.

Pict 250: Wardancers (WIP)

Pict 251: Warhawk Riders (WIP)

The other Asrai are not done yet. I only finished the Warhawk Rider's bases because I didn't just want to complete the Wardancer's base. The base colours are not quite done but you can already see where the miniatures are going. We'll see what I'll have done next week but as you can see looking at the last two month's posts, there are quite a lot of unfinished miniatures currently laying on my desk...