The Illithid! (and a few Hobbits, all WIP)

This week was slower than the last one again and I didn't finish any miniatures. Instead of completing projects, I started new ones again.

Pict 415: Illithid (WIP)

These two creepy tentacle-humanoids will add to my D&D monsters once they are done. Right now however, I'm not to keen on the skin-mantle the Alhoon (Mind Flayer Spellcaster) has and I might change it to tattered pieces of cloth instead. Since I haven't yet put on washes, this should be a quick fix.

Pict 416: Hobbit Archers (WIP)

The second project are these Hobbit Archers. I'm painting them mainly for my Arnor Battle Company since they are on the reinforcement table and I only had one painted so far. They don't count against the bow limit so that you will get more of them once this limit is reached and you roll another Ranger. I really like the these sculpts with the unique little details and look forward to finishing them. Right now they have almost all of the basic colours on them - let's see how long it will take me to finish them.

Dúnedain Rangers and a Duergar Warrior

I finally finished the Dúnedain that had been taking up space on my desk for some time this week. After I was done with them, I also got to the Duergar Warrior I had started the week prior.

Pict 410: Dúnedain

Pict 411: Dúnedain

Pict 412: Dúnadan

Frist up, here are the northern Dúnedain; I picked out my favourite pose that I like to call the Hipster because of the beard and the topknot. I'm really happy to be done with these miniatures. Don't get me wrong - the sculpts are amazing and I liked converting them, but they cost me a lot of motivation since they took so long to finish.
I really look forward to play with them since they will fill multiple roles: They will be used as Dúnedain in an Arnor army or in Scenarios as well as normal Rangers of the North in my Arnor Battle Company. I also hope to use them as brigands or similar evil doers in D&D.

Pict 413: Duergar Warrior

Pict 414: Duergar Warrior

Speaking of D&D - as I said earlier, I also finished the Duergar Warrior. The highlighting here also went rather fast and I'm happy with how he turned out. Next up for this ongoing project of painting my D&D backlog will probably be the two Mindflayers of the set.

Iron Hills Dwarves with Mattocks

This week I had a little more time to paint and promptly got started on the Iron Hills Dwarves, I built the week prior.

Pict 405: Iron Hills Dwarves

Pict 406: Iron Hills Dwarf Warriors with Mattocks

These warriors were surprisingly easy to paint this time around. When I was painting the warriors carrying crossbows I tried to finish the chariot at the same time and painted myself into a metaphorical corner. With these I really enjoyed the differing poses and thus finished them quickly.

Pict 407: Iron Hills Dwarves Command with Mattocks

Pict 408: Iron Hills Dwarves Command with Mattocks

The Captain and Banner Bearer are amazing models as well - I am tempted to get the same Captain again to convert him into a hero for my battle company, but for now these will do fine. The Banner is complexer than the first one I painted. The prominent designs form not only a mountain but also a band that I interpreted as the ground and thus painted green resulting in a fetching contrast with the complementary red that I used as the main colour.

Pict 409: Duergar Warrior (WIP)

I got a little bit of work in with the Dúnedain, but not enough to warrent a new picture of them. Instead I'm showing my progress with the next D&D miniature. This Duergar is part of the same set as the Intellect Devourer so that I painted the base in matching colours. For now the base-colours and washes are down and I hope to finish this guy early in the coming week.

Early Plastic Genestealers

Since I showed you what was on my painting table last week, I had to start aomething different instead of finishing one of the older projects. So here are some more Tyranids that I was able to finish so that my table wont become even more cluttered.

Pict 401: Genestealers

Pict 402: Genestealer

Pict 403: Genestealer

I showed these 'Stealers when I finished up the other batch of Tyranids. Since then they were stripped of their original colours and repainted. I like the aesthetic with more of the open flesh areas reminiscent of the Alien Xenomorph. They painted up rather fast and I'm happy they did, because I kinda lost some of my hobby mojo seeing these Dúnedain skulking around my table and never getting finished.

Pict 404: New Projects

Other than this painting, I also had time to build and prep a few more miniatures - some more Tyranids, a bit for my Warhammer Woodelfs and some ForgeWorld kits. I had to get some Iron Hills Dwarves with Matoocks so that I'll be able to play the Battle Company without using Grimhammers as stand-ins.

The current Projects

This week was rather crowded so that I had virtually no time to paint. But to show even the little bit of progress I managed, I took a photo of my painting table.

Pict 400: The State of my Painting Table

As you can see, there are several projects I'm working on right now. The Dúnedain look the same as you last saw them, the Skin Wolves should be done quickly since I decided on a polarwolf as the refence and Sauron the Necromancer is mostly wispy smoke and cloth. In the background are  (among other things) parts of the Fellowship of the Ring, another Théoden and a Duergar as well as my seasonal watercup.
Hopefully (and presumably) the coming weeks will be better for my hobby.

Spinefist Termagants and of course more DnD

The Termagants from last week were finished up fast but since I didn't have to much time to hobby, I only got to one more project.

Pict 396: Termagants (Spinefists)

As I said earlier, these were only missing a few colours last week. I only had to put on the brighter red and clean up the carapax in some places with black. I also used the black for the spots on the head, the shoulders and around the hips.I really like how the spinefists look - I wanted some Gants with this more unusual gear so that the spinefists wouldn't all end up in my bitsbox and to break up the units.

Pict 397: Intellect Devourer

Pict 398: Intellect Devourer

This Intellect Devourer is the next miniautre for my growing D&D menagerie. On top of that it's the first one I painted from Gale Force 9's Dungeons and Dragons Collector's Series. These miniatures are awsome scuplts but sometime you do have to quite a bit of greenstuff work to fix the seams. And you do have to be careful to not break them. The Intellect Devourer painted up pretty fast as well since I didn't use to many colours but I really like the way it turned out.

Pict 399: Genestealers (2nd ed.)

With the Termagants done, I was inspired to do more of them and so I started by cleaning moldlines off of some more old miniatures - this time it's Genestealers. I also broke of some of the arms to swap them around so that I could have more than two poses.As you can see they are rather colourful right now - they were bought with a larger lot and are awaiting some primer to get them started as soon as I can get to it.

Termagants, Genestealers and D&D

I originally planned to get the Dúnedain done, but as is so often the case, I got distracted. During a painting session with a friend, I started to work on some more Tyranids and I contiued with my D&D menagerie.

Pict 391: Smaller Tyranids

Pict 392: Termagants (WIP)

These Tyranids were the ones that were primed and ready to get some paint, so I grabbed them when I was invited for an afternoon of painting over at a friend's. I was really surprised at how fast I was able to get the skin and the first layer of carapax done - I did pretty much all of them in this one afternoon, so that I was able to finish some and get very far with ten more. There are still some more Genestealers as well as Hormagaunts and Termagants left for me to do, but the backlog of Tyranids is definitly shrinking!

Pict 393: Skeleton (Diablo II Miniatures)

Pict 394: Skeleton (Diablo II Miniatures)

This here is the first piece from the Diablo II Miniatures set, I was gifted last year. I really enjoyed the old school look of this skeleton and the painting went really fast as well. I used the same woodgrain technique I developed for the shields of my Arnor Warriors and I'm happy with the texture it adds to the miniature.

Pict 395: Hex-Map of the Elven-King's Protectorate

Some more hobby-time was spent world-building for Dungeons and Dragons. The first outlines of terrain, cities and special places were created using the Rolling through Regions generator over at my friend's roleplaying blog Out of Curiosity. After I had a rough sketch in pencil, I used Hexographer by Inkwell Ideas to convert it into a hex-map. The resulting look of the map is great I think, but the tool has it's kinks.
I do want to continue with the D&D miniatures - maybe I'll be able to sneak one in every week? Let's see!